The CBS Fallout

We confess to savoring a bit of schadenfreude at the fallout from the RatherGate affair at CBS. It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch. Well, perhaps that's not quite true. Maybe the New York Times deserves it just as much. At any rate, CBS and the cashiered foursome is getting what it, and they, deserve. They wanted with all their might for this story to be true. They wanted so badly to discredit George Bush that they convinced themselves that the forged memos were genuine. They were blinded by their own wish-fulfillment and threw all professional standards and caution to the winds, chancing their careers on this one throw of the dice.

At least that's the charitable interpretation. The alternative is that they knew going in that the documents were suspect, but didn't care. They thought they could damage the president with fabrications, and no one would be the wiser. They may well have done it before and thought they could do it again. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the blogosphere they doubtless would've gotten away with it.

The difference between the two interpretations is the difference between being reckless, careless, and gullible because of ignoble political motives and being overtly malicious and vicious because of ignoble political motives.

Some bloggers are a little miffed that the CBS report didn't come down harder on what they perceive to be the obvious political motivations of the principal players in this farce, but motivation is much easier to discern than it is to prove. Even so, in this case there can be little doubt, whether the report makes it clear or not, that the impelling force was a desire to destroy the Bush presidency.

Here's what Bernard Goldberg, former CBS reporter and author of the expose Biased, said to Wolf Blitzer on CNN:

"And I'm going a step further. I'm saying there was an agenda at work. I'm not saying that Dan Rather went into this saying, I'm going to get George Bush. It's never -- that is not the nature of bias in the news. It never, ever happens that way. But I am saying that he wanted this story to be true, and Mary Mapes sure wanted that story to be true. And did he depend too much on her? Yes, that's obvious. But if he didn't want this story to be true, if it didn't fit the culture of CBS' preconceived notions about liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans, it would have never seen the light of day and we would never be talking about it..."

"I think when you're working with investigative producers -- and it's the scariest thing in the world -- I've worked with them -- when they fall in love with the story, head for the hills. Because you may have big, big problems, as we see here. But what I'm saying is, they didn't simply fall in love with a great story. They would have never -- I know these people, I know these people. And even more than knowing these people, I know the culture at CBS News. They would have never fallen in love with a story that made the other side look as bad as they made George Bush. They just wouldn't have."

We hate to sound like Madame DeFarge, but we're satisfied that the job-ending guillotine at CBS is doing condign work. The only injustice is that Dan Rather is allowed to walk away with his dignity and dubious reputation somewhat intact while underlings suffer a season of public humiliation. Rather's head should have rolled with the rest of them, metaphorically speaking of course. The good news is that everyone knows it.