:
The Year 2002

In order to keep loading time down on our main "What's New" page, we shift older stories from the current year into "Previous News." Articles from before get broken down as well. This page is an archive of our work from the year 2002. Archives of even older updates are also available. Please note that some of the links referenced below may no longer be valid because of the passage of time.

2002-12-21 18:03:44 ET

• After being criticized for never mentioning the racist remarks made by West Virginia Democrat and former KKK member Sen. Robert Byrd in contrast to their comprehensive coverage of Trent Lott's troubles, Dan Rather and his colleagues decided to quote Byrd's statements, over a year later. Better late than never, we say.
• Continuing to try and boost the ratings for the CBS Evening News, Rather and his producers ran another clip of the late-night comics. Besides teasing it at the top of CEN, the two CBS morning news shows are also promoting the non-news feature. Last Friday, Rather made a clip for the segment telling viewers, "It's that time again, Friday's Last Laugh, later on the CBS Evening News."

2002-12-17 18:08:40 ET

• With the news media focusing on allegedly racist remarks Senate Republican leader Trent Lott made at a birthday party for retiring Senator Strom Thurmond, RatherBiased.com wondered if Rather and his colleagues covered earlier, more racially charged comments by Senate Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia in which he referred to the existence of "white niggers." We discovered that CBS never mentioned it, despite the fact that Byrd's remarks had been condemned by NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, and had aired on live network television. In fact, two months after Byrd made his remarks, CBS reporter Phil Jones called him "more than a senator, he's the Senate's historical and parliamentary expert. He could probably teach the Founding Fathers a thing or two." (CBS Sunday Morning, July 1, 2001.)
• On Friday's CBS Evening News, reporter John Roberts quoted from a list of Senate votes by Lott, which Roberts claimed indicated anti-black attitudes. Included in the list was a vote against "an African-American judge's confirmation." But when Democrats opposed Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination, CBS never called them racist for doing so. In fact, Dan Rather denounced Republicans during the hearings for attempting to defend Thomas:

  "[I]t raises the potential, the potential for a strategy that says, 'Listen, Anita Hill has raised this. In order to save Clarence Thomas's nomination we [the Republicans] are going to have to, in effect, tear her apart.' Is that pretty much the strategy as you see it?

  Of course, it's absurd to claim that a vote against either is proof of racism since both parties voted on the basis of their ideology.

• Also on Friday, Henry Kissinger stepped down as head of the commission that will look into intelligence failures leading up to September 11. Earlier Rather was sure that the commission would be anything but impartial, and was convinced it would only follow the will of the White House. He twice said the body would be "what's called an independent commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks." He also called it "what is officially described as the independent commission."
• Dan and his entourage decided once again to end the news Friday with late-night comedian's jokes. He's assuming that if viewers don't want to see him, at least maybe they'll want to see David Letterman, Craig Kilborn and John Stewart--all Viacom employees, as is Rather. No NBC jokesters have been aired in the more than month-long (six weeks) attempt to impress Nielson. CBS is allowed to run clips from NBC entertainment programming as long as they're part of the news, but when they are merely lifted from one network and run as entertainment, it's not allowed--which is why you won't see Jay Leno giving a boost to Dan's ratings, or even trying.

  Rather started off at the top of Friday's show by whetting the audience's appetite about the "Friday Funnies" to come at the end of the program. After being criticized by this Web site for lowering his news program to rebroadcasting jokes from second-tier late-night comedians, he tried to justify himself by saying, "Always keep 'em laughing." Does he mean the comedians--or the newscast--should keep the audience laughing?

2002-12-10 16:38:21 ET

• The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather continues to attract the oldest viewership of the Big Three newscasts, according to an analysis conducted by MediaWeek magazine. The average age of a CBS viewer has increased to 61 compared to 56 for NBC and 59 for ABC.

  "This analysis is further proof that CBS is growing increasingly desparate to increase its ratings among younger viewers," said Matthew W. Sheffield, RatherBiased.com Co-Director.

  See yesterday's update for our report on CBS's efforts to boost its popularity among younger TV watchers.

2002-12-09 07:23:49 ET

• Who would have ever thought Dan Rather, the successor to Walter Cronkite, would be reduced to this? In a desperate grasp at the ratings that have avoided him for a television eternity, Rather has lowered himself to telling viewers about the latest one-liners. For five straight weeks, the CBS Evening News has reserved the last segment of Friday's broadcast for late-night jokes. In fact, they so want you to stick around for the half-hour that Rather announces it at the top of the program along with the major headlines of the day.

  But this is just part of concerted effort on the part of the CBS News executives to finally fix their problems. In an attempt to boost the ratings of its perpetually last-place evening news program, CBS and Dan Rather have embarked on a new, multi-faceted strategy to draw in new as well as younger viewers. Through cosmetic changes in appearance and presentation as well as changes in content, the news division and Rather, the Managing Editor for the CBS Evening News, are making yet another attempt to crawl out of the ratings cellar.

