Rathergate: Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog
October 5, 2008“If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.”
That sentence there marks the end of an era. An era of trust in Dan Rather and in 60 Minutes. People who had trusted Rather believed that as the voice of the news in 60 Minutes that they could just believe what he said as well researched truth. It only took one event to topple his credibility like a line of dominoes, or a house of cards, and that event was Rathergate.
It was September 8th, 2004, just weeks before the american federal election, and Dan Rather was doing a report on 60 Minutes about George Bush’s military history. He mentioned that he had files from a higher up in the organization and that they were genuine and had been evaluated by experts. These files portrayed Bush in a rather unflattering light. If they were in fact genuine as Rather had said, they would have been very harmful to Bush in the upcoming election. The report ran and people in America were shocked, but beliving. Who wouldn’t believe Mr Dan Rather? He was a trusted figure in the eyes of many. Why would the news lie? Who would go against believing the news?
Well, a group of Republican bloggers began to look at the supposed files saying that they could have just been mocked up in Microsoft Word. Bloggers, you say? Why, what is a blogger?
A blogger being a person who wrote online articles, but didn’t need to be published by a paper or news outlet. They were self publishing. They had mainly been online and helping eachother out and telling eachother stores. Blogger was not a word used in everyday homes. Up until this incident that is.
These bloggers helped to disprove some very damning, but actually very possiby fake evidence against the President of the United States. These independant Internet nerds working together actualy toppled the tower of news and made Dan Rather fall like Humpty Dumpty. He “resigned” just under a year later.
This incient was the turning point for blogs and bloggers. Some of them were all of a sudden taken very eriously. In the 4 years since, people are able to make a living out of blogging. They can sit at home in their underpants and just write about whatever they want, and as long as they have proof, they are valid purveryors of news. They aren’t journalists, but they are news providers. Blogging gave people everywhere a soapbox to stand on, which is something a lot of people needed to get their thoughts and ideas out there. Blogging is now everywhere, even in the classrooms of schools, as I am actualy writing this blog for a class assignment.
Rather was forced to apologize for the Bush Texas Air National Guard story by top CBS management to ensure that no further damaging revelations about the president’s time in the Texas Air National Guard would become public. Ostensibly, CBS hired a private investigator to re-report the original Bush-Texas Air National Guard story, after Rather threatened to hire his own private eye to do the same thing. Purportedly that investigator found the story to be accurate, only to have his findings suppressed by CBS as part of an effort to curry favor with the Bush White House.
Only the verification was in question, not the story itself. According to Rather, private investigator Erik Rigler checked out the leads given to him by CBS producer Mary Mapes. After looking into it, Rigler was of the opinion the documents were likely authentic, and that the underlying story was certainly accurate. CBS News, still trying to curry favor with the White House, covered up Rigler’s findings.
So…the truth never did make it back into the main stream media and Dan Rather’s reputation was ruined. So much for blogging the truth or the rest of the story as they say.