Memogate: Aftermath
Well, it looks like CBS and Rather are trying to come clean, but not hard enough. They are now laying blame on Bill Burkett, a former Texas Air National Guard official.
CBS said Burkett acknowledged he provided the documents and said he deliberately misled a CBS producer, giving her a false account of their origin to protect a promise of confidentiality to a source.
Neither Rather nor CBS understand that the real issue is not that they were misled (“It was an error that was made, however, in good faith,” Rather claims), but that they were so easily misled and didn’t check out the story from another viewpoint.
Bottom line: They wanted the story to be true, and were not going to test it thoroughly to prove it otherwise. By running the story, CBS became an unelected political actor attempting to influence the outcome of November’s election. It became the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party, and it deserves the term “propaganda” with all the negative connotations the word carries.
Rather needs to do the honorable thing, as do the heads of CBS news. Nothing else will do.
