A SORRY APOLOGY AT CBS
By ANDREA PEYSER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 21, 2004 -- SOME apology. It took just 235 words. Dan Rather, the most recognized talking parrot in TV news, single-handedly removed the "C" for "credibility" in the CBS logo — and turned the country's venerable broadcast propaganda machine forever into the network of BS.
From deep within Dan's bunker in Black Rock, yesterday emerged a wan statement, evidently typed on Microsoft Word through the anchor/Democratic activist's clenched teeth.
Dan purportedly was issuing a confession. We thought he'd admit he perpetrated a journalistic hoax — reporting a patently false story aimed at harming the president, in advance of a hotly contested election.
Instead, Dan pulled off a liar's hat trick: He was evasive, insincere and — in the spirit of such caught-in-the-act liars as Richard Nixon and Martha Stewart — Dan Rather blamed his career-killing misdeeds on others.
The BS began at "hello."
In the very first sentence, Dan said he was responding to "increasing questions about the authenticity of documents" he broadcast on "60 Minutes" regarding President Bush's National Guard service. Hogwash.
Rather should have admitted that his troubles stemmed not from the scorn heaped on his network after the story aired. CBS, with Rather at the helm, started the ball rolling when it chose to ignore the network's own experts, who told them the story was a crock before it aired.
Dan started his butt-covering in earnest from paragraph two.
"I find we have been misled on key questions," said Dan. Well, I'll be. A week ago, Rather declared in his practiced cowboy tones that if his Bush smear story were to blow up in his face, he'd take responsibility.
But now it's "we." And "we" were misled, cried Dan.
Then again, I have no idea if Dan's "apology" is authentic. Did he hunt-and-peck it with his own two paws on his Vietnam-era Selectric, or is this some kind of computer-generated hoax, delivered by a septuagenarian Rather look-alike? |
