WHY IS THE CORPORATE MEDIA BEATING UP ON DAN RATHER AGAIN?

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[The dismissive, insulting comments about Dan Rather's law suit against
CBS in the corporate media are strikingly unprofessional. No one in the
media - including us - knows whether Rather has a case or not, but
certainly the issue in contention has never been adequately resolved, as
we are reminded of by an article Russ Baker wrote in the Atlanta Journal
Constitution a couple of years ago]

RUSS BAKER, 2005 - The hullabaloo over CBS News's overzealous use of
documents whose authenticity is in doubt -- and CBS management's actions
to punish those involved -- only serves to obscure a far bigger
question: Where was George, who has gone on to promulgate a
precedent-shattering, hugely risky doctrine of pre-emptive war, when his
nation called on him to fulfill his own military obligations?

Like CBS's staffers and journalists from many media outlets, I explored
Bush's National Guard service extensively during the election campaign.
What I found were gaps upon puzzles upon misstatements upon
nondisclosures.

Certain facts are clear:  As a young man at Yale, George Bush vocally
supported the Vietnam War and criticized others who failed to serve,
then got himself into a safe unit for the sons of the privileged, in the
Texas Air National Guard. We also know that, for reasons yet unclear, he
failed to complete the final two years of a six-year military obligation
to fly jets, for which taxpayers had spent a good part of a million
dollars training him.

- Bush claims that he left his unit prematurely in order to accept a
high-level opportunity in campaign management in Alabama. But campaign
colleagues described his work as grunt-level make-work, marked by a
predilection to show up in the afternoon hours and to brag about
carousing the night before. In addition, the widow of the Alabama
campaign manager, who was a close friend of Bush's father, told me that
Bush was only in Alabama because the senior Bush had begged her husband
to hire his son in order to get him out of some kind of trouble back in
Texas.

- According to the widow of the flyer brought in to replace Bush in the
Texas Air Guard, his commanding officer, Jerry Killian (who died in
1984)  had explained to her and her husband that Bush had left the unit
abruptly because of problems flying his plane -- and Killian had
suspected that alcohol abuse had something to do with it. (Bush has
admitted to past alcohol problems but not offered specifics relating to
his military service.) More than one of his flying comrades indicated
that Bush's behavior became suddenly erratic several years into his time
with the Guard.

(The questioned CBS documents were memos purportedly generated by
Killian; his own reputation is unblemished.)

- Bush has said on repeated occasions that he continued to fulfill his
military obligation while in Alabama, but high-profile efforts to
substantiate that, including the offer of reward monies, have turned up
no corroboration. And Bush's former ghostwriter told me that Bush
admitted to him in 1999 that he had done no service at all in Alabama,
claiming to be "excused."

One thing is certain about the CBS documents: If they are not real, then
they were prepared by someone who had enough inside information to make
them look almost real, but who also knew enough to include a few small
telltale signs that might point to their inauthenticity - clues that
might be overlooked by a news organization racing to put out an
important, timely story under competitive pressures.

It's striking that the critique of the documents appeared on the
Internet just hours after CBS aired them, and that the person claiming
to be a document expert turned out to be an attorney with strong GOP
connections who had no such credentials. How was this man able so
quickly to produce his critique, and how did the story grow so quickly
to overtake the basic questions about the president's own murky past
performance? Did Rove's well-documented history of aggressive
last-minute campaign ploys have anything to do with this episode? And
why, despite all the questions, has Bush never offered a detailed
accounting of his doings in those missing years? That's a news story no
one yet has tackled.

Without excusing serious errors on CBS's part, an even more important
question remains: Why have we decided that the transgressions of a news
organization -- that, at worst, overshot on a legitimate story - are
more important than a thorough examination of the personal character of
our Commander in Chief, presiding over a highly controversial war in
Iraq and having no hesitation to expose others - including large numbers
of Texas Guardsmen -- to mortal risk when he himself may have even
failed to complete a safe military obligation of his own?

Independent investigative journalist Russ Baker covered Bush's National
Guard Service for The Nation. He is a Contributing Editor of the
Columbia Journalism Review and founding Fellow of the new Fourth Estate
Society.

[An abbreviated version of this article appeared on the Op-Ed page of
the Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

http://russbaker.com/ajc%20-%20whats%20wrong%20with%20the%20coverage.htm

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