  On Friday's program, Rather informed the viewer about the latest funnies, that "this time, their timely topics run the gamut from Hussein to the holidays." Continued...

• Former vice president Al Gore fired a salvo against the Fox News Channel recently, but it's not only Gore who has taken aim. So has CBS News; although it's gone both ways as CBS News and Fox News have traded barbs since the start of FNC and even before. 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace said in 1997 that Fox News was destined for failure and that it was tainted with a "conservative spin." In the other direction, eventual Fox News president Roger Ailes told George H. W. Bush in 1988 that if Dan Rather "thought he could get away with it, he'd shoot you." Read more about CBS vs. Fox News.
• While a former vice president attacked some of the media outlets a few weeks ago, another vice president attacked outlets, this time the Big Three networks, during President Richard Nixon's first term. His vice president was Spiro Agnew. While Gore's comments were met with approval from the mainstream press, Agnew's speech was met with outrage. One of those most offended was a young CBS White House correspondent, Dan Rather, who called Agnew's speech "inflamatory" and part of a "holy war" against the press.

2002-11-23 15:00:10 ET

• 
  Dan Rather, Jr.
  While the alleged Washington snipers were on the loose, Dan Rather placed some blame for their success on the "special interest money" of gun-rights supporters, including the National Rifle Association. But Dan isn't the only Rather who takes aim at guns.

  Apparently following in the footsteps of his old man, Rather's son, Dan "Danjack" Rather Jr., a deputy district attorney in New York City, is cheering on his office's attempt to hold 10 firearms manufacturers liable for murders committed with their products. The city's lawsuit is similar to those launched by the state of New York as well as the NAACP.

  "[These companies] manufacture highly powered, inexpensive guns, and those are the favorite guns of criminals," Rather told New York's Daily News Nov. 17.

  The younger Rather feels strongly about what he calls "a national problem" and has denounced the gun industry several times during his ten-year stint as chief of Manhattan's firearms trafficking unit. A 1995 Daily News piece related that "Rather, who grew up in middle America where hunting and target shooting were recreational pastimes, said he doesn't believe gun stores are an American icon.

  "'We're not talking about rifles for hunting or target shooting, we're talking about submachine guns, street sweepers,' he said. 'They're providing guns for hunting humans.'"

• The 107th Congress ended its session and Rather chided Congress for not extending unemployment benefits. He also took issue with the newly formed department intended to fight domestic terrorism. Instead of extending the benefits that "are due to run out a few days after Christmas," Congress created "what's called the Department of Homeland Security."
• CBS aired an unbalanced report about President Bush's new decision to allow older energy facilities to produce more power, and in effect more pollution. Correspondent Bob Orr devoted twice as many words to those who were against Bush's decision than to those in favor of it, even though there are numerous sources CBS could have turned for a comment in order to balance the equation.

2002-11-20 19:35:59 ET

• In the battle over creation of the Homeland Security Department, Democrats and Republicans in Congress denounced each other for putting "special interests" ahead of the country. CBS, however, only chose to relay one side of the argument.

  During the debate, Democrats argued that Republican provisions limiting lawsuits against companies who may have to deal with terrorism in the future were nothing more than the GOP's desire to protect "special interests" in the industries involved. Republicans, on the other hand, argued that companies wouldn't be interested in dealing with preventing or responding to terrorism if doing so might leave them open to the risk of exorbitant tort damages.

  Unfortunately, Dan Rather and his colleagues decided not to relay any of the Republicans' views in their report. Showing that they fully understood the Democrats' point, both Rather and CBS's Bob Orr referred to the bill's "special interest" provisions but made no mention of the Republicans' view of why Democrats were against them.

• As it turns out, last night's bias wasn't at all out of character for CBS. A RatherBiased.com study of Rather and his colleagues' usage of the term "special interest" revealed they were seven times more likely to employ it when referring to Republicans, despite the fact that both parties are supported by numerous interest groups.

  Out of 20 stories in which any reporter used the words "special interests" in politics, seven discussed whether the Republicans were giving in or pandering to special interests, while only one story included a reporter doing the same of Democrats. Many stories about "special interests" did not mention a specific party, such as what Dan Rather said on March 20, that a ban on soft money would stop "the unregulated special interest donations to national political parties." But based on his reporting over the last two years, it appears he meant to say it would stop the "unregulated special interest donations to the Republican Party."

2002-11-15 12:23:15 ET

• After major election election losses left Democrats in disarray, Washington has been abuzz with talk about the just-concluded battle for the party's House leadership. While everyone else has been talking about whether or not new Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will shift the Democrats Leftward, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer decided to focus more on whether the Republicans' new Majority Leader Tom DeLay will shift his party too far to the Right.

