Contributors
Carol Platt Liebau - Columnist

Carol Platt Liebau is editorial director and a senior member of the CaliforniaRepublic.org editorial board. She is an attorney, political analyst and commentator based in San Marino, CA, and has appeared on the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNN, Orange County News Channel, Cox Cable and a variety of radio programs throughout the United States. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Carol Platt Liebau also served as the first female managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. [go to Liebau index]

Rather Hypocritical
“Old Media” Flouts the Standards It Sets for Others
[Carol Platt Liebau] 9/13/04

In assessing the burgeoning scandal surrounding CBS’ use of forged documents in a hit piece on President Bush’s National Guard Service, it’s illuminating to play a mind game. How would Dan Rather react if, for example, Fox News Channel had produced never-before-seen documents and witnesses purporting to show that President Bush had been a hero of the National Guard – flown risky but vital sorties over Cuba and engaged in other derring-do? Imagine further that no independent expert could be found who would certify the documents as authentic; the people closest to the President’s now-dead “character witness” disputed the assertions; the type-style and other printed characteristics of the documents were identical to those of a modern word processor; Fox News refused to disclose either the source of the documents or their chain of custody; and in fact, one of the military leaders prominently named as commanding the President in the daring raids had actually retired from the service a year earlier.

We all know what would happen – Dan Rather would appear during his nightly half-hour newscast, flushed with indignation and spewing homespun similes about the deception that had been visited upon America by a partisan, irresponsible news organization. There would be questions – oh, how there would be questions! And the rest of the nation’s business would be put on hold until Fox News – and the President – answered them fully. If Fox simply decided to stand by the story, repeating a mantra reaffirming its confidence in unnamed sources, it would be all over. “Old Media” would be writing Fox’s epitaph in time for the 6:30 pm broadcast. The verdict? Fox lacks “credibility.” Game over.

For another scenario, no imagination is required – it actually happened. On May 4, a group representing 254 Swift Boat veterans announced its opposition to erstwhile compatriot John Kerry. Many of them signed affidavits and they produced an extensively sourced book to support their assertions – a book so popular that bookstores still can’t keep them in stock. At least one of their assertions was proved indisputably true, forcing John Kerry’s campaign to retract his oft-repeated story of having spent Christmas Eve in Cambodia. But the book wasn’t covered until the Kerry campaign complained about it – and the focus of coverage centered on the book’s alleged inaccuracies. The authors were never invited onto a national morning show to promote their work

A month or so later, Kitty Kelley prepares to release a maliciously gossipy book about the Bush family. Her work has been notable in the past for outrageously inaccurate, poorly sourced allegations of the most sensitive and embarrassing nature – that Nancy Reagan and Frank Sinatra conducted trysts in The White House, that President Reagan in his earlier years obtained an abortion for a girlfriend, and that the Reagans sat around smoking pot with their Hollywood friends, to name a few. Now, she's going to "reveal" that President Bush is a marital philanderer; that Barbara Bush is an anti-Semitic "harridan" (to use the word featured in the book's index) and that First Lady Laura Bush used drugs and is a detached, resentful wife. In contrast to the Swift Boat vets, however, this author is offered a plum three-day extended promotion opportunity for her book on NBC, during the most popular morning show in America.

In light of all this, can there really be any further debate about whether the networks are biased? And is it any wonder that they are losing viewers in droves? Recently, on CNN, political analyst Jeff Greenfield bemoaned the erosion of a consensus that news outlets were impartial arbiters of the political debate. Indeed. Where are the American people supposed to turn for this impartial arbitration – to CBS, or to NBC?

With the emergence of the internet, lawyers from Minneapolis (Powerlineblog) led the charge in raising crucial and credible questions in a matter of hours about the documents upon which CBS relied last week. Combining their own formidable intelligence with only the most basic research, they marshaled facts that have destroyed any realistic chance that the papers are authentic. And CBS either cannot or will not step forward to offer a convincing defense of its work. NBC, likewise, has offered no justification for its decision to ignore the Swift Boat vets while aggressively promoting Kitty Kelley.

This kind of arrogance is a major reason that the “old media” has lost the trust of large segments of the American public. In America, when legitimate questions are raised about a politician’s record or behavior, the press forces the politician to address them – as he (or she) should. But when legitimate questions surface about a network’s coverage, and even its good faith and fairness, stonewalling and self-righteousness have been the order of the day. Sadly, in contrast to politicians, we can’t vote the men of the press out of their comfortable Manhattan anchor chairs. If we could, Dan Rather and his compatriots would have been gone long ago.

It’s axiomatic that a strong press is central to the existence of a functioning democracy. The people cannot govern themselves effectively unless they have access to the information that will allow them to do so. What justification will the “old media” find for its existence now that it’s clear that agenda-driven journalists deem the facts they like more newsworthy than those they don’t?

Writing in yesterday’s Washington Post, Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, mourned the “end of network news,” arguing that the “journalism of verification” is yielding to new media’s “journalism of assertion.” He is apparently unaware that the networks are, in fact, the entities engaging in partisan “assertion.” In journalism’s brave new world, it now appears that the “new media” weblogs are conducting the careful work of examination and verification that once used to be the hallmark of news operations like the increasingly tarnished “Tiffany network.” CRO

Columnist Carol Platt Liebau is a political analyst, commentator and CaliforniaRepublic.org editorial director based in San Marino, CA. Ms. Liebau also served as the first female managing editor of the Harvard Law Review.

copyright 2004

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