The Dems Get Desperate, Part III: Rathergate

I haven't posted a lot on this recently, but I suppose it's time (hat tip to PoliPundit, who was the first person I saw using the term Rathergate).

The last few nights, Dan Rather and his minions have put forth anemic defenses as the walls have come tumbling down around them. The classic response was from Jonathan Klein of CBS News, who said the following on Fox News on Friday night, "Bloggers have no checks and balances . . . [it's] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas." The arrogance of the statement aside, it's triggered vast hilarity among the bloggers of the world. Not to mention some smugness.

RatherBiased does a good job rounding up the news from the last week, as does Instapundit, Powerline, Patterico, JustOneMinute and KerrySpot (particularly here and here, with responses to Rather's televised defenses so far). The New York Post even pointed out that CBS may have trouble with another recent story, one with even more implications (hat tip: Powerline, again). Tony Blankley and Michelle Malkin do a nice job of crowing for the blogosphere. CBS has even triggered some new products from Microsoft (hat tip: VodkaPundit).

Even the MSM (mainstream media) has come around, with ABC revealing the tale of the experts CBS didn't mention. This follows the excellent article by Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post this week. Now editorials are appearing in liberal hand-wringing outlets like the L.A. Times. Even the forger portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in "Catch Me if You Can" is making fun of the boys at Black Rock: "If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been, 'Catch Me In Two Days.'" Even Rather's colleagues, like Bob Schieffer, want an explanation.

Today, CBS will supposedly have an announcement. I'm hoping it's Dan Rather's resignation. But that's not the endpoint for discussion here. Forget the liberal-conservative thing; this is, in the end, a generational issue.

I was talking with a friend the other day who mentioned that he raised the issue with his parents, who are decidedly to the left of him (and me, which isn't very difficult, since President Bush is to the left of me). Neither of them felt very comfortable with the topic and almost were offended by the fact that they had to have this discussion.

To a lot of people, folks like Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings are trusted friends; they're the guys you invite into your home every evening to tell you what's happening in the world. You grew accustomed to them and believed what they told you -- mostly because no one had ever proven them to be wrong. You trust them because you and your parents also trusted guys like Cronkite, Brinkley, Huntley and Reynolds, and before them your folks trusted Edward R. Murrow, because he was reporting from London during the Blitz during WWII.

None of those names mean a damn thing to my generation.

Maybe that's sad, but it's also refreshing. My generation grew up with cable TV and the advent of 700 channels, with news available every half-hour, with specialty channels to report on sports news, weather news, entertainment news, whatever we wanted. Then along came the Internet, which allowed us to broaden our horizons without relying on the traditional gatekeepers. We no longer view one voice, or two or three at most, as authoritiative. Hell, we view no voice as authoritative, unless it can back it up. The arrogance of the media elite is entertaining, but it's also instructive. Lileks put it best last week:

But I think the number of people who regard the evening news as straight truth delivered by disinterested observers, can be numbered in the high dozens. Blogs haven’t toppled old media. The foundations of Old Media were rotten already. The new media came along at the right time. Put it this way: you’ve see films of old buildings detonated by precision demolitionists. First you see the puffs of smoke – then the building just hangs there for a second, even though every column that held it up has been severed. We’ve been living in that second for years, waiting for the next frame. Well, here it is. Roll tape. Down she goes. And when the dust settles we will be right back where we were 100 years ago, with dozens of fiercely competitive media outlets throwing elbows to earn your pennies.

That's about right, except for the high dozens part. I'm guessing there are still plenty of older folks who view the words of Rather, Jennings and Brokaw as gospel, because they've always been gospel. Rather may still perceive his environment as the same, but it's not. He's a media dinosaur -- his claims and statements will not be accepted as the truth without being examined, and he's not ready for that world. One wonders if his colleagues at ABC and NBC recognized this issue before or do so now; my guess is that many do. I'm guessing the younger reporters in particular know better than to run with a questionable story, with the fact-checking that goes on today outside their house -- Steven Glass may not have lasted one week at the New Republic in today's environment.

Network news still has its audience -- but the fragment of the audience that hangs on its every word and accepts it as truth is growing older and shrinking every day. Rather's defense thus far -- to rely on his credibility and reputation, and the credibility and reputation of CBS News -- probably would have worked in another time and place. But now, it's a competitive marketplace, where the rest of the MSM, while it cringes at what this does to its credibility, has to report the story or get left in the dust by the Pajamahadeen on the Internet. What's funny is that Rather impugned the critics as partisans, while mounting a half-hearted defense against the criticism itself. If it doesn't remind you of the Kerry campaign's response to the Swift Boat Vets, it should. If the story was intended to help Kerry and hurt Bush, we doubt it's done either -- no one's paying attention to either guy, which benefits the leader in the race. And the DNC's attempt to flog the memo story in the face of the contradictory evidence has made Terry McAulliffe into a bigger joke that he already was, but that's neither here nor there.

In the end, the network news will never be the influence it once was. Some folks probably will wax nostalgic about that and see it as a terrible development. From here, it just looks like a bright new day -- one where the quality of Dan Rather's reporting is examined as closely as that of anyone else. And that's the way it is, and should be.