With CBS canceling the viewer-allergic Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes, James Joyner couldn't resist a parting shot:
Moonves' claims that the scandal that brought down Dan Rather was "not even slightly" to blame for this is ludicrous. The show and its lead anchor were permanently associated with the forgery and for its embarrassing failure to admit to its shoddy reporting for weeks after it became obvious what had happened. A news program simply can not exist without believability.
Huh. "Ludicrous". Well, speak of the devil. Does James really think that Dan Rather and 60 Minutes have lost all credibility in the eyes of the viewing public? I mean, really think that? I'm sure they've tumbled in the eyes of many a right wing blogger and partisan but, let's be honest, who hasn't? And I know this'll prove my ignorance or bias or something, but when I heard the show was being canceled, I didn't even connect it to Rather. I had no idea that's where the documents were mentioned. Eight months after a scandal I paid some sort of attention to, you couldn't have paid me to tell you where it happened (I actually thought it was on CBS's evening news program).
So I, who had a blog during that whole period and devoted a fair number of posts to the scandal and even got quoted in USA Today for my comments on the story had totally forgotten that the Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes was the site of Napoleon's Powerline's great victory. And if I've forgotten, you can probably bet that the mental monologue of most folks isn't "Well, I'd like to watch an educational and informative program on CBS, but they did that documents thing and now I can't believe and oh hey Lost is on!" So apologies to James whose writing I like, but I'm having a fair bit of trouble with this bit of triumphalism.
But maybe I'm wrong, atypical, out of touch. So I went off and found some numbers. Back in September, when this was all very fresh in people's minds, a majority of Americans thought CBS made "an honest mistake". 62% thought Rather should keep his job. 55% thought CBS reported the news accurately, compared to 51% who thought the media in general did the same. I know "Rathergate" was a very, very, very big deal for bloggers, but it just wasn't that damning of an indictment in the minds of most Americans. And if they didn't hate Rather and CBS when they knew what had happened, you think that now, nine months later, they're flipping over to Lost because CBS didn't and couldn't win back their trust?
Give me a break.
