Let’s Suppose . . .

. . . that there are two guys running for president. Call them Candidate X and Candidate Y.

Suppose further that there are parties attacking the military records of Candidate X and Y and bringing up all kinds of allegations about what they did or didn’t do during the Vietnam War.

Suppose that there is a TV network that at first refuses to cover the allegations made against Candidate X by a large number of sources and then, when the story becomes too big to ignore, heaps scorn on those making the allegations, trying its best to shoot holes in their account.

Suppose finally that the same TV network eagerly hops on the allegations made against Candidate Y by a single source and, when virtually the entire blogosphere shoots holes in the allegations, the network stiffly and rigidly defends the allegations.

Could you fairly conclude that the TV network and the people at it who were involved in these stories were biased against Candidate Y in favor of Candidate X?

How then can the CBS Rathergate pannel say something like this?

The question of whether a political agenda played any role in the
airing of the Segment is one of the most subjective, and most
difficult, that the Panel has sought to answer. The political agenda
question was posed by the Panel directly to Dan Rather and his
producer, Mary Mapes, who appear to have drawn the greatest attention
in terms of possible political agendas. Both
strongly denied that they brought any political bias to the Segment.
The Panel recognizes that those who saw bias at work in the Segment are
likely to sweep such denials aside. However, the Panel will not level
allegations for which it cannot offer adequate proof [LINK–Evil file format (.pdf) warning!].

I don’t think there’s anything "subjective" here. I think the bias is blatantly obvious. Viewing the Rathergate sandal in the context of the overall election, it is obvious what was happening: This was a desperate attempt to get a military record story on Bush to neutralize the effect of the Swiftvet story on Kerry. Only a "myopic zeal" for focusing on the Rathergate story in isolation from the Swiftvet story could lead one to think that there is not adequate proof of bias in this case.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

8 thoughts on “Let’s Suppose . . .”

  1. Of course, in order to nail down the question of bias, you would have to ask these reporters for whom they voted. I just scanned the report, but there was no mention of their political ideologies that I saw. I bet the makeup of the people at CBS who were involved in this story was no different than the reporters at the BOston Globe.

  2. This is definitely a matter for the FEC, which unfortunately seems to be run by Clinton aparatchiks.

  3. However, the Panel will not level allegations for which it cannot offer adequate proof
    Incredible.

  4. Well, there are still some people on the left side of the web who think that it is still “inconclusive” whether or not those “documents” were made in Microsoft Office.
    I hope I never get to the point where I’m so blinded to the truth by my own biases.

  5. Much as it is obvious to all of us that bias was the motivating factor in the airing of the fraudulent Memogate story, I think that Thornburg et al had to conclude no bias because they can not read minds. What they should have done is 1. release all the material that they had. 2. Ask more questions. They took at face value each of the invilved individual’s testimony and did no additional fact checking. They did not look deeper into the Kerry campaign connections. The whole report is very superficial. There is much more that needs to be investigated. This should be done. But will it? Does this report “put an end to the matter”?

  6. Bias can be a bit distracting. The problem with the hit piece was that it was false. If you are to argue that hit pieces are inappropriate, then you would have to say that the Swift Vets were wrong.
    Obviously CBS is biased. Every other news source is biased. Many biased sources can still tell the truth. CBS cannot. CBS could become successful again even with its current bias if it desired to report the truth.

  7. speaking of bias, a direct quote from the report:
    “some people on the Internet, at first primarily supporters of President Bush with their own conversative political agenda.”
    I wonder if they asked them if they denied being political biased.

  8. And again,
    “further attacks, mostly by bloggers with a conservative agenda.”
    Have these people no shame?

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