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Contributors
Cliff Kincaid- Contributor
Cliff Kincaid, serves as editor of the Accuracy
in Media (AIM)
Report. A veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff has
appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and
The O'Reilly Factor, where he debated O'Reilly on global
warming, the death penalty,
and the homosexual agenda. He was a guest co-host on CNN's Crossfire
(filling in for Pat Buchanan) in the 1980s, where he confronted
the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. with evidence of Libyan
involvement in international terrorism. Through his America's
Survival, Inc., organization (www.usasurvival.org), he has been
an advocate on behalf of the families of victims of terrorism
and has published reports and held conferences critical of the
United Nations. His articles have appeared in the Washington
Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events, Insight, and
other publications. He served on the staff of Human Events for
several years and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor
for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at
his Freedom Alliance educational foundation. He has written or
co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign
policy issues. Cliff is married and has three sons.[go to
Kincaid index]
 Rather
Departs on Rather Low Note
But the agenda is the same…
[Cliff Kincaid] 3/11/05
As Dan Rather
steps down as anchorman of the CBS Evening News, latest indications
are that
nothing has really changed at the network and nothing will change.
Despite the reported housecleaning stemming from the “Rathergate” phony-documents
scandal, also known as Memogate, the newscast still refuses to
correct basic and documented errors of fact. Business as usual
continues at CBS.
On January
12th, just two days after the release of the “independent” report
on Memogate, when you would have thought that CBS would have
had their fact checkers and proofreaders working overtime, came
this gaffe: as part of their Fallen Heroes feature on the CBS
Evening News, in which they talk about someone who has died in
the war on terror, with sad music playing in the background,
Dan Rather introduced Sergeant Joseph Guerrera. While showing
his picture and a graphic that showed he was an Army pfc., age
20, Rather said, “He was just four when his father was
killed in the Vietnam War. Guerrera started wearing his dad’s
dog tags and decided he wanted to be a soldier too.” After
giving information about his death, the report highlighted another
picture and a graphic showing he was born in 1983 and died in
2003. To the best of our recollection the war in Vietnam ended
in 1975. You do the math. This was pointed out to us by one of
our grassroots watchdogs, Mr. R. Baker, who wrote that “Rather
has politicized these casualties from the start by attempting
to draw a correlation to Vietnam, and again he went way over
the line.”
In a new
case, also disclosed here for the first time, CBS News is refusing
to
admit that Rather grossly inflated casualty figures
from Iraq in a January 31 broadcast. He said 25,000 to 30,000
U.S. troops had been “injured” in Iraq when the actual
figure was less than half of that.
Linda Mason, who has been named Senior Vice President for Standards
and Special Projects, refused to admit to AIM that Rather had
made any mistake at all. Instead, her response was that Rather
got it right two weeks later. The CBS practice seems to be that,
if CBS gets it right once, that eliminates the need to correct
the record when it gets the same facts wrong.
This case
was brought to our attention by Veronica Sabloff, a viewer
of the CBS Evening
News, who says, “If CBS News/Rather
can’t even get something like this right, what else have
they been wrong/inaccurate about?”
The issue
of media coverage of killed and wounded soldiers in Iraq is
an important
one. In response to a report that the
active-duty U.S. Army missed its recruiting target for February
by 27.5 percent, Defense Department spokesman Lawrence DiRita
said there were a number of factors contributing to the recruiting
shortfalls, including “prominent media coverage of casualties
in Iraq.” DiRita said the coverage was a factor in parents
not encouraging young men and women to join the military service.
Putting
it more bluntly, the liberal media know they can undermine
the war effort by
emphasizing the human cost, without emphasizing
the just cause for which they died. The long-term benefits to
the U.S. and the world from freedom and democracy in the Middle
East do not get highlighted. The prospect of the U.S. suffering
more dead and wounded civilians from terrorist attacks if we
do not win militarily in Iraq is an issue that doesn’t
register in the coverage of the war. Our soldiers understand
it, even if our media do not.
A more serious
related problem is the inflation of the number of casualties.
In his
January 31 broadcast, Rather referred to “25,000
to 30,000 others injured” in Iraq, in addition to the “1400-plus…American
servicemen and women who’ve died there.” When AIM
asked for a correction of the figure of U.S. wounded, Mason’s
letter pointed to Rather’s report on the February 18 evening
news program that the number was almost 11,000. That figure,
she said, “is from the Pentagon wounded numbers, including
soldiers who return to battle after being injured and those who
are sent home.”
Of course,
the 11,000 figure stands in sharp contrast to the “25,000
to 30,000” figure that Rather used on January 31. But the
figure of “almost 11,000” is itself misleading. Of
that number, 5,074 returned to duty within 72 hours. A total
of 5,255 had not returned to duty. So, even with the more recent
lower figure that he used on the air, Rather is not making it
clear to the viewing audience that about half of them are not
out of action.
What about
correcting the “25,000 to 30,000” figure?
Mason’s letter to AIM made it clear that nothing will be
done about that. She simply ignores the problem, as if it will
just fade away or people will not pay attention.
This is a
big disappointment. Mason was appointed to her new position
by Leslie Moonves,
chairman and CEO of CBS, in the wake
of the release of the panel report into the “Rathergate” scandal.
Moonves said that Mason would be “an integral part of the
re-vitalization of CBS News after this difficult time.” Yet
she is prepared to leave uncorrected Rather’s statement
that “25,000 to 30,000” were injured in Iraq simply
because he got it right on a later date. So much for revitalizing
CBS News.
Rather is
not the only one to use the much higher figure. Interestingly,
Flavia
Colgan, a Democratic Party strategist and MSNBC analyst,
used the 30,000 injured figure on the Scarborough Country show.
When asked to justify this exaggeration, she said she got the
figure from a CBS 60 minutes program, “Iraq: The Uncounted,” which
aired last November and suggested that the Pentagon was covering
up casualty figures.
The story,
narrated by correspondent Bob Simon, reported that, in addition
to the
more than 10,000 injured in Iraq, more than
15,000 troops with non-battle injuries, including diseases, stress,
and heart problems, had been evacuated from Iraq. Most importantly,
however, the show acknowledged that non-battle injuries were
not included in casualty reports in other recent wars. So the
purpose in using these figures in coverage of the Iraq war has
some other purpose. The purpose, quite obviously, is partisan
and political_to make the human carnage on the battlefield appear
much worse than it really is, to undermine public support for
the war, and damage President Bush’s policy. Such a story
is what we have come to expect from CBS News.
It’s
possible that Rather, like Democratic Party operative Colgan,
had based
his exaggerated statement about the wounded
in Iraq on the same CBS 60 Minutes program. However, Mason did
not defend his statement on that basis. Instead, she referred
to the February 18 broadcast and its lower figure as constituting
a correction of the record.
Whatever
the basis for Rather’s controversial assertion,
the failure to issue a straightforward correction is another
example of how CBS News has not learned its lesson from “Rathergate.” Rather
is leaving the broadcast, but the same curious news practices
and agenda remain. tRO
copyright
2005 Accuracy in Media
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