Top Stories of 2004: 'RatherGate': Was It Incompetence -- or Was It Bias?
by Jody Brown and Chad Groening
January 3, 2005
(AgapePress) - A respected Christian journalist says while it's possible "gross incompetence" is to blame for the erupting controversy surrounding CBS News' use of possibly forged documents critical of President Bush's National Guard service, more likely it's the result of "incredible bias."Marvin Olasky is editor-in-chief of World magazine, a weekly news magazine reporting national and international news written from a Christian perspective. He tells Baptist Press that CBS, which first reported the story on September 8 during a 60 Minutes segment, ignored basic journalism standards. In fact, he implies the network violated elementary journalistic protocol and knowingly set facts aside in its quest to get the story out.
"[I]t seems CBS definitely had an agenda, which for CBS was more important than the facts," he tells BP. "Every publication, every network has its biases. The question is, do you let those override the facts -- or do you go through the normal practice of checking and verification that even journalists in school are told to do?"
According to Baptist Press, Olasky also said it "looks like" the network "really wanted to bash Bush."
Meanwhile, veteran White House journalist Helen Thomas is publicly defending Dan Rather, describing the longtime CBS anchorman who broke the story as a "magnificent reporter." The major issue for her, she says, is "why doesn't the president tell us the truth?"
In a printed statement, Rather has admitted the network was "misled" by the source of the disputed documents and "made a mistake in judgment" when it chose to use them. But it was an error made "in good faith," he said.
CBS has announced that an independent panel will investigate the network's use of the questionable documents. That panel will be led by Dick Thornburgh, a former U.S. attorney general, and retired Associated Press president Louis Boccardi.
Rolling Heads?
A media watchdog organization says it will be interesting to see who might take the fall for what many have dubbed the "Rathergate" controversy. Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center believes someone is going to be held accountable.
"Whoever inside CBS is most responsible for this debacle -- whether that's Dan Rather, producer Mary Mapes, [CBS president] Andrew Hayward -- a lot of people had their hands involved in this story before it went on the air, not just Dan Rather," the MRS spokesman notes.
Still, Noyes says Rather needs to provide some more answers. "He knew much more about how this story was gathered than we do on the outside -- and yet he still thought it was better to point fingers at his critics rather than take any responsibility for his shoddy reporting," he says. "I think Dan Rather is going to have to answer a lot of harder questions in the future."
Noyes says the only way CBS can restore its credibility is to cover the remainder of the presidential election campaign in a fair and balanced manner -- instead of providing its heretofore "slanted" coverage.
And as for Rather? Noyes maintains that if the CBS anchor is revealed as being one of the parties responsible for the fraudulent story put upon the American public, he should "resign or be fired or be reprimanded in some public way."
