by James Layman

On September 19th, 2007, celebrated news anchor Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against his former employer, the CBS Evening News. The turmoil stems from a 2004 story in which Rather reported the accounts of a military commander who confessed he was pressured to sugarcoat President Bush’s record of National Guard service during the Vietnam War. After the legitimacy of the memos Rather cited fell under question, CBS News hired a panel to determine the fairness and accuracy of his report. In March of 2005, after the panel concluded the report was neither fair nor balanced, Rather was terminated from CBS. Was Rather’s firing truly based on CBS’ charges of bias and untruthfulness, or had the anchor offended the wrong people and paid the price?

Media critic Noam Chomsky presents a theory of journalistic censorship consisting of five “filters” through which he alleges the content of news is passed. Chomsky’s fourth filter concerns journalist’s collective fear of flak, and loss of access to powerful sources. “The media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest. The media need a steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news”, says Chomsky. “The White House, The Pentagon, and the State Department are central nodes of such news activity at the national level”. (McChesney, 408)

Circumstances suggest fear of flak may have had something to do with Rather’s termination.

Rather delivered the report in September of 2004, less than two months before the presidential election. At the time, it wasn’t clear whether the Bush Administration would still be in power for the years to follow. Rather was not terminated until March of 2005, when CBS would require more than three years of continuous access to an administration it may have severely angered.

The “memogate” incident falls under greater scrutiny when weighed against recent media controversies of similar magnitude.

January 12th, 2005 marked the release of the final report that Iraq contained no weapons of mass destruction. This would ultimately discredit prior New York Times reports to the contrary (one which even described Iraq as “one large storage facility”). The Times would eventually come forward and confess the reports were “insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.” The media critique website www.fair.org analyzed the Times slipup in comparison to the Rather controversy, and inquired as to why Judith Miller, the journalist behind a great deal of the faulty WMD reports, was never reprimanded by her paper. FAIR’s critique pointed to Chomsky’s fourth filter, suggesting that Rather’s punishment came from “offending the wrong people” (in this case, the Bush administration).

Former Democratic Vice President Al Gore agreed in a 2005 speech, stating that Rather was “forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House.”

Other media critics maintain Rather’s (and other CBS executive’s) dismissal occurred under less sinister circumstances. In a column published on the media critique website www.aim.org, columnists Cliff Kincaid and Roger Aronoff addressed the alleged pressure put on CBS by the administration. The article references a CNN appearance in which Mary Mapes, the producer of the Rather piece, was asked if the White House had pressured CBS to keep the story under wraps. “I don’t know”, she responded. “I have no evidence that they put direct pressure on.”

Kincaid and Aronoff went on to ask, “have we reached a point in journalism where the facts and evidence simply don’t matter?”

Perhaps, on the contrary, the facts matter too much.

Chomsky describes the need for wholly, undoubtedly accurate sources as another means of media filtration. “Another reason for the heavy weight given to official sources is that the mass media claim to be “objective” dispensers of the news. Partly to maintain the image of objectivity, but also to protect themselves from criticism of bias and the threat of libel suits, they need material that can be portrayed as presumptively accurate”, he says. (McChesney, 408).

This criticism suggests that fringe sources stray too far from tangible, monolithic fact- a notion that repels journalists fearful of bias accusations. Unfortunately, mainstream fact may typically fail to question the powers that be. The fear of being investigated deeply over a fringe piece might prevent journalists from stepping out of line- the very thing good journalism is supposed to do.

This may be another filter looming over the “memogate” controversy. Rather’s report consisted largely of gathered scraps of information from around the internet, instead of a single, solid source. The panel that deemed the report biased clearly dismissed the legitimacy of this data collection. Could this have sent a warning to the journalism community about straying from the mainstream? If a journalist were to happen upon a fringe source with a TRUE story, might it never get published out of fear?

Martin Gold, Rather’s lawyer, saw the incident as a sacrifice of “independent journalism”. Meanwhile, AIM columnist and Rather critic John H. Wambough chastised Rather for relying on heavily biased left-wing sources.

Between allegations of bias and implications of censorship from both sides, lies a more pressing question. Should Rather have been fired, even chastised for “memogate”?

David Dent, a New York University professor and author of In Search of Black America, and American Extremes sees Rather as a singular piece of the picture. “I think he was a scapegoat, but he still bears responsibility”, said Dent.

What implications might Rather’s firing carry for the future of investigative journalism? What risks does going against the grain of the administration or stepping aside of mainstream sources entail? Was Rather’s firing on account of CBS’ dishonesty, or was it something more?

Books Cited
McChesney, Robert W, Scott, Ben, Our Unfree Press, 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism, The New Press, London, 2004