CBS “Got Caught”

RUSH TV SHOW ARCHIVE: Look at who goes to journalism school today. Go into any major U.S. university journalism school and just pick your average student there and say, “Why are you here?” and they’ll say something like, “Because I want to make the world a better place.” Want to make the world a better place? “Yes. I want to rid the world of social injustice.” Well, what are you doing here? That’s not what journalism is. You’re supposed to look at things that happen and either write ’em down or tell other people what happened. You’re not supposed to go and save the world.

RUSH: Here’s Dan Rather at the New York public library on Saturday, New Yorker magazine writer Ken Auletta moderating a panel discussion with Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather. Auletta said, “What’s the most frustrating and also the most exhilarating thing about your job, Dan?”

RATHER: I think most of us got into journalism because in some way, somehow, we wanted to contribute to the well-being of the country, well-being of our fellow man — if that doesn’t sound too overarching — and so when you feel that you’ve done it, in even the smallest of ways, that’s the best of times.

RUSH: I mean, they just continue to prove everything I say: Went in there to improve life for our fellow man. You look at Dan’s recent body of work and ask how that’s happening, and you don’t find a whole lot of evidence. I have a different theory. You want to get to Dan Rather’s level in journalism. You’re a journalism student out there and you’re walking through the halls of some sacred journalism school and you’re thinking, “I’m here because I want to get rid of social injustice like Three Dog Night. I’m here because I want to make the world a better place.” Screw that. Just admit you are there to destroy people, and the sooner you go about doing a profile of somebody that utterly destroys them, you will get noticed by the Washington Post, Newsweek, TIME, New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC.

They’ll pick you up in a second. The more people you can destroy… I mean, far better shot at making it big than going out there and feeding the poor in Africa, which is also what journalism is not about. Here, moving on. Peter Jennings had some things to say. He had a couple things to say at this. No, let’s do #4. Yeah, we’re going to stick with the order I gave you. We’ll do #4, then we’ll go to five and then eight. So here’s Rather. Now, at the end of this Jennings, Peter Jenning’s chimes in, and Auletta says, “Dan, recently CBS made a mistake.” (Laughing.) “If I were a young journalism student and I came to you, Mr. Rather, and I said looking back with the benefit of hindsight, what was the biggest mistake that CBS made on September the 8th?”

RATHER: I appreciate the question and I’ve tried to address that at least in part previously, but we have an independent review underway now, and I’ve been asked by the president of the news division while that’s underway not to say anything more and so that’s the way — that’s going to be my answer for the moment.
JENNINGS: One thing I feel quite strongly about and I’ve this said to Dan, I say it to everybody else. I don’t think you ever judge a man by only one event in his career. So — (Applause.) So now we know this is a blue room. (Laughter.)

BROKAW: Never thought of New York as a red state.

RUSH: Well, now, what is that? I mean, here’s Dan Rather taking the Janet Reno excuse. “There’s an investigation underway and I can’t comment,” but then the room applauds after this one-mistake comment and Jennings says, “Well, now, I guess we’re in a Blue Room.” (Brokaw) “We never thought of New York as a red state.” So he admits that they’re involved. Admitting it: “Okay we’re in a Blue Room.” Democrats, New York, Democrat, blue state. They just… They just… I don’t know. I think that it’s now gotten to the point where they’re getting close to admitting certain things, but they won’t admit the key thing about them and that is that they personally are biased. This business that if somebody “will just apologize,” we never go after somebody who just apologizes; we judge a man by one event in his career? Are we not judging Bush by one event in his career, war in Iraq? Is that not what these guys are doing is judging Bush by one event in his career? What is this notion of apologizing? You know, Kerry is still running out there, “He’s stubborn.” Kerry says, “He won’t admit he made a mistake.” They’re still trying to goad him into that for that sound bite, folks, trying to get him to admit that he made a mistake. One more from Peter Jennings, Ken Auletta said, “Peter, do you think the CBS situation has had a chilling effect?”