  After allowing Pelosi to assert that she wouldn't let her liberal views make her partisan, Schieffer spent the rest of the report discussing DeLay's conservative views. Altogether, the story devoted more than twice as many words, 145, wondering if DeLay was too extreme to lead his party to just 64 questioning Pelosi. Even stranger, Schieffer never once referred to DeLay by his full name, calling him a "bare-knuckle Texas conservative who led the fight to impeach Bill Clinton" before finally mentioning DeLay's last name.

• While CBS gave Pelosi the kid-glove treatment, she actually didn't fare as well as the Democrats' leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle. Last night the South Dakota Democrat was given a rare opportunity in the era of the seven-second soundbite of having his words carried for 35 seconds on a network news program. Daschle's lengthy soundbite practically qualifies as a report since Rather gave him a short intro and the CBS Evening News producers made up some slick graphics to accompany his statement. Although both the White House and Congressional Republicans rebutted Daschle's remarks yesterday, Rather chose not to run any of their comments, instead, he summarized the administration's views in 11 seconds before prefacing Daschle's 35-second soundbite with an 11-second pro-Daschle summary.
• Rather used one of his "Texanisms"/"Ratherisms" during the November 12 Evening News while describing a gun story CBS had been working on:

  "With many Americans concerned about the lag in homeland security, terror threats and the recent serial sniper case, CBS News and Denver affiliate KCNC have been investigating loopholes in gun laws, some big enough to drive a tank through."

• Rather questions everybody's independence but his own. In 1992 he proclaimed, "I walk out every day trying to have a big 'I' for independence stamped right in the middle of my forehead." But during last night's program, he questioned the impartiality of a new 9/11 panel okayed by President Bush and Congress:

  "White House officials now report what they call a tentative agreement with Congress for what's called an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the 9-11 attacks. Under this agreement, President Bush would appoint the commission chairman."

  Rather has also even acknowledged that journalists can be biased...sort of. During the October 9 program: "Iraqi television has aired portions of a rare meeting between the Iraqi dictator and Arab journalists who describe themselves as independent."

Unexpected Republican Victories Not Rather's Top Story
2002-11-06 22:29:48 ET

• The day after an election in which Republicans defied historical trends and gained seats during an off-year election, Dan Rather chose not to make it the top story, bumping it to second after leading his program with a report on interest rate cuts. Although he deemed the congressional races of 2002 of lesser importance, in 1998, when President Bill Clinton's Democratic Party gained seats in similarly unlikely circumstances during another off-year, Rather decided to make it the top story:

  "Far-reaching ripples from the Election '98 stunner: Democrats gain and buck midterm election history against the backdrop of Congress's impeach-the-president inquiry.... What a difference a day makes. Now it's the Republican congressional leadership facing political jeopardy from unhappy GOP ranks.... Republicans didn't get a single pickup in the U.S. Senate, and they lost about five House seats and one governor's mansion."

  In 2002, while leading with a story on a cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, Rather tried to justify his bumping of election coverage by making the rate cuts seem as important as possible: They "cut them way down," they "cut them more than anyone expected," they were cut by "half a percentage point," and the cut was the "first interest rate cut of the year and maybe the last for a while." Although Rather placed the story as the top news item of the day, NBC didn't mention the cuts until halfway through the program, and then only in passing. CBS's report began:

  RATHER: Good evening. They waited 'til the day after the election to cast their votes on a matter that will affect millions of Americans. Federal Reserve policy makers voted today to cut interest rates, cut them way down, cut them more than anyone expected, half a percentage point. The idea is to give the economy a boost by making it easier to borrow and spend money. After the announcement, stocks bounced up and down before closing somewhat higher. (Dow up 92.74, NASDAQ up 17.82) Anthony Mason reports on the Fed's first interest rate cut of the year and maybe the last for a while.
  MASON: With the economy suffering heart palpitations, Alan Greenspan took out some insurance today.

  Finally, after much time devoted to interest rate cuts and the palpitating economy, Rather decided it was time to bring up the story of lesser importance, the results of the previous night's off-year elections where the Republicans took back control of the Senate and enlarged their majority in the House.

• The day before Election Day, Rather appeared on CNN's Larry King Live. King asked Rather if he was going to do any reporting on the Winona Ryder trial. Rather said that at CBS, "We try to hang out a sign to the viewer and to the listener: 'News That Matters.' And it's hard for me to see how the Winona Ryder trial is news that matters for a truly national audience, but there will be plenty of other people who will cover it, and God bless them."

  Apparently Rather put away his sign before tonight's broadcast:

  "And back in this country, Winona Ryder could get up to three years in prison after a jury convicted her today of grand theft and vandalism. But early indications are she will not have to serve prison time. The actress was caught shoplifting more than $5,000 worth of merchandise from a Beverly Hills department store."

