OpEdNews - Diary: Leave 'Em Laughing (Or Just Leave)

Rather and Chung retiring at the same time may be noted by the MSM only for it's irony. But it's the news behind the news that we ought to pay attention to.

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I think people mostly missed the points being made with the departures of both Dan Rather and Connie Chung from TV news. No doubt many people saw only irony in the two leaving broadcast journalism in the same week. Their relationship as co-anchors of CBS's Evening News in the early 90's had been tense and often terse -- on air and off. No doubt liberal-bashers broke open a few bottles of well-aged scotch to celebrate their "passing" -- especially Rather's. I know some of those folks are in TV news management. Many of them know deep-down they're also drinking to numb their own consciences as collaborators in government controlled news. As for their drinking -- denial can be a funny thing -- one's probably too many and a hundred won't be enough. Rather undergoing a forced retirement and Chung's "up yours" farewell to MSNBC were both part of the same process -- to present what little was left of moderate MSM as a "dying breed." Chung ought to get an Emmy for sticking it to GE/NBC the way she did. She was outrageously funny -- offering us a version of a sullen lounge lizard who once did the TV news and wound up the way Susan Alexander did in Citizen Kane. The Rather story, though, is far more fetching. In 2004, Rather had been set up by his own network. The fudged Killian/Lt. Col. Burkett papers about Bush's Texas ANG service was as low has CBS has ever gone. That story couldn't possibly have been anything but a pre-emptive strike before anyone put the real truth out there about Bush's Guard service. In the end Dan got "swiftboated" and Viacom/CBS gave payback to Mary Mapes -- who was soon set-up as the ultimate fall guy (fall gal?) then fired over the affair. It probably didn't help Mapes that in 2003-04 she had produced news segments that 1) helped expose the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo atrocities, and 2) revealed that Strom Thurmond had fathered an interracial daughter out of wedlock. I once thought that Rather was just naive enough to get suckered into the by now named "Rathergate" affair. And loyal enough to CBS to grovel an apology to a national audience. I guess when you're in the middle of a story like Rather was it's hard to see out. It was just a GOP plot -- quite good, actually -- to make it look like CBS was trying to throw the election to Kerry when the opposite was true. Many in the GOP had already been calling for Mapes' head to be "necklaced" in a flaming tire, especially since she'd produced a scandal story on a GOP icon like Thurmond. All the while, CEO Sumner Redstone was saying "that a Bush victory in 2004 was better for Viacom/CBS's bottom line." Viacom/CBS had issues which would have to go before the FCC in 2005. A takeover of Vivendi/Universal was being contemplated -- although the deal fell apart early the following year in preliminary talks. Still, a Bush defeat would have meant a Democratic FCC Board with a Democratic majority. Somebody running it like a Michael Copps could make trouble for the newly named CBS, Inc. And the White House made out like a bandit after the Rather/Mapes trap had been sprung. Rather gave way to Bob Schieffer -- a conservative far more acceptable to the Busheviks. Schieffer was an old Bush family friend and also had done an interview with Dubya right before the New Hampshire primaries that helped Bush win the state. But we'll always have Connie Chung to thank for "giving the finger" -- at least figuratively -- to GE/NBC. They don't even bother with pretenses of fairness in TV journalism any more. If Chris Matthews kisses one more neo-con's ass in public I hope it involves money. Because it's already a crime. As expected, nearly all of the MSM just "played dumb" and took Chung's farewell as just another day at the office. Sadly, that gives you an idea of what a day at their office has become -- at places like CNN and Faux News and the others. Somebody in charge takes White House, Pentagon, and Treasury Department press releases over the phones and fax machines and turns them into the day's neo-con propaganda. Lucky us. Pravda reporters in the old USSR were more critical than the goons and lackeys brought in to run TV news today. What else has TV news become other than a propaganda weapon for the GOP, their lobbyists, major defense contractors, the oil "bidness," and every other oligarchy on the planet.