Rather leaves in disgrace

Dan Rather is going … finally. The reason he is said to be leaving now, instead of later, is ascribed to the faked Bush memos. But the reason behind the reason is this: Dan Rather was ousted by a mistake and by technology.

The mistake: CBS decide to post images of the faked memos on its website. In the past, before the Internet became ubiquitous, Dapper Dan would have waved the memos in front of the camera, read their contents to us and insisted on their validity. And the audience would have believed it. After all, there would be no way of disputing the “evidence.”

Oh, some people may have disputed the memos. They would have been dismissed as partisan cranks and conspiracy nuts. After all, would a revered news organization make these things up? Remember Monica Lewinski being dismissed as a crazed stalker? Just like the famous little blue dress with traces of Clinton’s DNA on it, CBS made the mistake of posting forensic evidence on its web site.

Enter technology in the form of the Internet: bloggers began to examine the documents and it took a matter of mere hours for someone to post his observation that the memos did not look like they were typed on vintage 1970s typewriters, but on a computer using Microsoft Word. Thousands of Internet- savvy experts added their analysis, and the fraud was exposed … within a day.

The world of “news” will never be the same. Now every reporter, every commentator, every MSM analyst will have his words, his bias, his sins of commission and sins of omission analyzed.

Despite the MSM’s most fervent wishes and best efforts, media critics will no longer be dismissed as cranks or conspiracy theorists for two reasons: first, because they have been exposed one of the most revered media mavens as a craven liar and, second, because they are in charge of their own medium of communication. They are not limited to speaking to each other via the letters to the editor pages of the media monopolists. Some bloggers on the Internet have more daily readers than the most widely read newspapers. Moreover, unlike newspapers and television, they link to each other, reinforcing their message.

But remember the original premise: Dan Rather’s lies about the Bush Guard memos were exposed by an unusual combination of chance and technology. How many other “Rathergates” have become accepted truths because this happy combination was absent? How many other ABCNBCCBSCNN “news” stories were, well, bullshit? Hummm?

Isn’t it time to review history?

With a hat tip to Ralph M at IMAO:

Hilaire Belloc's epigram, "Epitaph on the Politician":

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept:
For I had longed to see him hanged.