• In an Election Eve report on the next day's outcome, CBS Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer said the opposite of what reporters on some other networks were saying. Unlike his colleagues, Schieffer had comforting words for the Democratic faithful:

  "Well, Dan, the Democrats are feeling actually a little better tonight about holding their one-seat majority in the Senate..... [A] top Republican strategist told me tonight that Republicans will almost certainly lose the Arkansas seat held by Tim Hutchinson, and that Republican Elizabeth Dole's race against Democrat Erskine Bowles in North Carolina is much closer than anyone thought.... So, Dan, I would say the Democrats tonight may feel a little better about holding the Senate, but probably not good enough to bet on it."

  On ABC, Correspondent Terry Moran told Peter Jennings:

  "Peter, White House officials seem increasingly optimistic about Republican chances tomorrow. That could be because of internal polling they're doing, or it could be because, as you mentioned, the President has staked a lot on this election."

  On Fox News Channel, Brit Hume reported:

  "[T]here is some evidence of a late trend toward the Republicans.... In the final hours of what seemed to be shaping up as another virtually tied U.S. election, there suddenly emerged two striking poll results suggesting a late and possibly decisive trend toward the Republicans."
• On a lighter note, we will soon have a compilation of the "Texanisms" Rather shared with viewers on Election Night. To see our 2000 edition, click here.

Rather’s 71st
Today (Halloween) is Dan Rather's 71st birthday.
2002-10-31 18:30:01 ET

• For Dan's birthday, RatherBiased.com decided to look at the lighter side of bias by examining the Big Three networks' coverage of the three most important team sport events of the year: The Super Bowl, the NBA Finals and the World Series. As it turned out, two of the three networks were remarkably biased in favor of baseball, preferring to cover it far more than the NBA's championship and a good deal more than the Super Bowl. Even the Little League World Series got more play on the Big Three than the NBA Finals during the past six years.

  Despite the fact that Rather tried out for his high school football team and has served as a guest color commentator for the Dallas Cowboys, CBS was the most biased in favor of baseball, followed by NBC. ABC, in a fit of corporate synergy in the year its sports division carried the Super Bowl, actually ran more stories about football's big game. Thirty-seven percent of ABC's 19 Super Bowl stories actually occurred during seven days in January.

  As interesting as that is, what's more interesting is that CBS never carried the World Series and that NBC was the most interested in major leaugue baseball in a year it didn't carry the series, 2001.

• While reporting on the contentious Georgia Senate race between Republican Saxby Chambliss and incumbent Democrat Max Cleland, CBS aired a slanted story tilted in favor of the Democratic incumbent. With 11 arguments aired in favor of the Democrat and five arguments in favor of the Republican, this television report constituted a "soft-money" issue ad, the kind that will be banned after this election. Senator Cleland's challenger, Saxby Chambliss, says the incumbent is soft on national defense and unpatriotic in his refusal to vote for the Bush national security plan which labor unions oppose. Cleland says that's absolutely not true because he lost thee limbs 35 years ago while serving in Vietnam.

  In his report, Bob Schieffer repeatedly brought up the fact that Cleland served in Vietnam, reciting it four times throughout the piece as well as airing the Senator saying the same. It was clear whose side Bob Schieffer was one when he said, "But it always comes back to who loves the country more, a veteran who lost his legs and an arm in Vietnam, and a non-Veteran who votes with the president."

• Former CBS Newsman and predecessor to Rather, Walter Cronkite, was asked about an appearance Rather made a year earlier on The Late Show With David Letterman after 9-11, when he broke down on the stage. In the October 21, 2002 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cronkite said of his appearance, "I think it's perfectly acceptable to understand that news people are human beings and can be touched by the news like anybody else." But then had added, "I would find it terribly harmful if I thought it was phony."

2002-10-18 0:28:16 ET

• Enraged Democrats demanded an apology from President Bush for saying that some of them cared more about "special interests" than the nation's security, but after watching last night's CBS Evening News, will Bush and Republicans demand an apology from CBS after Dan Rather blamed them for letting "special interest money" get in the way of stopping the Washington sniper?

  "With a serial killer on the loose, you might think that police are using every high-tech tool to catch him. You might think that, but you would be wrong," Rather opined. "For instance," Rather continued, using a classic gun-control advocate's line, "while the police are allowed to use computers to trace the owner of a car, they are not allowed to use computers to trace the owner of a gun. One reason, bluntly put, is politics and special interest money, as CBS's Wyatt Andrews reports in tonight's Eye on America." See our Guns section to read the entire report or watch Rather's intro.

• Rather also gave his opinion of President George W. Bush's proposals for dealing with Iraq. In his Oct. 7 syndicated column, Rather wrote that "responsible people" need "more evidence that the Bush administration [is] taking as serious a view of that war's potential consequences as it is of the causes for waging it."

