Who killed Dan Rather? (Bloggers claim first scalp)

[kskiska]

Bloggers are claiming their first scalp. But the old media isn't dead yet -- and the new media can never replace it.

It's reflexive, irresistible: When Dan Rather says goodbye Wednesday night, some trend watchers will tell us it marks the end of one form of media -- big media, corporate media, old media and, according to some, liberal media -- and the emergence of a new one, ruled by a populist, disintermediated chorus of citizen journalists who live in something that's been badly labeled "the blogosphere."

We all know the narrative: Within hours of Rather's Sept. 8 "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment, on allegations that President Bush got special treatment in the Texas Air National Guard, bloggers began unraveling the story, pointing particularly to problems in key source documents that seemed to indicate they were forgeries. (Problems that came to light, ironically, when CBS posted the documents on the Internet, where they could be instantly scrutinized by millions.)

It's an Internet success story and we want to believe it. We love Internet success stories because we are one! (That's the cardinal rule of the blogosphere -- transparency cures all ills! Let your biases hang out!) But it's not the whole truth.

(snip)

# The other fiction is that "citizen journalists" alone brought down Rather. In fact, the bloggers behind Rathergate -- starting with Rathergate.com -- were a mixed bag of independent citizens and scrappy document hounds alongside veteran right-wing activists with ties to all sorts of conservative causes. In the American Prospect this week Garance Franke-Ruta lays out the pedigree of Rathergate.com founder Mike Krempasky, a Virginia GOP veteran of Morton Rockwell's right-wing leadership training institute who currently works for conservative mastermind Richard Viguerie. Trashing Rather has been a cause on the right going back to the '70s. The late Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media popularized the slogan "CBS: Rather Biased"; it was picked up by some young conservative bloggers at RatherBiased.com in 2000, and they rode it to Rather's retirement. The right fused its old-politics infrastructure of rabid Rather-haters to new-media bloggers to make sure the story found its legs.

more…
http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/03/09/rather/index.html

[Skittles]

1. conservatives will be sorry to see Dan go

ask any asshole conservative for examples of the "liberal media" and you get the same tired three names - Rather/Browkaw/Jennings. Pretty soon they won't have any f***ing names will they?

[starwolf]

2. He killed himself through carelessness

When you take on the kind of people he did, you need to make sure all your bases are covered. He did not and got burned. He created the hole that bloggers attacked through.

In a situation like his where you already have more than your share of enemies, mistakes like that get you tainted and you are gone. Not all of his enemies were repugs.

The shame of it all is that when the messenger gets brought down, the message goes down too. This is a generic condition, not just limited to Rather. We need to be rock solid when we make statements that attack things most people hold to be true, otherwise this will be a red nation for a long time to come.

[Bridget Burke]

3. Rather didn't "attack things most people hold to be true"

His segment on AWOL Bush was focused on an appearance by Ben Barnes, who admitted that he had pulled strings to get Bush Jr into TANG. This was already suspected & has never been refuted.

The memo was an additional feature to the segment, offering interesting details on that period in Bush's life. The memo's provenance is questionable--one hopes that investigation will reveal its actual source. But the secretary questioned did say that the contents were true.

Bush pulled strings to hypocritically avoid Vietnam by getting into TANG. Then he failed that commitment. That's public knowledge that has never been contradicted.

[starwolf]

4. Way too nuanced

While I am not arguing about your points, but we need to consider how the average person looked at it:

- Rather was dredging up something that had been already been put to bed in the 2000 run just before the election.
- His source was a fraud, and Rather should have known it.
- The whole topic (Bush in the ANG)and the people who pushed it were discredited in their eyes.

Note that this is not MY position, but what seems that most people thought about the report. We need to remember that the vast majority of voters operate at the sound bite level. Make a straight forward case for things and they buy it. If it gets complex you lose them and those who can make the straight forward case wins the day. Shrill screamers like Carville and Coulter are just noise and in the end hurt their causes.

I'm a geek. One thing I have learned is the elegance of simplicity. Good design is not when you can no longer add things to something, but when there is nothing more you can take away. Its something I try hard to inject into my politics. Occam's Razor helps here too as do hard facts. Clear step by step reasoning wins the day. Bringing up Nazis, or character assignation does not win. Small tight, rational arguments win.

[saracat]

9. The average person believed what they were told.

It doesn't happen to be true. Rather was NEVER proven wrong. Bush was awol. And oddly, most people do believe that. It is the fact that Rather forged documents, something he did NOT do, that has the public insensed. They believe what they are told.

[Blue_Tires]

6. yeah, all the commotion over rather covered up the fact that

bush DID go awol

[Catfight]

7. Indeed, it's "Revenge of the Morans,(sic)" if you ask me. n/t

[umass1993]

5. yes, this was just an excuse

to get rid of Rather. He wasn't controllable.

If CBS wanted to keep him, they would have. The execs just wanted to get rid of him without a big fuss.

Bloggers are just tools.

[blm]

8. Actually GOP Cong. Ed Schrock (Va) was the FIRST scalp for bloggers....

Lest we forget that the VERY conservative, VERY Republican anti-gay Schrock was outed by blogactive with his solicitations for gay sex.

Schrock resigned the day before the GOP convention. The mainstream media did not cover the story at all.