Why did Dan Rather leave CBS?
After all, seems like the world’s come around to his views now.
Witness a true tongue-bath of an interview at his old home network this weekend, PR for a documentary about the man’s life— and proof positive that he fought against truth in journalism and the truth lost.
Yes, Rather was forced out at CBS for his disastrous reporting on George W. Bush’s National Guard service, in which he relied on fabricated documents to allege that Dubya got special treatment and that his superiors had been ordered to lie about his record.
As all the follow-up reporting showed, it was utter nonsense.
But what, in the end, did that matter?
The narrative — that Bush was a nasty, evil, bad, bad, bad, bad man — was correct, Rather argued: Facts were and are irrelevant.
Remember, he stuck by the fake story for yearsand tried to make himself out as a victim of a sinister plot at CBS, when in fact he suffered only thanks to his own partisan rage and midwit hubris.
He seemed an outlier at the time, even in a media landscape that most certainly leaned left and did its best to run interference on his BS. (Remember the immortal “Fake But Accurate” New York Times headline about the forged docs?)
But he ended up writing the law our stenographer class lives by today.
That being: Journalism exists to help Democrats, period.
By trying to suffocate bad stories about Hunter Biden (including his 100% real laptop) to fend off the political harm they might do his dad.
Or greasing the path for the Biden administration to lie about inflation or the border crisis.
Or going to bat for the Chinese government’s version of where COVID came from while shrieking for useless draconian measures against the virus here at home based on nonsense data.
Here we are, almost two decades later, with Ratherism near-triumphant and the actual goals of journalism in near-ruin.
So, great work, Dan.
You and your pals helped wreck a key institution of American life.
The only casualty was the truth.