Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Redress of Grievances: There's a small protest going on out in front of the CBS Washington headquarters. I only saw about a dozen or so people, but a colleague reported that there were more than 30 at one point. In DC, you can't walk across the National Mall without running into at least 30 protesters on any given day. But on M Street, it's not too common, and a few cops were even present.

The protesters held up signs with Dan Rather's mug and the slogan, "Unfit to Report", which is clever, and another with Osama Bin Laden's face and the words, "The American Press is My Best Friend", which is slapworthy.

But the protest is notable because all of them were dressed in pajamas. I wish I had a digital camera now.

The situation wouldn't have gotten this ridiculous if CBS hadn't been stonewalling so defiantly. I'm glad Dan Rather finally apologized, but it almost feels like too little too late. I wish I could say that I'm going to stop watching CBS News now, but I never watched it to begin with (or much of any broadcast news, for that matter, I'm a newspaper dinosaur).

We still need to find out more about who created these memos and why CBS so willingly fell for them. Bill Burkett seems to be CBS's source, but that still doesn't explain who forged them to begin with and why. And that doesn't begin to explain why CBS was so eager to trust a partisan hack after spending five years digging into an issue like this that has no important news value whatsoever.