Dan Rather: Democracy Cannot Survive with the Level of Government Interference and Intimidation in News
This is what 9/11 truth activists have been saying for years. See for example this.
Associated Press has the story.
NEW YORK -Dan Rather said Thursday that the undue influence of the government and large corporations over newsrooms spurred his decision to file a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company.
“Somebody, sometime has got to take a stand and say democracy cannot survive, much less thrive with the level of big corporate and big government interference and intimidation in news,” he said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”0921 01
In the suit, filed a day earlier in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, Rather claimed CBS and Viacom Inc. used him as a “scapegoat” and intentionally botched the aftermath of a discredited story about President Bush’s military service to curry favor with the White House. He was removed from his “CBS Evening News” post in March 2005.
“They sacrificed support for independent journalism for corporate financial gain, and in so doing, I think they undermined a lot at CBS News,” he told King.
Rather didn’t mention other instances in which he believed news organizations bowed to corporate and government pressure.
CBS spokesman Dana McClintock did not return an after-hours call seeking comment Thursday. He has called Rather’s complaints “old news” and said the lawsuit was “without merit.” A spokesman for Viacom declined to comment.
Journalism ethics scholar Bob Steele said Rather would have a difficult time proving that the White House or other political operatives exerted undue influence on CBS.
“It would be naive for us to believe that there was no influence from powerful institutions and individuals on journalism,” said Steele, a scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism foundation in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Still, he said: “For the most part, the journalists who run news organizations and who report the news fight hard to protect the independence of the journalism, and most of the time succeed.”
Rather narrated the September 2004 report that said Bush disobeyed orders and shirked some of his duties during his National Guard service. It also said a commander felt pressured to sugarcoat Bush’s record.
The story relied on four documents, supposedly written by Bush’s commander in the Texas Air National Guard, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. Critics questioned the documents’ authenticity and suggested they were forged.
A panel selected by the network to investigate the story determined that it was neither fair nor accurate. CBS fired the story’s producer and asked for the resignations of three executives because it could not authenticate documents used in the story. Rather was forced out of the anchor chair he had occupied for 24 years.
On CNN, Rather dismissed the panel’s review, claiming it was not impartial.
“This was in many ways a fraud. It was a setup,” he told King.
Louis D. Boccardi, the retired chief executive of The Associated Press who made up the two-man investigative panel with Richard Thornburgh, the former U.S. attorney general, defended the panel’s work Thursday night.
“Our report was independent, and it speaks for itself,” he said, echoing comments made by Thornburgh on Wednesday. Both declined to comment further.
© 2007 The Associated Press
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Rather
Thought he might come out at some point and make some noise.... but now I think he's trying to tip the scale so they are more likely to drop him a nice multi-million dollar tip so he keeps his mouth shut.
He still has respect and pull and his words carry alot of weight.
He'll disappear once he gets his $$$$$
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Together in Truth!
Its pretty clear Rather
was set up to take a fall. His story was factual and anyone with a room temp IQ knows it.
Dan Rather was THE LAST of the real journalist left in this country he tried to tell the truth and the Fascist MSM hung him out to dry for it.
I hope he gets every penny he ask for.
Rove FUD Bomb
Take real information, have it delivered and then discredit the messenger. Information is discredited by association.
Rove gives real information to author who wrote Fortunate Son and detailed Bush's cocaine bust in Houston . . . then Rove reveals that the author is a convicted murderer (which he knew) and discredits him and forever makes the information suspect because of the source.
So they create a fake document with real information, pin it on Dan Rather, get rid of him and allow people to believe that the information itself was discredited. It did seem to end the MSM's coverage of the early career of fly boy george.
If you haven't watched the Movie "Bush's Brain" it is a blockbuster.
a convicted murderer who
a convicted murderer who almost no doubt was murdered himself. Sander Hicks brushed off those allegations early on but even he now admits based on the evidence that it looks like his buddy and co-author was killed.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Former Director, CIA
Do you have a source for this?
Are these comments by Sander Hicks that you allude to accessible anywhere that you can direct us to? Or was it something related in private conversation?
I admit that when I first learned about how J.H. Hatfield turned up dead in a hotel room in mid-2001, I suspected foul play. But then I thought--writing career in tatters, mountains of credit card debt, maybe he did swallow a bunch of pills as a way out.
