Dan Rather is synonymous with “fake news.”
He is best remembered for alleging during the 2004 United States presidential election that then-President George W. Bush had gone “AWOL” for much of his tenure in the National Guard. Rather’s bogus charge, for which he lost his job at CBS News, was based entirely on forged documents that looked absolutely nothing like the authentic documents from the era.
Despite this Hall of Fame moment in media malpractice, CNN keeps hosting Rather on its ironically named media program Reliable Sources. Again and again, the disgraced newsman is asked to dish out wisdom on the truth, fact versus fiction, accuracy in journalism, and basically anything that is the opposite of Dan Rather.
“Dan, you tweeted something that might be related to this,” host Brian Stelter said this weekend. “You said the other day, ‘I have covered many cults. Some end with a bang, others with a whimper, but they invariably end. The question is how much damage they leave in their wake.’ Is Mitch McConnell part of the Trump cult?”
A probing question indeed.
“Yes,” Rather responded gravely. “I think the short answer is yes. And I’m not the only one making this observation that increasingly President Trump’s support seems cultish.”
He added, “These cults, cults generally don’t end well. There will be people who say, ‘Well, it’s too much to say it’s a cult.’ But I don’t think so because the further we go, it is always all about him. It’s not about a policy.”
So, why is Dan Rather appearing on a show called Reliable Sources?
I am not even sure how you could parody this; it does all the work itself.
Consider the name of the cable news program and then consider it keeps hosting a guest who is best known for trying to influence a U.S. presidential election by spreading honest-to-God fake news. We are not talking about bad Facebook posts. We are not talking about memes on Twitter. Dan Rather tried to torpedo Bush’s reelection efforts with a smear based on obviously forged documents.
And Rather regrets nothing!
“One supporting pillar of the story, albeit an important one, one supporting pillar was brought into question. To this day no one has proven whether it was what it purported to be or not,” Rather said in an interview in 2005.
He added, “I stuck by the story because I believed in it.” Pressed to clarify his position on the disputed report, Rather said, “The story is accurate.”
But Rather’s “AWOL” report revolved around documents that independent analysts have since deemed to be forgeries. But other than that, the story was solid.
Incredibly, Rather now appears to be enjoying something of a renaissance. He is treated as a wizened media elder, his pithy anti-Trump quips retweeted by thousands of eager fans, his earlier media misdeeds apparently totally forgotten.
How could so many people blindly follow someone so thoroughly discredited?
Is this a cult? I hear that cults never end well.