JENNINGS: I don’t think this has had a chilling effect at all. I do think that the attack on CBS has been brought on by some people and some have taken an attack on us all, an attack on the establishment media, an attack on what people regard as the liberal media, which is in itself a whole other area for discussion because it’s so often wrong but I think each — each of us I’m sure feel quite strongly about the investigative teams in our unit. We have a fabulous investigative team at ABC. It works all the time on a variety of subjects. You know, when you get caught, you apologize.

RUSH: Well, you can look at this one of two ways. I mean, it was sort of a slam at CBS there, wasn’t it? Our unit, when you get caught, you apologize. When you get caught. Not when you make a mistake you apologize, “when you get caught.” “We have a fabulous investigative team at ABC, works all the time on a variety of subjects, when you get caught, though, you apologize.” Blue Room, it’s okay. You don’t have to get caught in the Blue Room because they’ll excuse you.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’ve got two more sound bites. Our old buddy Tina Brown, ladies and gentlemen, I want to go back and before playing you the payoff sound bite, the setup sound bite, last Sunday on her CNBC show that nobody watches, I mean it’s got like a .1 out there, it barely rates, it’s barely above John McEnroe. She had a roundtable discussion out there with the writer Susan Cheever, Christopher Buckley, David Remnick and Stanley Crouch and they’re discussing bloggers and how they influence the Dan Rather story and this is what Tina Brown had to say about it.

BROWN: What bothers me slightly, though, about the way the bloggers have almost become like the media mujadean, you know. I mean, everybody feels so chased by them. I mean, look what happened in a sense, CBS had the same kind of campaign for that — for that Janet Jackson Super Bowl debacle, and for the Ronald Reagan miniseries. I mean, this is the third time in a sense that CBS management has been completely kind of, you know, harassed.

RUSH: I heard about this, and I had a little response. I said, “CBS has been harassed? CBS was using forged documents and it took the new media to ferret this out! If it weren’t for the new media, a fraud would have been committed against the President of the United States,” and, you know, Jennings is out there demanding an apology for Rather because, you know, nobody’s career is “judged by one mistake.” Nobody is demanding that Rather apologize to Bush. Kerry is out there demanding that Bush apologize for Iraq. But you can do whatever you want to a president, we never have to apologize to a president, he’s got to be spending his whole life apologizing just to please Kerry and the rest. Anyway, I said all this and Tina Brown decided on her Topic A with Tina Brown show to respond to it last night to what I said. This is what she said.

BROWN: This week’s viewer mail comes from the unlikeliest viewer of all, Rush Limbow [sic Limbaugh]. He took time out of his daily nine-hour show [sic three hour] to send me this love note over the air in response to comments that I made last week about the mob mentality of bloggers. Take a listen.

RUSH ARCHIVE: If you want to know who defines media elitism in New York, it’s Tina Brown and her husband Harry Evans. No, no, Tina. It’s not that CBS management blew it, or that CBS management was wrong, and not — and extends down even below management. No, this all happened because they got caught, and she’s mad they got caught.

BROWN: Well, Rush, you certainly know how to flatter a girl, but what I take away from it is this. Who knew you were watching?

RUSH: Tina, I hate to tell you, I don’t watch; I pay people to watch. (Laughing) I’m embarrassed now. She thinks I watch her show. (Laughing.) Yeah, somebody is watching the show, a couple people, maybe, but it isn’t me. (Laughing.) What am I, Dawn? I’ve what? (talking to staff member) Being very what, to her? I’m not! What do you mean, being rotten to her? Dawn says I’m being rotten to her? Dawn is our transcriber here, ladies and gentlemen. I’m not being rotten. I don’t watch the show. I pay people to do it. I couldn’t tell you what time it’s on, but still, I mean as a comeback, once again, doesn’t discuss the substance of what I suggest. But there’s that word “caught” again, CBS got caught. Isn’t this interesting?

END TRANSCRIPT