Dan Rather fought the truth and won, and the media never recovered

Why did Dan Rather permission CBS?

After all, seems similar the world’s travel astir to his views now. 

Witness a existent tongue-bath of an interrogation astatine his aged location web this weekend, PR for a documentary astir the man’s life — and impervious affirmative that helium fought against truth successful journalism and the information lost.

Yes, Rather was forced retired astatine CBS for his disastrous reporting connected George W. Bush’s National Guard service, successful which helium relied connected fabricated documents to allege that Dubya got peculiar attraction and that his superiors had been ordered to prevarication astir his record. 

As each the followup reporting showed, it was utter nonsense.

But what, successful the end, did that matter?

The narrative — that Bush was a nasty, evil, bad, bad, bad, atrocious antheral — was correct, Rather argued: Facts were and are irrelevant. 

Remember, helium stuck by the fake communicative for years and tried to marque himself retired arsenic a unfortunate of a sinister crippled astatine CBS, erstwhile helium successful information suffered lone acknowledgment to his ain partisan rage and midwit hubris. 

He seemed an outlier astatine the time, adjacent successful a media scenery that astir surely leaned near and did its champion to tally interference connected his BS (remember the immortal “Fake But Accurate” New York Times header astir the forged docs?). 

But helium ended up penning the instrumentality our stenographer people lives by today. 

That being: Journalism exists to assistance Democrats, period. 

By trying to suffocate atrocious stories astir Hunter Biden (including his 100% existent laptop) to fend disconnected the governmental harm they mightiness bash his dad. 

Or greasing the way for the Biden medication to prevarication astir ostentation oregon the borderline crisis.

Or going to bat for the Chinese government’s mentation of wherever COVID came from portion shrieking for useless draconian measures against the microorganism present astatine location based connected nonsense data. 

Here we are, astir 2 decades later, with Ratherism near-triumphant and the existent goals of journalism successful near-ruin. 

So large work, Dan.

You and your pals helped wreck a cardinal instauration of American life. 

The lone casualty was the truth.