Dan Rather Gone, But White House Isn't Sated Yet

“Karl Rove started talking to me again,” John Roberts, CBS News’ White House correspondent, said of President Bush’s chief political advisor and deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House.
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Dan Rather left the CBS Evening News March 10, and now that the White House has gotten what it wanted, history has started over. Kind of.

“I think there’s a sense of wiping the slate clean with the White House and we’re starting at square one,” Mr. Roberts said, adding that it was “no secret” that the Bush family hadn’t liked Mr. Rather. And the memo scandal had further hurt CBS News’ access to the White House.
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“Dan Rather became a symbol,” said Mr. Fleischer, who remains close to President Bush. “That’s why this is a new opportunity for CBS. But there’s a lot more to it besides who was in the anchor chair. There’s CBS as a larger organization. There is still largely a Democratic tilt that goes in their journalism.”

Dan Rather was a good start. But the White House wanted more. “A new chapter has opened up at CBS,” Mr. Fleischer said on March 22, “but we don’t know what’s in it yet.”

http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage3.asp#

n/t

motel rooms.

I honestly believe that George's method of celebrating a win is to "suicide" a journalist.

But that's just me.

Lured in by easy money, CBS has been pulled into the right-wing media pool. Due to its lack of journalistic integrity, there was very little fight in the big fish.

To pump for Terri Schiavo by saying that they are speaking with her and know her wishes and she would have pressed the lever for Jeb and George in a heart beat in the elections and wants buried underneath a collection box for the RNC!

....
Adam Levine, who was the assistant White House secretary in charge of television news until January 2004—and who, like Mr. Fleischer, remains close to the Bush administration press office—said CBS News still had “a lot of work to do.”

To measure the relative credibility of news networks with press officials at the White House, Mr. Levine suggested a scale of one to 100: he put Fox News at 90, NBC News at 80 and CBS News at “about 10.”

Asked about that assessment, a current White House official, who declined to be named, said that figure was “probably generous given what happened.”

“It depends on where they go from here,” said the official. “Contrition is always nice, but it all depends on what gets on the air. That’s the true test.”
...............

And Ari thinks Shieffer has a little problem, too...

snip>
“I found him to be very gracious,” said Mr. Fleischer. “The only thing was he seems to really dislike Tom DeLay. I think a lot of reporters do. I always had good workings with Bob Schieffer. I thought he gave issues a fair ear.”

And it will be at Bu$h and his criminal family. That kind of hope is all that keeps me going nowadays.