But what also made a difference to me was when I learned that Sander, after expressing similar suspicions initially, ultimately accepted that it was suicide after going down to review the scene in Arkansas himself. Now you're saying he's saying something different. So, I'd be interested to know what he's actually said on this more recently and the evidence he's referring to.
no, im sorry i dont. i just
no, im sorry i dont. i just looked all over for it but couldnt find it. i didnt hear it personally, i remember reading a couple of months back that Sander was unsure about the death at this point where as he previously said he thought it was just a suicide.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Former Director, CIA
Thanks
Thanks for looking.
Yeah, that's how I've always thought it was done....
....Rove had the actual documents, then had them remade with imperceptible flaws (that only the forger could detect)...once Rather, et al took the bait, Rove immediately unleashed a torrent of Rethuglican attack dogs with specific knowledge of the obscurities that make the documents false in terms of when and how produced.
Then ensues a manufactured furor over the documents themselves and CBS's "irresponsibility", that forever buries the question of Bush's going AWOL, his drug use, the family-connection draft-dodging that put him in the National Guard without being qualified, etc.
9/11 Truth ends the 9/11 Wars
yes!
well stated
Rather was probably as his says, "reading a script". At the stage of his career he was a talking head. Rove's genius is creating the story and feeding it to the media machine.
An analogy
Of course, Rove couldn't do what he does without the complicity of CBS execs, or the mass of the public being so easy to manipulate.
Here's an analogy. Let's say someone produces what appears to be an old bar tab and says, "Here's George W. Bush's bar tab from 1980" (or thereabouts--back in the days when he was drinking heavily). Tests are then run on the document, and it turns out that the paper wasn't manufactured until several years later, and the font doesn't match any of the cash registers then in use in any of the bars in the area where GWB was living at that time.
Now in that case, how logical would it be for someone hearing these results to conclude, 'Wow, I guess that proves he never had a drinking problem at all!'
To conlcude that he never went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard in view of the forged documents cited by CBS is just as illogical.
"As he wrote in an
"As he wrote in an autobiography, Rather was the first network television journalist to report that U.S. President John F. Kennedy died in the November 22, 1963 shooting in Dallas. He was also one of the first to see the Zapruder film taken by an eyewitness to the passing Dallas motorcade and reported that JFK's head went "violently forward" when he was hit. It in fact went violently backwards, after jerking forward briefly."
-- wikipedia - yeah I know not the best source but it is not the first place I have heard this account, infact I have heard an mp3 of him saying those words... "Violently Forward"
Rather isn't your typical newsman. Things tend to go full circle... In other words he has known from the beginning what the hell was going on, but for what ever reason went along with it. Sold his soul to the devil basically, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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The 9/11 Truth B-Team
Rather lying about Zapruder: audio
Everything imgstacke said is true, but don't take our word for it, listen to the tape:
http://www.thelawparty.com/realplayer/rather4.wav
Dan Rather was a nobody in Texas when he launched his career by lying to the public about the Zapruder film. He is scum.
Rats leaving a sinking ship
Just like Kean and Hamilton and personal retractions on the 911 commision report, the rats are trying to squirm their way out of a sinking ship.
Any critical thinking person knows that the Bush-Chenney-Federal Reserve-Military-Industrial-Complex is going to collapse.
It is just a matter of time.
They went to far, made too many mistakes and the arrogance and sheer hubris of 911 is going to take its toll.
The American Military, Economy and Political System and Freedoms has been totally thrashed and abused by this shameful excuse of an administration.
Bush - Cheney and the rest will go down into the dustbin of history into shame and judgement.
Enough Americans are awakening and if they try to activate their Haliburton FEMA camps, its not going to be a cakewalk.
Even if ROVE jokes about how they are an empire now and they define reality.
The Constitution of the United States is NOT going to "Collapse" into pulverized dust no matter how much thermate / explosives or planes they throw at it.
There are still patriots.
Stand with the Constitution.
www.patriotsquestion911.com
Woman Arrested for Reading the Constitution
Shit like this will continue
and will get worse until We the People TAKE this country back.
Sadly Code Pink are about the only Americans with ovaries/balls, everyone else has been neutered.
Joe - Where did this happen ?
You failed to provide the name & location of the event.
What State ?
What County ?
What City ?
What agencies were involved and how many officers of each ?
How about a date ?