Rather, Bush equally disgraced?

Rather, Bush Equally Disgraced?


When CBS reported this week it was firing four of its top news producers for their role in using a faked military document to claim President Bush evaded National Guard responsibilities, the story made the front page of almost every newspaper in America.
When the White House admitted Wednesday the United States is no longer even looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the news was buried on inside pages - and not even displayed prominently on those pages.

If I were President Bush, I'd be plenty worried about that.

There's a truism in the news business that if a dog bites a man, that's not newsworthy, but if a man bites a dog. ...



The nation's media, apparently, no longer think it terribly newsworthy that the Iraqi weapons - those same presumed weapons that were cited not only as reasons for going to war but as reasons for going to war immediately - don't exist.

Or, to put it another way, the loss of credibility of Dan Rather and CBS News is more shocking than the loss of credibility of the president of the United States.

Again, if I were president, I'd be worried about that.

I suppose you might make the case that this is just another example of media navel-gazing, that we think anything involving news anchors is more important than anything else going on.

But my mail here at the State Journal reflects the same bias. I received all sorts of e-mails chortling about the discomfort of my "friend" Dan Rather - who wasn't fired but was certainly humiliated by the CBS findings - but almost none about the weapons of mass destruction confession.

Yet the two stories have much in common.

President Bush, like Dan Rather, relied on information provided him by a team of researchers (in the president's case, the CIA; in Rather's, his research team).

The information proved to be wrong. Both Rather and Bush refused to admit they were wrong until outsiders proved otherwise. In fact, I kind of doubt whether either Bush or Rather truly thinks he was wrong even now.

There are some differences, of course. The producer who fed Rather a bill of goods was fired and sent into ignominy. The CIA director who told Bush the existence of those weapons in Iraq was a "slam dunk," was allowed to retire in honor and later received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

And, of course, there is the little matter of the consequences of a war being more disruptive than the consequences of a television report.

But, on the whole, the situations are roughly analogous. We had two leaders, one of the media, the other of a nation, who believed erroneous reports, probably because those reports "confirmed" what they already believed to be true.

As a result, their institutions, CBS News and the United States of America, were humiliated and lost both prestige and public confidence. Yet, Rather's embarrassment seems much more newsworthy than the president's.

Why is that? I expect one reason is that it is too scary to think about the ghastly price so many American men and women have paid because of our decision to go to war.

Nevertheless, when the president next tells us we have to go to war because of "slam dunk" evidence, I wonder if we're going to be as gullible as we were this time.

Wisconsin State Journal :: DAYBREAK :: B1
Saturday, January 15, 2005
William Wineke