2002-10-09 19:32:41 ET

• After years of people telling him about media bias, is Dan Rather finally coming around? Tonight he acknowledged that journalists can be biased in their reporting. Unfortunately, he was not talking about his own:
  

  "Turning to the looming U.S. showdown with Saddam Hussein, Iraqi television has aired portions of a rare meeting between the Iraqi dictator and Arab journalists who describe themselves as independent."
  

  That's just how Rather described himself years earlier: "I walk out every day trying to have a big ‘I’ for independence stamped right in the middle of my forehead."

• Reporting on the continued debate on Iraq, Rather and his CBS colleagues reported on a biased poll commissioned by CBS and the New York Times. Condemned by Rather during the 2000 primary elections, CBS's "push poll" misled respondents by deliberately asking ambiguous questions, according to former Clinton pollster Dick Morris. The phrase "would you like to hear the candidates talk more about the possibility of war with Iraq or improving the U.S. economy?" undoubtedly included people who supported attacking Iraq, writes Morris in his New York Post column. "[T]hat phrasing surely masks the impatience of voters who favor war with Iraq but are tired of the endless talk about it. Those who favor action and oppose more debate would register on the 'economy' side of this biased question."

  Rather has chosen to not run polls in the past he thought were inaccurate or would unduly influence public opinion (click here for a Lesley Stahl account of Rather refusing to run a poll showing Michael Dukakis trailing George Bush in 1988), so declining to run this one would not have been unprecedented.

• This week marks the one-year anniversary of the news media anthrax scare. During this time, there were some who criticized reporters for hyping a story, simply because they were a part of it. NBC's satire program Saturday Night Live ran two skits ridiculing Rather's histrionic attitude toward the whole story as well as CBS's inaccurate projections during the 2000 Election. In the sketches, a rather poorly costumed Darrell Hammond introduces the CBS Evening Anthrax Update and alerts viewers to the hitherto-unknown spread of disease in TV news:
  RATHER: Uh-oh! hold on to your hats, folks. In perhaps the biggest surprise of the night, CBS News now projecting that down at CNN, anchor Wolf Blitzer has both anthrax and rabies. Details are sketchy at this time, but apparently the highly-respected newsman was bitten by a squirrel caught in his attic vent.

  So, to sum up where we stand at the moment -- Rather, anthrax; Russert, anthrax; Koppel and Jennings, anthrax; Rivera, anthrax; Couric, no anthrax; Blitzer, anthrax, attacked by a squirrel.

2002-10-06 23:18:06 ET

• Suday's Washington Post features an article criticizing the media, particularly Dan Rather, for overhyping hurricanes. The author, Patrick J. Michaels, charges that Rather's coverage of Hurricane Carla in the early 1960s set a ratings-driven example which all other TV networks now follow, to the detriment of public safety.

2002-10-03 01:56:46 ET

• Former anchor of the CBS Evening News, and Dan Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite denounced the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Cronkite made the remarks on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports while explaining his signing of a Common Cause ad in the New York Times questioning the president's actions.

  "I think a primary question is in the resolution that the president wants Congress to pass which would give him the right to go to war at any time he wants." The Bush administration seems to "wish to run the country without any consent of Congress at all," Cronkite said. (Read Entire Transcript)

• Like his predecessor, Rather also had some words to say about Bush's plans to invade Iraq. In his syndicated column, Rather worried that "other nations might use the American precedent to justify their own military incursions around the world."
• Dan Rather was handed a disappointment instead of a big hurricane as he he found the storm he had hyped up on Wednesday turned out to be milder than expected the next day. On Wednesday, while anchoring from New Orleans, "the hurricane strike zone," He devoted much more time to hurricanes than his competitors, twice as many words as NBC and ABC did. He started off Wednesday with:

  RATHER: Tonight from New Orleans, an especially powerful and dangerous hurricane is headed to strike the Gulf Coast in a matter of hours. As Lili closes in, residents are boarding up and heading out. A massive evacuation is under way tonight. Could we see the worst-case scenario? Why New Orleans is just about the worst place a hurricane can hit.
  ANNOUNCER: This is the CBS Evening News, with Dan Rather reporting tonight from New Orleans.
  RATHER: Good evening from the hurricane strike zone.
  A superstrong, possibly historic hurricane is about to strike here along the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Lili is now officially an especially dangerous Category 4 hurricane. That means sustained winds of 140 miles per hour, gusts much higher than that and with an unusually large sea surge.

  Unfortunately for him, Thursday's weather never materialized to become what he had hyped, and although he had three other correspondents on the ground placed throughout Louisiana, they each had little to contribute to a storyline that had fizzled.

