60 Minutes of Fame
By BERNARD GOLDBERG
September 17, 2004; Page A14
On Feb. 12, 1996, I picked up a phone at CBS News in New York and
called Dan Rather, who was in Des Moines covering the Iowa caucuses. It
was a call that I -- then a CBS correspondent -- wasn't anxious to
make. I'd written an op-ed for this page about liberal bias in the news
that was going to run the next day. I knew I had to give Dan a heads
up. "I wrote a piece for the Journal, Dan, and my guess is you won't be
ecstatic about it." I hadn't given him any details yet, so he had no
idea what the op-ed was about. Dan was gracious; he always was when we
spoke. "Bernie," he said, "we were friends yesterday, we're friends
today, and we'll be friends tomorrow. So tell me about it."
I did, and the more I told him the more tense the conversation got.
After listening for a while, Dan told me, "I'm getting viscerally angry
about this" and the call soon ended. And then the man who was my friend
yesterday, today, and tomorrow told a number of our colleagues that
he'd "never" forgive me for what I'd done.
What I'd done was not simply to say that there really was a problem
with liberal bias in the news (if it matters, I'd never voted
Republican in my life), I'd also broken a taboo, doing what no
mainstream journalist (to my knowledge) had ever done: I'd given ammo
to "the enemy" by very publicly saying, in effect, that the
conservatives had been right all along.
* * *
As if that weren't bad enough, it was becoming apparent that by writing
about bias, which Mr. Rather over the years had repeatedly said was a
phony issue, I had (at least in his mind) also called into question the
thing he holds most sacred -- his integrity. That wasn't my intent. I
was just writing about bias in the news, not about Dan Rather. But if
Dan thinks his reputation has been attacked, understandably, he gets
hotter than an armadillo at a Fourth of July picnic, as you know who
might put it.
That's why in the midst of this Bush memo scandal, you have to wonder:
Now that Dan's credibility really is taking a beating, why won't he
blow the whistle on his source, the one who slipped him the documents
that almost certainly are fraudulent and got him into this mess?
He doesn't have to give us the guy's name and address, just tell us
what motivated him to leak the documents to CBS News. It's a common
journalistic practice, after all, to shed as much light on an unnamed
source as possible. That's why we often read "a source close to the
administration" or "a police source involved in the investigation" said
such and such. No name. But enough info so the news consumer
understands, as they say, where the source is coming from. In the case
of the leaked memos, does the source have any connection to the
Democrats? How about the Kerry campaign? If Dan told us that, he'd
still be faithful to his source, but at least as importantly, he'd be
showing good faith to his viewers by giving them a clue as to the
source's motives, whatever they might be.
Instead, Dan and CBS News do what they'd never tolerate in a crooked
politician: They circle the wagons. First we get a statement about how
there's no internal investigation going on at CBS; then we get a bunch
of stories by CBS News backing up the original "60 Minutes" piece that
areso one-sided they'd get a junior-high journalism student an "F" for
lack of balance; then on "60 Minutes" we did get a former secretary, "a
credible voice" as Dan Rather put it, who told him that "she believes
the documents we obtained are not authentic. But . . . she told us she
believes what the documents actually say is exactly as we reported."
Put plainly: The memos may be fake, but "We stand by our story."
We're the ones who have a right to be angry with CBS News, but it turns
out that Dan Rather is the one who's really fuming. Not at the source
who got him into all of this, but at those "partisans" who are fanning
the flames. The Washington Post quotes him as saying: "I don't cave
when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political forces."
He's absolutely right that some of his critics are partisans. But how
about Dan's source? Is he also a partisan?
Now it's possible that the mystery man (or woman) is someone who lives
in Denmark or Tibet and somehow got his hands on genuine documents that
make the president look bad in the middle of a race that might turn out
to be tighter than the rusted lug nuts on a '54 Chevy. But I doubt it.
I'm betting he lives a lot closer to home, and, who knows, he might
indeed turn out to be a "partisan political force" himself. And this is
precisely Dan's problem. This is why, I suspect, he isn't coming clean,
despite the damage to his reputation. Because Dan Rather may be
protecting not just his source, but himself; because, if the source
turns out to be a partisan, then Dan wasn't just taken for a ride, but
may have been a willing passenger.
And then Dan, and CBS News, can kiss their reputations goodbye.
Mr. Goldberg, a correspondent with CBS News from 1972-2000, is the
author of "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News,"
and, most recently, of "Arrogance: Saving America from the Media Elite"
(Warner, 2003).
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