September 8, 2024

IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Rathergate at 20.

When the film Truth premiered in 2015, only a little over ten years after the events depicted, film critics seemed to take the movie as a historical account. Based on Mary Mapes’s memoir Truth and Duty, the film was something else again. It prompted John and me to revisit the story in the Weekly Standard article “Rather shameful.” On Power Line I itemized “problems” with the film in “Lies of Truth.”

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the CBS News broadcast that we helped expose as a fraud in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election. I find that even those who vaguely recall the scandal know next to nothing about it. I like to say that we contributed to Dan Rather’s early retirement from CBS News. We foolishly thought that a corner had been turned.

However, Dan Rather lives! He is celebrated as a lion of truth, justice, and the American way. Earlier this year Netflix broadcast a documentary that is illustrative of the continuing descent in which we find ourselves. This is what I wrote about it on Power Line.

When Rathergate broke, even the then-Washington Post-owned Slate in September of 2004 described him as Dan Rather: The anchor as madman. And as Glenn wrote at the time, Rather’s implosion was a reminder not to trust what was being presented by old media (or by an media, for that matter):

The world of Big Media used to be a high-trust environment. You read something in the paper, or heard something from Dan Rather, and you figured it was probably true. You didn’t ask to hear all the background, because it wouldn’t fit in a newspaper story, much less in the highly truncated TV-news format anyway, and because you assumed that they had done the necessary legwork. (Had they? I’m not sure. It’s not clear whether standards have fallen since, or whether the curtain has simply been pulled open on the Mighty Oz. But they had names, and familiar faces, so you usually believed them even when you had your doubts.)

The Internet, on the other hand, is a low-trust environment. Ironically, that probably makes it more trustworthy.

That’s because, while arguments from authority are hard on the Internet, substantiating arguments is easy, thanks to the miracle of hyperlinks. And, where things aren’t linkable, you can post actual images. You can spell out your thinking, and you can back it up with lots of facts, which people then (thanks to Google, et al.) find it easy to check. And the links mean that you can do that without cluttering up your narrative too much, usually, something that’s impossible on TV and nearly so in a newspaper.

(This is actually a lot like the world lawyers live in — nobody trusts us enough to take our word for, well, much of anything, so we back things up with lots of footnotes, citations, and exhibits. Legal citation systems are even like a primitive form of hypertext, really, one that’s been around for six or eight hundred years. But I digress — except that this perhaps explains why so many lawyers take naturally to blogging).

You can also refine your arguments, updating — and even abandoning them — in realtime as new facts or arguments appear. It’s part of the deal.

This also means admitting when you’re wrong. And that’s another difference. When you’re a blogger, you present ideas and arguments, and see how they do. You have a reputation, and it matters, but the reputation is for playing it straight with the facts you present, not necessarily the conclusions you reach. And a big part of the reputation’s component involves being willing to admit you’re wrong when you present wrong facts, and to make a quick and prominent correction.

When you’re a news anchor, you’re not just putting your arguments on the line — you’re putting yourself on the line. Dan Rather has a problem with that. For journalists of his generation, admitting an error means admitting that you’ve violated people’s trust. For bloggers, admitting an error means you’ve missed something, and now you’re going to set it right.

What people in the legacy media need to ask themselves is, which approach is more likely to retain credibility over time? I think I know the answer. I think Dan Rather does, too.

Presumably, now that CNN has resurrected the television career of Brian Stelter, one of his favorite guests will return as well. Will Stelter’s new show still be called “Reliable Sources?”

Related: What Dan Rather paved the way for: VDH on A decade of untruth: Adding up the media’s lies about Trump and Biden.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

ROBERT SPENCER: Tucker’s Historian Wasn’t There to Talk History — He Was Making Policy Points for Today.

[Darryl] Cooper’s point is that the Israelis are like the Germans, launching a war without a plan and ending up committing genocide. This analogy outrageously ignores the fact that Hamas started the war with Israel by invading the country and murdering 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Did the Soviet Union invade Germany before the German tanks rolled into Russia on June 22, 1941? No. In fact, Stalin was scrupulously keeping to the terms of his pact with Hitler, and studiously ignoring the many signs that the Germans were about to break that agreement.

Also, the Israelis are not committing genocide, either by accident or design. It is false that they had “no plan to care for the millions and millions of civilians and prisoners of war.” West Point Professor John Spencer says that Israel has, in fact, “created a new standard for urban warfare” In a March 25 article in Newsweek, Spencer stated that as of that date, “some 18,000 civilians have died in Gaza, a ratio of roughly 1 combatant to 1.5 civilians. Given Hamas’ likely inflation of the death count, the real figure could be closer to 1 to 1. Either way, the number would be historically low for modern urban warfare.”

Cooper ignores all that, as demonizing Israel is the entire point of his discussion with Tucker Carlson. Cooper wants us to think that Hitler was pushed reluctantly into war and ended up killing Jews out of grim necessity and even worse, a desire to be humane. Then he wants us to see Israel as the new Hitler, committing genocide not out of malice but out of an abject failure of planning, but either way, the point is clear: the U.S. should abandon Israel and stop aiding its allegedly imperialist and genocidal enterprise. By making Hitler seem more reasonable, Cooper attempts to make betraying an ally seem more reasonable as well. And Tucker Carlson, to his everlasting discredit, earnestly played along.

Tucker morphed into Pat Buchanan so slowly, I hardly even noticed.

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll

LULA IS A CRIMINAL AND A DICTATOR: Brazilians Take to Streets to Protest Ban on Elon Musk’s X.

Tens of thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro took to the streets of Brazil’s biggest city Saturday on the country’s Independence Day to rally against the government and protest the Supreme Court’s ban of Elon Musk’s social-media platform X.

Scores of conservative politicians joined the demonstrations, many accusing the court of trying to censor the right-leaning opposition ahead of municipal elections on Oct. 6, when voters will pick mayors and local representatives in thousands of cities and towns.

The protest served as something of an indicator on whether Bolsonaro, whose term ended 20 months ago, still has the ability to draw support as the opposition prepares for the coming vote and future elections.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes banned X on Aug. 30 after a monthslong battle with Musk over the tech mogul’s refusal to take down accounts by conservatives that the judge accused of spreading hate speech and misinformation online.

As always, “spreading hate speech and disinformation” basically means “telling the truth about the regime.”

Posted at 9:55 am by Glenn Reynolds

WHAT DOES JOE BIDEN THINK ABOUT DICK CHENEY ENDORSING KAMALA? Let’s ask him!

Also, let’s ask him about the massive amount of plastic surgery he’s had done since this debate in 2008. And why isn’t he stuttering in this clip?

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll

JEFFREY CARTER: Sovereign Wealth Funds: A Dumb Idea. “Trump and the Democrats have come up with the idea that America should have a sovereign wealth fund. Plenty of other countries have them. However, just because plenty of other countries have them doesn’t mean America should have one. It’s a dumb idea.”

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

September 7, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Have a nice Saturday night.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE:

What could possibly go wrong?

Flashbacks:

● Ellison Posts Photo of Himself Posing With ‘Antifa’ Handbook, Says It Will ‘Strike Fear’ in Trump.

● Democratic Deputy Chair Keith Ellison Meets With Far-Left U.K. Leader Accused Of Anti-Semitism.

● Minnesota AG Keith Ellison’s Chief of Staff Promotes Pro-Hamas Rally.

● The Compleat Keith Ellison.

● Star Tribune sues to unseal U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison’s divorce records: DFL candidate for attorney general was accused of abuse by an ex-girlfriend.

Posted at 2:30 pm by Ed Driscoll