Getting Tired Of All The "Tributes" to Dan Rather in the MSM today?

Well, let The Weekly Standard serve you up a heaping helping of reality.

Learn a few things that you didn't know about Mr. Rather's early career, like:

"Eddie Barker, for one, remembers. The news director for CBS's radio and TV affiliates in Dallas at the time of President Kennedy's November 22, 1963, assassination, Barker is widely credited with first reporting on the air that the president was dead, having received word through a doctor acquaintance
directly from the hospital ER.

Rather, then based in Dallas as a reporter for CBS's national news broadcast and working out of Barker's newsroom, later took credit for the scoop, Barker says. The error is repeated in historical accounts often enough to annoy the now-retired Barker, though he says the falsehood was
later acknowledged by Rather."

And arising out of the same tragedy:

"As reporters from around the world descended on the Texas city, Rather went on the air with a local Methodist minister who made a stunning claim: Children at Dallas's University Park Elementary School had cheered when told of the president's death. The tale was perfect for the moment, reinforcing the notion among distant media elites that Dallas was a reactionary "City of Hate."...

...Except that it wasn't true, and Rather knew it, Barker says. Approached earlier by the same minister with what was a second-hand account, Barker himself had run the story by the school's principal and some teachers, all of whom denied it
outright. Because of the shooting, which took place at 12:30 p.m., the principal had decided to close the school early, though without telling the students why.

The children at the school--including three of Barker's own--were merely happy to be going home early, he was told. There couldn't have been any spontaneous cheering at the news of Kennedy's murder, because no such news had been announced.

Undaunted, the dogged minister--"a very, very strong liberal and a very, very strong Kennedy supporter," Barker says--moved on to Rather. "Rather came to me, and I said, 'My kids are in school there, and I checked it out, and there's not a darn thing to it,'" says Barker. "He said, 'Well, great--I'll just forget it.' But instead of forgetting it, he went out and did this gut job on Dallas and its conservatism," with the preacher's story at the center of his report."

The forty years that followed may very well have resulted in Rather having a bust in the broadcaster's hall of fame along side Edward R. Murrow, except for one tiny little story that he lost control over, turned out to be based on lies and he staunchly defended even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to the point where he made himself and the "Tiffany Network" look ridiculous. And this will be his legacy.

Goodbye, Dan

Posted by: Gary at 10:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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