On British TV, Dan feared the price of "asking questions"
By Greg Palast
September 21, 2004
"It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the
tough questions," the aging American journalist told the British
television audience.
In June 2002, Dan Rather looked old, defeated, making a confession he
dare not speak on American TV about the deadly censorship -- and
self-censorship -- which had seized US newsrooms. After September
11, news on the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who
stepped out of line, he said, would be professionally lynched as
un-American.
"It's an obscene comparison," he said, "but there was a time in South
Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if
they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be
necklaced here. You will have a flaming tire of lack of
patriotism put around your neck." No US reporter who values his
neck or career will "bore in on the tough questions."
Dan said all these things to a British audience. However, back in the
USA, he smothered his conscience and told his TV audience: "George Bush
is the President. He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up, just
tell me where."
During the war in Vietnam, Dan's predecessor at CBS, Walter Cronkite,
asked some pretty hard questions about Nixon's handling of the war in
Vietnam. Today, our sons and daughters are dying in Bush
wars. But, unlike Cronkite, Dan could not, would not, question
George Bush, Top Gun Fighter Pilot, Our Maximum Beloved Leader in the
war on terror.
On the British broadcast, without his network minders snooping, you
could see Dan seething and deeply unhappy with himself for playing the
game.
"What is going on," he said, "I'm sorry to say, is a belief that the
public doesn't need to know -- limiting access, limiting information to
cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war. It's
extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted, and I'm
sorry to say that up to and including this moment of this interview,
that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And
the current Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge
in that."
Dan's words had a poignant personal ring for me. He was speaking
on Newsnight, BBC's nightly current affairs program, which broadcasts
my own reports. I do not report for BBC, despite its stature, by
choice. The truth is, if I want to put a hard, investigative
report about the USA on the nightly news, I have to broadcast it in
exile, from London. For Americans my broadcasts are stopped at an
electronic Berlin wall.
Indeed, Dan is in hot water for a report my own investigative team put
in Britain's Guardian papers and on BBC TV years ago. Way back in
1999, I wrote that former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes had put in the
fix for little George Bush to get out of 'Nam and into the Air
Guard.
What is hot news this month in the USA is a five-year-old story to the
rest of the world. And you still wouldn't see it in the USA
except that Dan Rather, with a 60 Minutes producer, finally got fed up
and ready to step out of line. And, as Dan predicted, he stuck
out his neck and got it chopped off.
Is Rather's report accurate? Is George W. Bush a war hero or a
privileged little Shirker-in-Chief? Today I saw a goofy two page spread
in the Washington Post about a typewriter used to write a memo with no
significance to the draft-dodge story. What I haven't read about
in my own country's media is about two crucial documents supporting the
BBC/CBS story. The first is Barnes' signed and sworn affidavit to
a Texas Court, from 1999, in which he testifies to the Air Guard fix --
which Texas Governor George W. Bush, given the opportunity, declined to
challenge.
And there is a second document, from the files of US Justice
Department, again confirming the story of the fix to keep George's
white bottom out of Vietnam. That document, shown last year in
the BBC television documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," correctly
identifies Barnes as the bag man even before his 1999 confession.
At BBC, we also obtained a statement from the man who made the call to
the Air Guard general on behalf of Bush at Barnes' request. Want
to see the document? I've posted it at:
http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg
This is not a story about Dan Rather. The white millionaire
celebrity can defend himself without my help. This is really a
story about fear, the fear that stops other reporters in the US from
following the evidence about this Administration to where it
leads. American news guys and news gals, practicing their smiles,
adjusting their hairspray levels, bleaching their teeth and performing
all the other activities that are at the heart of US TV journalism,
will look to the treatment of Dan Rather and say, "Not me, babe."
No questions will be asked, as Dan predicted, lest they risk necklacing
and their careers as news actors burnt to death.
- 5/16/2002: Dan
Rather says Mainstream US Media Are Frightened and Timid [more ]
"Bush Family Fortunes," the one-hour documentary taken from Greg
Palast's BBC investigative reports, including the story of George Bush
and Texas Air Guard, can be viewed, in part, at
http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm