WPCNR CITY ROOM. News Comment By John F. Bailey. January 10, 2004: The announcement that CBS News has fired four employees connected with the Dan Rather forged documents controversy involving President Bush’s service or lack thereof in the National Guard has been turned around to “get” Dan Rather.
The greatest television news organization, CBS News, perhaps the last network to attempt to report stories (on 60 Minutes, at least), exposing corruption and wrongdoing, has been deeply wounded.
To listen to the commentary on talk radio today, is to be sickened by the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude of the snide remarks of commentators who conveniently overlook what has to happen for a reporter to make a mistake, or misreport a story.
Many of Mr. Rather's critics have never broken a story in their lives, or have the guts to go out and find one.
He was lied to. He was set up. Mr. Rather and his producers are being torched for not doing their homework. One guest on the John R. Gambling program on WABC Radio this morning went so far as to say “They (CBS) wanted the story to be true.”
So what.
Do the commentators like that above guest, and Mr. Gambling himself (who, of course has no news credentials and has probably never ever been lied to by a source), talk about how the forged document was brought to CBS News? No.
Well, to make a long story short, the persons or person who gave Rather’s guys the papers were from Texas, (former National Guard Lieutenant Bill Burkett)
(What a coincidence! Of all places who passed the forged documents to Mr. Rather’s producer in the first place? Were they Bush operatives in disguise? Mr. Burkett refused to identify them. Was this a Set-up of the news producers in the best tradition of Watergate?) Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes also spoke out about Mr. Bush's favorable treatment.
Now, does the Bush campaign get any flack (for possibly, just maybe creating a false news story and discrediting a major news organization in a set-up disgrace)?
No, the media hyenas who are drooling over the mortally wounded Dan Rather and vilifying him for circulating a false news story, ignore the fact that the story was planted – perhaps even by the Bush campaign itself. I mean who would have those documents in their possession -- perhaps the President himself. (Now, there is outright specualtion, folks.)
The hyenas on talk radio would not know a story unless it was told to them. Since when do any talk show commentators get on a phone, or a plane go down and talk to people, and hear anything but other people's opinions.
The Secretary's Story: Ignored.
Let us remember what the secretary at Bush’s National Guard unit Marion Carr Knox, on CBS-TV said, when she announced she did not remember typing the document in question, she also said:
"I know that I didn't type them," Knox said of the Killian memos. "However, the information in there is correct," she said, adding that Killian and the other officers would "snicker about what [Bush] was getting away with."
Let those words sink in: "snicker about what (Bush) was getting away with."
Rather said he was "relieved and pleased" by Knox's comments that the disputed memos reflected Killian's view of the favorable treatment that Bush received in the military unit. But he said, "I take very seriously her belief that the documents are not authentic."
So the story about Bush getting preferential treatment is really true. But was sabotaged by the use of the alleged phoney documents, that's the way I read her statements.
Rather, the messenger, and a fighter to the end, pointed this out to his fellow media Judases, saying "Instead of asking President Bush and his staff questions about what is true and not true about the president's military service, they ask me questions: 'How do you know this and that about the documents?' "
A Lie a Day in the City, a Lie an Hour Out of Washington.
Let me tell you news fans, I am lied to every day by some of the nicest (and nastiest) people. It is a fact of news life.
I was once given a supposed “scoop” from city hall about collusion between a store tenant and a major developer in town to kill a major project. The Mayor's Office of this city claimed to have telephone records showing phone calls between a leading attorney for the developer and this store tenant, prior to the store tenant’s following a law suit which conveniently derailed a project.
I asked to see those telephone records but The Mayor's Office would not show them to me. So I did not run the story. When I ran a watered down version of it, not mentioning the phone records, City Hall hurriedly advised me to remove the story because “I might be sued.”
Rather’s producers might have asked for the original documents, but the original documents, too, could have been faked.
The Coverup and Lie. How they work. Half the Truth and Anything But the Whole Truth.
White Plains City Hall denied up and down for ten months there was any problem with the Main Street sewer, then BINGO, it all unraveled, or "burst" when the mayor’s office slipped up. They forgot to check the Department of Public Works memos on the sewer, and a memo from Joseph Nicoletti surfaced revealing Nicoletti’s worry of “catastrophic consequences” if City Center apartments were hooked up to the Main Street sewer as is, and the fact that it was repressed from the Common Council. Ten months of lying about the sewer let loose a very odoriferous media emission from the Mayor's Office, and resulted, very quietly, in the okaying of the "Nicoletti Bypass."
On the national level, this happens a lot more. The book Into the Buzzsaw is a vivid account of how major news stories have been covered up and suppressed by the government, including TWA 800 and verifiable evidence that flight was taken out by a missile, on a national level. I firmly suggest you read it if you do not believe what I am saying.
Overlooking the Knox Remarks.
What is conveniently overlooked in this flap over “Dan and the Producers” is Mrs. Knox’s statement that Killian and the other officers were laughing at what Bush was getting away with. Legitimate exposure of President Bush’s soft time in the National Guard is conveniently deflected with the forged document exposure, as evidence that Dan was just out to get Bush, and that becomes the story, instead of what President Bush actually did. The strategy: deflect and accuse.
Well Mr. Bush is very gettable and vulnerable. So how do you deflect that? You lie. Lying, obfuscation, and suppression of key events by the government and media goes on every day, and media are talked into not covering stories. They are also talked into covering stories the government wants covered.
The following are stories about White Plains and Westchester County that were not reported, except by the White Plains CitizeNetReporter, you might ask yourself why they were not reported by the media in the area:
1. The Suicide of David Meyers.
2. The Main Street Sewer Controversy.
3. The Elena Sassower Jailing for Disruption of Congress.
4. The New York Presbyterian Hospital Failure to Appoint a Director of Proton Therapy to date.
5. The Chaotic evacuation of over a thousand people from the City Center Movies on a Saturday Night and lack of a fire evacuation plan.
6. The job hunt of the city’s former executive officer.
7. The overbilling of day care costs by Samaritan House to HUD, two years ago.
8. The City Hall “Orchestration” allowing Jeffrey Rosenstock and Tony Stimac to qualify to bid to run the White Plains Performing Arts Center.
9. The state of White Plains finances at the close of 2004.
10. The alleged shortfall in sales tax reimbursement to Yonkers, New Rochelle and White Plains, and the fact that the sales tax is not audited according to city finance officers.
11. The success or lack thereof of the White Plains Performing Arts Center.
12. The reluctance of Samaritan House to unveil its books to the Department of Social Services, as well as salaries and rents they charge the county, and the equal reticence of Westchester County to answer pointed questions about how much is spent on homeless shelters, the traffic through the shelters.
13. The new West Side Plan for White Plains.
14. The lining of the Main Street sewer.
And that is in just two years, ladies and gentlemen.
Why weren’t these stories covered? Because they were embarrassing, some to the county, some to the city.
When reporters get on to something, they are initially discredited, characterized as “stupid” “uninformed” and “out to make a name for themselves,” or killed (not literally, but figuratively, as has been done to Dan Rather), and sometimes actually killed or hurt (Karen Silkwood comes to mind, as does Victor Reisel.)
Who will be Mr. Dan Rather's replacement? Well, I guarantee you he or she will not be a reporter.
Old reporters never die, they just are not used or wanted. Because they are dangerous people.
