Page 160 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

150 Chapter 6

plained, "In retrospect, we shouldn't have used the documents, and we clearly
should have spent more time and more effort to authenticate them."''
Both of the problems mentioned by the media above are largely irrelevant.
The story of Bush's special treatment in the National Guard was corroborated
long before it became news in the 60 Minutes piece in 2004. As one story run by
the Washington Post in February of 2004 commented: "A review of Bush's mili-
tary records shows that Bush enjoyed preferential treatment as the son of a then-
congressman, when he walked into a Texas Guard unit in Houston two weeks
before his 1968 graduation from Yale and was moved to the top of a long wait-
ing list."86 The Washington Post article went on to cite a Boston Globe story run
in 2000, which found that between 1972 and 1973, Bush was granted permission
to leave the Alabama National Guard in order to work on a Senate campaign.87
In other words, it was not 60 Minute's reporting of Bush's privileged position
that got Rather and others fired, but only their use of counterfeit documents to
corroborate a story that had already been well established for years.
And yet, only to highlight the misplaced punishment of Rather and others
for reporting this story is to neglect a far more important lesson that should be
learned from this "scandal." In the post-911 1 media climate, news anchors like
Rather are castigated for errors in relatively trivial stories-at least trivial in the
sense that the 60 Minutes story had no direct relationship with the major cam-
paign issue (the war in Iraq). Meanwhile, the Bush administration is exonerated
in regards to scandals that are far more severe in scope. The 60 Minutes "scan-
dal" pales in comparison to other forged document stories, such as the Bush
administration's reliance of counterfeit documentation in its allegation that Iraq
had attempted to purchase "yellowcake" uranium from Niger-documents that
were shown to be crude fakes shortly after the administration announced them to
the public. To compare the Rather "scandal" with the Niger scandal in terms of
their scope would be outlandish. And still, the 60 Minutes story has been framed
as a major humiliation for CBS, while the Bush administration's use of false
documents and inaccurate intelligence (not only considering the yellowcake
charge, but concerning Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction alto-
gether) have not been interpreted by media so as to lead to greater skepticism of
the Bush administration's justification for occupying Iraq. The attacks on Dan
Rather reveal that even high-profile defenders of the Bush administration (recall
his statements about the limits of dissent earlier in this chapter) can become the
subjects of ridicule and attack when they criticize the President in a time of war.
The threat of being fired looms over the heads of those within the media
who too rigorously promote views critical of the war and the President. Report-
ers without the star presence conferred by hosting a major network's nightly
news are also in danger of losing their positions should they incorporate anti-war
arguments into their reporting. ABC News Senior Correspondent Jim Wooten
speaks of the fear among the White House press corps of asking critical ques-
tions: "There is, of course, among these ladies and gentlemen, an instinct for job
protection. A clear understanding that if a question is too hostile, it could be the
last time they got to ask one."88