Howard Kurtz has a new book out. He has been investigating the “Rather-Gate” [2] for two years, and insists that Dan Rather did have a final say in running the forged documents. (Although Rather’s testimony begs to differ.)
But the night before the story was set to air, Rather called Josh Howard. Howard had been named the executive producer for 60 Minutes. Rather wanted to know what they were doing to promote his “story.”
Howard’s reply was “nothing.” Clearly that was not what Rather wanted to hear. It was then that he said this to Josh Howard:
“I’m going to give one of the documents to The New York Times to run in Wednesday’s paper … They’ll have to credit CBS News. That way we can put our stamp on it.”
Newsman or partisan hack? The answer is clear.
True. There doesn’t seem to be argument over this, any longer.
The remaining question in my mind at the moment, is how this is going to affect the Rather lawsuit against CBS. Rather must’ve known that this book was coming out. You can bet your baby fat your house cat and your cowboy hat that it’s going to be used, and it seems likely that Kurtz will be called as a witness, or at the least a consultant by some litigant other than Rather.
Here’s the delicious irony in all of this; To prove itself innocent of Rather’s charges they (CBS) will have to prove themselves complicit in his crimes. It doesn’tt seem to me likely that there will be legal repercussions, per se’ from such admissions. .. But the long charged liberal bias within the MSM will have been proven by the MSM itself, in an effort to defend itself from one of it’s own.