Who killed Dan Rather?

Bloggers are claiming their first scalp. But the old media isn't dead yet -- and the new media can never replace it.

By Joan Walsh

Read more: George W. Bush, Joan Walsh, New Media, Opinion, 60 Minutes

March 9, 2005 | It's reflexive, irresistible: When Dan Rather says goodbye Wednesday night, some trend watchers will tell us it marks the end of one form of media -- big media, corporate media, old media and, according to some, liberal media -- and the emergence of a new one, ruled by a populist, disintermediated chorus of citizen journalists who live in something that's been badly labeled "the blogosphere."

We all know the narrative: Within hours of Rather's Sept. 8 "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment, on allegations that President Bush got special treatment in the Texas Air National Guard, bloggers began unraveling the story, pointing particularly to problems in key source documents that seemed to indicate they were forgeries. (Problems that came to light, ironically, when CBS posted the documents on the Internet, where they could be instantly scrutinized by millions.)

It's an Internet success story and we want to believe it. We love Internet success stories because we are one! (That's the cardinal rule of the blogosphere -- transparency cures all ills! Let your biases hang out!) But it's not the whole truth.

Dan Rather is retiring because he's 73. It comes as a shock because CBS did a terrible job of succession planning. He's retiring a year earlier than he wanted to, but probably five years later than he should have. In Ken Auletta's dishy New Yorker piece last week, Walter Cronkite takes a few shots at him, and even supposed admirers like Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney admit they don't even watch him.

I don't either. I don't watch any of the nightly news shows anymore. Like a lot of people, I'm still at work when they come on, and they don't really merit TiVo. When I have my choice it's Peter Jennings. He's soothing. Rather has always kind of alarmed me. I'm not alone. The CBS anchor's ratings have been shrinking -- he's long been No. 3 -- and the networks' news shows along with them. In Auletta's profile, we learn what we mostly already knew, but the numbers are still shocking: The average age of the big three's viewership is 60. Only 8 or 9 percent of the crucial 18-34 demographic watches network news. This is media death.

So let's be clear: Rathergate may have hastened Rather's departure, but it didn't cause it. Which is not to say it wasn't a scandal. The story of how CBS ran with the Sept. 8 Bush report is an awful chapter in journalism and reveals terrible flaws in the news organization. I want to hand CBS's investigative-panel report on the mess to every new hire at Salon; it should be taught at every journalism school.

But it's possible to lament the handling of the National Guard story loudly without concluding that it either proves the mainstream media (MSM) is hopelessly corrupt and necessarily dead, and/or that the blogosphere is what tells us both things are true.

The CBS Guard story was a train wreck. Every journalist who reads the 224-page independent-panel report on it will cringe and shudder. Any reporter, editor or producer who has ever looked at the clock when making a decision about whether a story is ready for publication or broadcast will vow to hide all the clocks and watches in the future.

For those who didn't follow the mess, CBS relied on a central source, former Texas Air National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, for documents that allegedly showed a former Bush Guard superior complaining that higher-ups had forced him to "sugarcoat" the Houston scion's mysterious failure to take a physical and continue flight training. There had been whispers and rumors about such favoritism for years -- the producer, Mary Mapes, had even started reporting out the bare bones of the story in 1999, when Gov. Bush was getting ready to run for president.

This time, Mapes thought, she had the goods. It should be noted that Mapes takes issue with the CBS panel findings, and there may well be more to the mess than is captured there, but what's there is damning. Although the broad outlines of the story may turn out to be true -- there's plenty of evidence Bush got unusual treatment after he disappeared from the Guard -- the CBS report didn't prove it. The report breaks down four key problems in the network's pursuit of the truth.