Thursday, December 23, 2004

Why the differing standards?

A short note to ask a short question. Why are right-wing "journalists" allowed to misrepresent the facts while other are not?

MSNBC recently hired conservative radio host Monica Crowley. As this piece in Media Matters illustrates, Crowley has a history of lying and plagiarism -- for example, she misrepresented the findings of the 911 commission and relayed a false story that an elementary school had banned the Declaration of Independence because it mentions God. So far as I know, she never acknowledged her errors or offered an apology.

She gets a promotion.

Dan Rather trusted a source prematurely in the great National Guard documents fiasco. Rightists claimed, falsely, that he deliberately used forgeries created with Microsoft Word. In fact, the only expert in questioned documents to study the papers favors their authenticity; genuine or otherwise, those documents most certainly were not created with Word. Still, when the source for the documents changed his story about how he obtained them, Rather quickly put the new information on the air and apologized.

Rather lost his job.

Why the differing standards?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

All old horses have to go to the slaughter house sooner or later, nows the time for the old one past his prime.

Anonymous said...

Dan Rather had a reputation to lose. Monica Crowley does not.

Anonymous said...

Well, of course, Rather lost his OTHER job, maintaining his position at 60 Minutes, where the allegedly erroneous work was done. It was his anchor position he resigned from.

Sofla