  Rather started off Thursday's broadcast with:

  "Hurricane Lili: confounds the computers and the experts. It blasts ashore in southern Louisiana as a category two hurricane, not nearly as strong as was predicted. But still plenty strong enough to knock down trees and powerlines, flood homes, and now its wind and rain are heading north."

  Rather has always had a commitment to standing in hurricanes since his coverage of another Gulf Coast hurricane in 1961 catapulted him to CBS stardom. As a young news director and anchor of KHOU Houston, he convinced the station to give him a crew to cover Hurricane Carla on the Texas coastline. Rather and his crew stayed out in the wind and rain for three days to cover it. Then CBS picked up on it while trying to find anyone who was there on location. ("He was a-- deep in water moccasins," said Cronkite)

  CBS News offered Rather a job as a network reporter, but he demanded to be given the loftier position of "correspondent." Although such a thing was rarely done for a freshman reporter, CBS yielded (and has been yielding ever since).

2002-10-01 01:56:46 PT

• Beset by personal scandals since 1999, Senator Bob Torricelli (D-N.J.) announced Monday his immediate withdrawal from his reelection campaign, which probably came as a shock to viewers of the CBS Evening News since Dan Rather and his colleagues have provided scant coverage of Torricelli's troubles. Prior to yesterday, the CBS Evening News had mentioned the story only three times, not even deigning to report on the rebuke Torricelli received from the Senate Ethics Committee.

  Besides being paltry, CBS's coverage of the New Jersey Democrat was also biased. All of the times it mentioned the Senator and his scandal, Rather et al. interpreted things from Torricelli's view, allowing him to call investigators "politically motivated" and only interested in helping Republicans get the Senate back.

  CBS's kid-glove treatment of Torricelli is a stark contrast to its coverage of another senator named Bob who decided to step down after being dogged by scandals for years, Republican Bob Packwood. Following the Washington Post's breaking of the story on November 22, 1992, Dan Rather immediately reported on accusations of sexual harassment leveled against the Oregon Republican. During the three-year time period--which also happens to be how long Torricelli was under public suspicion for accepting illegal contributions and gifts--CBS devoted 22 stories (seven times more than its four Torricelli stories) to Packwood's scandal.

• Can Dan curry favor with women better than Packwood? we'll leave that for others to decide. It seems, though, that the anchorman was trying to win their approval, telling CNN's Larry King Sept. 3 that the Masters golf tournament will eventually end its "discrimination" against female golfers. "I think the time when any institution, any organization can, over a long period of time, deal in discrimination, those days are probably gone. Now, whether the Masters Tournament and the masters of the Masters can buck that trend, it will be interesting to see, but I doubt it."

2002-09-21 21:42:49 PT
CBS Gives Democratic Senators Big Edge in Iraq Spat

• After Democratic Senator Tom Daschle attacked President George W. Bush for "politicizing" a war with Iraq, CBS chose to air a heavily one-sided story about the day's political developments.

  A report from the Washington Post about Bush "saying on Monday that the Democratic-controlled Senate is 'not interested in the security of the American people'" raised a ruckus. The quote of Bush from the article was misleading in that it implied the president was trying to score political points by talking up war with Iraq while bashing Democrats as soft. The article left out the next sentence where it shows he was talking about a Department of Homeland Security bill, not a war with Iraq:

  "The House responded, but the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people. I will not accept a Department of Homeland Security that does not allow this President, and future Presidents, to better keep the American people secure."

  Tom Daschle immediately fired back after reading the Post version. "Not interested in the security of the American people?" questioned Daschle. "You tell those who fought in Vietnam and in World War II they're not interested in the security of the American people. That is outrageous. [...] We ought not to politicize this war. We ought not politicize the rhetoric about war and life and death." Other Democrats took to the floor to speak, including a WWII veteran, to denounce Bush's "statement."

  CBS also quoted Bush out of context, and on that night's Evening News, chose to relay almost exclusively the Democrats' arguments in exclusion of Republicans'. During correspondent Bob Schieffer's report, the amount of time given to soundbites of Democrats criticizing Bush's war plan was 52 seconds, and the amount of time given to anyone stating the president's side was seven seconds. CBS aired remarks from three different Democratic senators, and for President Bush's side, seven short and relatively meaningless seconds were selected from a press briefing and put on the air. (See the actual transcript, more than the snippet provided during the program)

  Not only did Bush have more to say in response than the seven seconds provided, but White House press secretary Ari Fleischer also gave a lengthy briefing where he defended the president's position and said the Washington Post article quoted the president out of context. Although CBS chose to air none of his briefing, nor statements from any other Republican, the other television news programs decided his comments were important, as well as those of Republican Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott.

