The 2004 presidential campaign may well represent the tipping point in terms of public awareness that, despite the ritualistic protests to the contrary by some of the more blatant offenders, an insidious liberal bias does indeed infect nearly every aspect of the news coverage provided by mainstream media.
Too many journalists, stewing in their hatred – dislike is too soft a word – of George W. Bush and infused with a zeal to elect John F. Kerry in Bush’s stead, have grown careless about maintaining a veneer of objectivity (not that the veneer ever fooled anyone operating with even a minimal level of discernment).
So heavy-handed has been this partisan tilt – from the incessantly negative framing of events in Iraq to the fawning attention lavished on any Bush critic with a book to sell or a magazine article in print – that only the dimmest among us experienced a moment of revelation when Evan Thomas of Newsweek acknowledged several weeks back that, yes, Virginia, the media really were out to beat Bush.
On a level all its own is the glaring contrast between the media’s handling of Bush’s National Guard history and Kerry’s Vietnam record. With Bush there was (is) an insatiable demand for full disclosure, while doubts about Kerry’s military narrative – a narrative upon which the Massachusetts Democrat is almost wholly basing his presidential run – were (are) treated with a mixture of disinterest and skepticism.
As if to underscore the double standard, Dan Rather and his 60 Minutes cohorts recently ambushed Bush by employing problematic documents in a segment whose sole purpose was to raise anew the National Guard issue in Bush’s disfavor. In short, Rather acted in a manner liberals no doubt would characterize as sleazy and unbalanced if, say, Fox News were to do a similar number on, say, Mr. Kerry.
Rather and his employers at CBS dismiss out of hand the many legitimate questions raised about the authenticity of the Texas Air National Guard memos showcased by 60 Minutes in its attempt to build a case against Bush – memos allegedly written more than three decades ago by a man who’s been dead since 1984 and who, his widow says, considered the young Bush “an excellent pilot.”
Maybe in the end the documents will turn out to be the real thing and Rather will emerge as pure as the proverbial driven snow, a journalistic icon accorded renewed respect, with all the weird and unseemly incidents in his past finally placed in the “delete” file.
(Remember when he was attacked on a Manhattan street by an assailant who kept shouting “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” Or his claim that a cabdriver took him on a wild ride around Chicago and refused to let him out? Or the time he stormed off his set in a fit of pique, saddling the CBS Evening News with six minutes of dead air? Or his making a fool of himself during an interview with George H.W. Bush, losing his composure and launching an emotional attack on the then-vice president? )
But however the National Guard controversy pans out, there’s another issue involved – one that goes beyond mere political ideology. For almost as disturbing as the doubts being voiced over the veracity of the 60 Minutes hit piece is the hubris exhibited by Rather and CBS in responding to their critics – who include among their number several forensic document experts and a retired general, Bobby Hodges, cited by CBS as a key source of Rather’s report but who says he’s convinced the documents were falsified.
Rather and CBS have taken to stonewalling even their colleagues. Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz – a journalist who strains to be objective, and for his efforts has been targeted for derision by some of the media’s more outspoken liberals – reports that after he pressed Rather and CBS News president Andrew Heyward to identify the experts cited in the 60 Minutes report, he was given “the name of a handwriting expert in San Francisco, and I called him, and he says, I am muzzled, I can’t talk. CBS has asked me not to talk to the press.”