Fraters Libertas

Must Not See TV

Hardball on Monday featured a discussion with some former MSM fixtures regarding Rathergate and the credibility of the investigation report declaring no evidence of political bias could be found. Strongest statements were from retired ABC News and 20/20 reporter Tom Jarriel. (Apologies for the stuttering and occasionally incoherent nature of the transcription. But don't blame the typist, that's just the way Chris Matthews talks).

MATTHEWS: ... Let's go now with our correspondents who are joining us right now. I want each person to give your comment about where you think the blame should lie, with Mary Mapes, the executive producer, or higher up the food chain. Tom Jarriel?

TOM JARRIEL, FORMER ABC "20/20" CORRESPONDENT: Higher up the food chain. Believe me, in stories like this, executives know, the executive producers know, everyone is watching what's happening. You can't say it was an overzealous producer because these people are professionals. They're cool under fire. They meet deadlines all the time.

MATTHEWS: Right.

JARRIEL: And there's a lot of responsibility still to go up.

MATTHEWS: What do you think of this "Ted Baxter defense," Pat Buchanan called it tonight on our earlier edition, that Dan Rather was simply, in the British sense, a presenter of the news and couldn't be blamed for this because he was too busy with other stories? Tom?

JARRIEL: I think that's sort of incredible - I'm sorry. I think that's rather incredible. For one thing, Dan Rather has been doing this for most of his adult life that I've seen and known him. He operates well under pressure. And I think it would be almost sophomoric for this panel to sit down and say, Well, you were too busy then, you really couldn't keep up with it.

MATTHEWS: Let me go back and just do a round robin on this because I think if you read the report today, you'll find a rather quick dismissal of the idea of political bias by Dan or by Andrew Heyward or anyone else, including Mary Mapes, the segment producer, or Josh Howard, the executive producer of "60 Minutes" Wednesday. It was a rather cursory judgment by these two men, by Boccardi and by Thornburgg. They simply said - it seemed to me they simply asked Danu and Heyward, Are you prejudiced or not? And they got the negative answer. It sounded like they did no research into comments made in the office, evidence of previous patterns of bias. Nothing like that found its way into the report.

Tom Jarriel, is it possible to get to the heart of motivation here?

JARRIEL: It is entirely possible. And the big question is, why weren't questions like that explained and elaborated more in their final report? How much did they take these guys to the mat? How much did they give them a good old "60 Minutes" grilling ... (Ed note: ouch! that one stings!)

MATTHEWS: Right.

JARRIEL: ... and say, What was the motive? Who was behind this?
What did Mary Mapes say when she wanted to join CBS to make a difference? Was that political? Was it journalistic? That question is one of the ones that is answered very superficially, among a lot.

And let me go back to the matter of these guys investigating the authenticity of these documents. They've had weeks. They've had resources. They've had assistants. They've had so much time and so much material and resources to do this to answer this one key question, and then to come out with a final report and saying, We really don't know if these documents were authentic or not -- that's incredible to me.

Jariel is exactly right, the standards applied to this story were more in line with a Fran Tarkenton That's Incredible! exposé, than Dan Rather and 60 Minutes.

All this talk of the Ted Baxter Defense and That's Incredible led me to the following site, listing the network TV line ups from 1980 and 1981. It's amazing how intimately familiar I am with many shows which were on at the same time on the same night. And this is the era before VCRs or even remote controls (at least in my house). I guess we can credit that to the magic of summer reruns, syndication, and too little parental guidance.

Worst night of this era: 1980, Tuesdays, NBC. Bringing you the Must Not See TV craptroika of Sheriff Lobo, B.J. and the Bear, and the Steve Allen Comedy Hour. One can only speculate how comedic genius in dotage Steve Allen felt about following a monkey on prime time TV. To say nothing of Greg Evgen's houndstooth hat wearing sidekick.