• Just who are Bob Schieffer's sources? Ending his Wednesday report on politics and Iraq, Bob Schieffer made a statement that implied the President's position was shaky, and his supporters unsure:

  "[P]rivately even some of the President's friends believe he has made a tactical mistake. Because a large number of Democrats here were on the verge of giving the President just the authority he's been asking for to deal with Iraq. Now some of those Democrats believe the President has hit them below the belt and that's going to complicate things."

  Schieffer says he was told "privately" by the "President's friends" that he had made a tactical mistake. But NBC's Campbell Brown told a far different story of what she was told "privately."

  From Campbell's Sept. 25 NBC Nightly News report:
  ARI FLEISCHER (W.H. Press Secretary): The president is stating the fact that unless and until this passes, the Senate will not have acted in the interest of the security of the American people.
  CAMPBELL BROWN: Privately, White House officials had a harsher line, calling Daschle's response, quote, "an act of desperation that shows just how much the president is winning the debate on war and security."

  One "private" comment shows the White House in the fetal position, the other shows it positioned for war.

2002-09-21 21:42:49 PT

• Dan Rather and Bill Whitaker air a biased report against the auto insurance industry, quoting three critics of the practice of credit scoring for insurance customers and only one defender. The piece begins with a profile of a woman whose insurance rates went up when she missed two credit card payments in the aftermath of her daughter's death six years ago. Not mentioned is the size of her unpaid bills, or when her rates rose. Whitaker also doesn't allow a representative from her company (or any other company) to respond the woman's charges.

  The next portion of the report has an interview with a representative from an insurance association who is allowed only 44 words to counter the earlier part of the piece, plus the words of a critic of the industry and the testimony of an agent who says insurers charge lower-income people more.

• Dan Rather ended his tenure as anchor of CBS's primetime newsmagazine 48 Hours on Friday. He told viewers it was his last appearance and gave his version of how the show originated--neglecting to mention the power struggle behind its birth. For a more personable, informal effect, Rather had his tie off and his shirt unbuttoned.

  "This is the last 48 Hours I'll be doing, at least for a while. It's been a long, good run--more than 15 years--as one who helped create the program and then be a reporter and anchor for it.

  "The original idea was to be on once a week or more in primetime with focused, emotionally moving hours of television journalism that affects people's lives. Not just short bursts but full hours, on one subject. And, to do full hours in times of crisis everything from hurricanes to wars. 48 Hours has done that and is, today, the third-longest-running program in primetime. Some of the most accomplished professional journalists in the world have made it so and they'll continue to do that."

• Thursday's CBS Evening News featured a story (with a follow-up on Friday) about police in a mid-size Indiana town trying to track down a mother after a shopping mall security camera caught her angrily spanking and hitting her four-year-old daughter. Dan Rather was one of the first to report on it and the only Big Three anchor to mention it the day it was reported in the local Indiana press. This is the same Rather who dismissed former President Clinton's alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick as a "somebody's private sex life" and who once admitted that he "hated" covering the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.

  And while he and news partner CNN were the first to jump on the Indiana story, (which until then had been confined to the local news) he was the very last to report on the disappearance of Chandra Levy, a former Washington intern who had had an affair with Democratic Congressman Gary Condit. Rather said that instead of reporting on the missing woman, reporters should instead "consider seriously some important news from around the world."

2002-09-14 13:17 PT

• During his Sept. 11 appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, the CBS talkmeister asked former president Bill Clinton about the prospects of his obtaining a talk program on CBS. (Clinton said he was too busy to do a show.) The media have been abuzz with rumors about a show since last May, but the apparently better-connected Dan Rather scooped his colleagues by over a year, half jokingly suggesting his idea for what Clinton could do after leaving the White House: host a prime-time talker with the CBS anchorman.

  "You talked about what President Clinton is going to do," Rather told CNN's Larry King. "How do you feel about a talk show that had President Clinton and myself on a national talk show, maybe 9:00 Eastern Time? How would you feel about that?"

  The idea may not seem as far-fetched since, according to 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt, both men seem to be on quite good terms. Speaking of their relationship to C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, Hewitt commented, "he likes Dan. And Dan likes him, I think."

• On Monday Sept. 9, Dan Rather took part in a journalism forum at Fordham University sponsored by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. While discussing the political atmosphere after Sept. 11, 2001, he claimed journalists were not doing their job, not doing enough to question Bush's foreign policy: "We haven't lived up to our responsibility, to our duty. Our duty is to be there every day and knock on the door and say what's going on in there." He also added, "I think it's unpatriotic not to [ask tough questions]. The idea that patriotism is wearing a flag in your lapel and never saying anything bad about whoever is in power ... is not consistent with the American character."
• The media coverage on the day of the anniversary of Sept. 11 was nonstop, and during primetime each network vied for viewers in a different way. CBS led all networks in primetime, but it was not because of its news division. At first CBS was trailing in the ratings--third place when Dan Rather hosted its coverage of President George W. Bush's live address (which all the networks carried) and a disappointing second for Scott Pelley's exclusive interview with the president. That would have left the suits in Black Rock disappointed once again, but then CBS re-aired 9/11 a documentary of the attacks which saved the network from last.

