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Many in the public are seeing that four people have been fired for their flawed work in MemoGate, but that Dan Rather has not:
Rather told the head of CBS News, Andrew Heyward, he knew the story was so controversial as to be “radioactive,” according to the report on the story and its failures released Monday by an independent panel.
But what Rather also told the panel and what became a central finding of the review was that he had extreme confidence in Mary Mapes, the award-winning producer who was putting together the Air National Guard story. The powerful alliance of Rather and Mapes helped power the flawed story onto the air, according to the 224-page review of the CBS story by former Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi, former president of Associated Press.
As a result, CBS on Monday fired Mapes and asked two other producers and a vice president in its news division to resign.
So Dan was permitted to stay because he wasn’t responsible for the story. He was just reading it.
But page 104 of the MemoGate report quotes CBS News President Andrew Heyward as saying the reverse, NewsMax points out:
The report on the in-house probe claims that Rather had almost no role in checking out the bogus Sept. 8 report on President Bush’s National Guard record, saying that the CBS newsman “does not appear to have participated in any of the vetting sessions or to have even seen the Segment before it was aired.”
But according to CBS News President Andrew Heyward, nothing could be further from the truth.
In a development first covered Tuesday morning by “Fox and Friends” host E.D. Hill, the report says:
“Heyward recalled speaking to Rather on Monday, September 6, and being told that the story was thoroughly vetted. Heyward also told the Panel that Rather said he had not ‘been involved in this much checking on a story since Watergate.’
So the unfortunate side-effect of the report’s defense of Dan Rather is to tell the public that news anchors frequently have no idea at all whether what they’re saying is correct.
