Bias and The Nation

Curious as to liberal reaction to "Rathergate" I checked in with our friends at The Nation. John Nichols, who writes The Online Beat blog column, takes what I consider to be a sensible approach to the scandal. He is furious at CBS for being so sloppy, because it now makes Bush's Guard service almost untouchable.

Here's where he starts to go down a questionable path:

After more than a month of virtually round-the-clock assessment of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam service, major media has a responsibility to reexamine the president's controversial service record.

The round-the-clock coverage was due to two factors: 1) Senator Kerry has used his Vietnam service prominiently in his campaign, almost to the extent that it is his sole qualification for office. 2) There was new information being publicized, in the form of a book by John O'Neill, and an organization called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

George Bush has not painted his Guard service as his primary qualification for the Presidency. Further, no real newsworthy information has come out regarding the Guard issue.

Nichols is also upset because he feels the meat of the story is elsewhere, and Rather has poisoned the entire well (horribly mixed metaphor is mine, not his). He mentions a book by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, published 5 years ago, as the definitive story of the Bush Guard record, and incredibly suggests it should be the standard carried forward by CBS:

So why didn't Rather and the CBS crew simply invite Ivins and Dubose, both experienced Texas reporters with long histories of sorting fact from fiction when dealing with the Bush family, to help produce a "60 Minutes" report that would have told the story accurately and thoroughly? Perhaps CBS executives thought that, because Ivins and Dubose write with a point of view, rather than feigning journalistic impartiality, they could not be trusted to get the straight story. That, of course, is the common bias of the elite broadcast media in the United States.

What is the meaning of the word "that"? Is he conceding that there is a common liberal bias in the elite media? This would be an astounding revelation coming from The Nation. Or is he simply suggesting some sort of vague bipartisan impartiality? He continues:

There is a lesson to be learned here: There was never any need for Rather and CBS to go searching for a "scoop" regarding Bush's time in the Guard. The story has already been reported and written by Ivins and DuBose. What there was a need for was a network with the courage to take that story, attach some pictures and broadcast it.

Here Nichols gets all twisted up between advocacy and journalism. By definition, a 5-year-old public story, with no updates, does not warrant major news coverage. Further, it's already been through an election cycle. But Dan Rather, like Nichols, realized that the old story could still do some damage, and wanted to dig it up. The only thing holding CBS back from airing a feature story was a loose journalistic norm that they have "new evidence." Running the same Guard story immediately after Kerry's August swoon would be blatant partisanship, taboo for a major news organization. Nevertheless, it was advocacy on the part of Rather and CBS which led them down this path of destruction.

From this, Nichols concludes the standard should be thrown out the window, and this type of story should run, regardless of its freshness. It is, of course, the wrong conclusion. The correct conclusion is that there should be no story unless there is verifiable new evidence. Advocacy should not push the story forward and force professionals to put aside journalistic integrity for the sake of a cause.

Let's put this in perspective: would it be wrong for Fox News to run a feature investigative news segment about Whitewater two months before Hillary Clinton's first Senate term expires, absent any new evidence? It would be advocacy, not news. And that is not what the networks are for.

Someone should take a memo.