2002-09-10 13:17 PT

• Tomorrow on September 11, President Bush has awarded an exclusive interview to CBS correspondent Scott Pelley where he'll be asked to discuss the aftermath of the attacks. Pelley will be the envy of his fellow journalists around the world since hundreds of news organizations were vying for an interview on the biggest news day of the year.

  So why didn't CBS's star anchor, Dan Rather, get to interview the president? During Bush 41's presidency, CBS News had the policy that "only Dan Rather interviews the president." But following an earlier confrontation Rather had with Bush "Sr.", that White House didn't want Rather either, and according to its press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, "[W]e offered many interviews to CBS correspondents Bob Schieffer, Charles Kuralt, Randall Pinkston, Harry Smith, and others. All we wanted was someone who would be civil." Repeatedly CBS told them that only Dan Rather would interview Bush, but he never got to; and throughout the entire Bush presidency, Rather, the star anchor of a Big Three network, was embarrassed as being the only major reporter who was never able to sit down with the president of the United States. Continued...

• See also USA Today's preview.
• Tomorrow is also the anniversary of another disaster, albeit on a much smaller scale. Wednesday marks the 15th anniversary of Rather's notorious Miami walkout, when the often hot-tempered anchor stormed off the set when he found out a tennis match might delay his daily broadcast.

2002-08-21 17:48 PT

• After ceasing publication on November 26, 2001, RatherBiased.com has returned.

  The political atmosphere during the months following September 11, 2001 was conciliatory and a truce had formed between Democrats and Republicans. Everyone, including Dan Rather, refrained from partisan sniping for political gain. Rather abided by the truce, until his fellow Democrats in Congress realized that they needed to get back on track for the 2002 off-year elections. But with Democrats and the media trying to connect George W. Bush with Enron, and both sides blaming each other for 9-11, the tranquil period--unprecedented in American history-ended.

  When the grace period was over, the normal tendencies of both parties were no longer suppressed. It's to be excepted that Democrats are partisan, as are Republicans, but it's not to be expected that journalists take part in this eternal scuffle.

  Except during the 9-11 détente, Dan Rather has been taking part in this scuffle for 40 years. With Rather now back in the political fray, RatherBiased.com is now back in service.

• Every summer (except during presidential election years), with the politicians out of town, the news media typically latch onto a story to fill the void. The obsession for this summer is child kidnapping--including at CBS News, where Dan Rather jumped on the bandwagon from the beginning, reporting the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart the day after it was broken by the Associated Press. The CBS Evening News has stayed on the bandwagon since. This is actually typical of Rather, who during the 1980s wanted to display portraits of missing children on his news program. But last year, during the fuss over the missing Chandra Levy, the normally concerned Rather stubbornly refused to mention Levy's plight for over 60 days and denounced his fellow journalists for "consum[ing] the nation, with gossip and rumor about a missing person's case."
• CBS announced today that Dan Rather will be replaced by Lesley Stahl as host of CBS's first primetime news magazine 48 Hours, leaving Rather as anchor of CBS's evening news and co-anchor of its other primetime magazine 60 Minutes II.

  48 Hours has an interesting story in the history of CBS News. As chronicled by journalist Peter Boyer in his book, Who Killed CBS?, during the 80s, a power struggle emerged between CBS News president Ed Joyce and Rather:

  "Rather's incessant theme, his constant obsession, was the matter of resources for the Evening News." In June 1985, Rather complained that two star reporters, Meredith Vieira and Jane Wallace, were recruited to be on a new CBS News show called West 57th: “If Vieira and Wallace were going to be in prime time, that meant they were not going to be on Rather’s Evening News. What's more, the two correspondents had been given the assignment without him being consulted. He was predictably angry and seldom missed the chance in the Evening News postmortem sessions to remind all that his broadcast had been hurt by the loss of the two correspondents. 'Every thirty seconds,' said one Evening News producer, 'we were reminded that we were missing those two people.' Rather constantly worried that the broadcast had too few A List correspondents on the air on any given night." News president Ed Joyce disagreed with him and told him in a memo that he was demanding "a disproportionate share of the total resources of CBS News." Rather responded by telling him his memo was "loaded with shit."

  West 57th later died because of its lack of resources and Joyce was later forced out by his adversarial anchor. A later CBS News president, Howard Stringer, came up with a plan to make sure Rather would never undermine his new program, 48 Hours, by naming Rather as its anchor. "With Rather as anchor, Stringer's new show was guaranteed fairly free access to Evening News resources, rather than the opposition that new CBS News efforts usually were accorded."

  And 48 Hours has survived ever since.