Dan Rather moved by Toronto premiere of 'Truth'

[karynnj]

25. In addition to the personal destruction of a good reporter, two things made this even sadder

1) The rest of the media - including his own company - completely caved and spoke in serious, high minded tones about the need to completely check out the validity of anything. This ignored that while he did not have the document tested, he did have the woman who was the secretary verifying that she remembered something of this sort being written. Additionally, a former officer in the line of command verified that there had been a problem of this sort.

The idea that Rather had "not checked this out" really is untrue. Given the witnesses, the question when the letter was disputed should have been who could have known enough to create a letter that comes very close (if not exactly) what actually was written at some point in time? Think about it - given the document of uncertain conveyance - how would one check it out. I think asking the people who were there - the secretary and an officer who approved it - would be the first thing that anyone who took Journalism 101 might think of. (There is also the fact that it was within minutes of CBS showing it, that Free republic had "experts" claiming that type writers in the 1970s didn't look like that. Consider any other time when "expert" and "Free Republic" were used in the same sentence.)

This is especially sad as it hit Rather on his professionalism and competence - and few defended him.

2) The other sad thing is that when the controversy was stirring, before the letter came out, there was a poll that the NYT reported. It asked the people who in a standard poll said they were for Bush if the proof of these accusations would change their vote - the answer was surprisingly overwhelming -- no, they wouldn't. In reality, it was already baked in that GWB was a screw up in his youth -- and in Republican mythology, found God and a life of purpose. The anger against Rather, was likely not because it showed something they didn't know, but they did not want it documented making it obvious that they were ignoring things like this. (Sadly, there was no similar anger by the media powers that people on the other side ignored the REAL NAVY record of a man who actually was a war hero. The media gave the SBVT inordinate time after they were shown to have lied on many things. )

The effort to completely destroy Rather's reputation showed where the media was in 2004. What is shocking is that in spite of that, had there been a fair election in Ohio where people in the inner cities did not have to wait 4 hours or more while people in the suburbs voted in the 5 or so minutes they usually needed, Kerry would have won. This must have come from Kerry's excellent debates and convention (the only times he got much unfiltered coverage (where the filters were almost always negative) AND the pool of distrust that the media was telling us the truth.

Given Obama beating Hillary in 2008, Bernie, with little support from powers that be or media, and the Republican primary being completely out of their power brokers' control, is it possible that - even though the power of mass media is huge - it may be that alternative voices can gain increasingly more traction.