Newsday columnist needs better information

Newsday columnist Dennis Duggan uses his latest column to lament that Dan Rather is no Walter Cronkite for not walking out when the 60 Minutes staff members were dismissed over the "forgery incident".

Unfortunately, Duggan also seems to hold it against Rather that he (Rather) continues to claim the story was accurate. He doesn't seem to have distinguished that while the story was mishandled, it wasn't innacurate.

His program was foundering even before his faulty reporting on President George W. Bush's service in the National Guard was criticized by the network for its lack of fairness and accuracy.

A few years ago, I laid into Cronkite for what I regarded as a pandering interview with Chicago's mayor during the contentious Democratic convention in 1968. When I talked to Cronkite after writing a critical piece, he told me the interview with Mayor Richard Daley "was the biggest mistake I've ever made."

I was taken aback. Here was the country's best-known newscaster telling me he had made a mistake. It takes a big man to admit to a mistake and Rather has yet to admit he made one. He backed up a faulty story for 12 days even as CBS president Les Moonves fired Rather's producer, Mary Mapes, and three other staffers.

To this day, Rather insists the story was accurate. That's what he told Auletta.
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nydugg024162336mar02,0,6804317.column?coll=ny-news-columnists

Duggan is no wingnut, and he's usually better than this. There's plenty of reasons to hold Dan Rather in not-so-high esteem, but Duggan doesn't account for the fact that there's a wingnut faction in this country who equate him with Tokyo Rose and have been gunning for him since Vietnam, and who leapt on this as a means to finally take him down.

I missed that particular 60 Minutes but, as I understand it the story in question did not hinge on that one document in question. Aside from the use of an insufficiently-verified source (which CBS should be above, but then so should all the other programs and papers who tossed such formalities to the wind during the Clinton years) the story was accurate, right?

What was factually wrong with it? Anything?

If this "journalist" wants to get to the real bottom of this story, he should review Mr. Rather's report and then ask the same question Dan did about Bunnypant's military service or lack of service.

The "forged memos" were a sideshow to the main point that * not only didn't serve his time in the National Guard, but he purposely deserted. Remember there was a developing paper trail of the manchild's army records (or lack of them) that were being forced out of the White House...they had to kill the story, the story teller and see if it could be turned on Rather...and in-directly onto Kerry through the Slime Boat smears.

Also, ask your "journalist", if he'd be interested in investigating the legendary "Buckethead"...who somehow mysteriously found out these memos were forged within minutes of CBS showing the program...and who investigations by the L.A. Times showed he was a GOOP operative...another "Gannon" hard at work inside the "media".

This isn't reporting, this is pontificating...and even worse, from a "journalist" who obviously didn't bother to research this topic beyond the water-cooler.

...usually covering the NYC local beats. it's just that here, yes, his column is operating at a strictly "watercooler" level, which is part of the very decline in journalism that he was criticising.

It doesn't really matter if that memo was forged or not, the information it contained was correct--the secretary of that commanding officer testified to that fact. Along with the widow of the politician whose campaign Bush was supposedly working on when he left the Guard early.
The whole "forged document" thing was a Rove plant, fed to the lapdog media, to take the spotlight off of the facts. And they ate it up.

By E&P Staff

Published: March 01, 2005 11:00 AM ET

<snip>
“The deterioration we experienced at Newsday was hardly unique," she wrote in the memo, describing the past few years. "All across America news organizations have been devoured by massive corporations, and allegiance to stockholders, the drive for higher share prices, and push for larger dividend returns trumps everything that the grunts in the newsrooms consider their missions. Long gone are the days of fast-talking, whiskey-swilling Murray Kempton peers eloquently filling columns with daily dish on government scandals, mobsters and police corruption. The sort of in-your-face challenge that the Fourth Estate once posed for politicians has been replaced by mud-slinging, lies and, where it ought not be, timidity.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3204516&mesg_id=3204516&page=

People are amazed when they find out their local paper really isn't a local paper...and is run by corporates thousands of miles away. I firmly believe the loss of local ownership of the media is one of the biggest problems in journalism, broadcasting and society in general. The notebook is trumped by the checkbook and 20 years of downsizing and deregulating have led to the sad media we have today.

Someone called what we're seeing the "MTV effect"...when MTV came onto cable, it turned music from something you listened to to something you watched...it turned it from art to fluff...where the style, not the substance matters. This now extends to journalism where the byline, having your face on the tube and being invited to the big drinkie-drinkie parties mean more than the purpose of reporting and informing.

Unfortunately few really grasp what has happened here, and a majority seem to be just fine with how things are. Until the atmosphere of this country changes, don't expect our corporate media to go for the quick buck over the truth.

Duggan is one of the last remnants of the "Kempton Era", and most of his columns are on local (esp. Queens) scandals, corruption., and other issues. That's why the casual acceptance of "conventional wisdom" in this case is such a dissapointment.