The Dan Rather scandal, also called “Memogate” is a scandal surrounding the 60 Minutes story aired on CBS September, 8th, 2004 just a few weeks before the presidential election. The scandal surrounded George W. Bush's time while in the National Guard service. In the scandals there were memos that provided information about claims that were supposedly created in 1973. They were found in the files of Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, who died in 1984 (2004, para.1). Experts and bloggers investigated documents which were made available to the public on the CBS website, and found them to be poor forgeries created on a modern era word. Four CBS employees lost their jobs over the report. Dan Rather defended the report, claiming the memos might be "fake, but accurate" and later went into early retirement.
The scandal started when Mary Mapes told her superiors that the information was authenticated by four experts she had consulted, but neither of them could tell that it was fake or not because they were copies. Major Bobby Hodges also confirmed that the continents in the documents were true but he later told the panel he never did. Bobby Hodges then told Dan Rather’s that the documents were ok and that then gave Rather’s the green flag to proceed with the live televised show even though they were not sure of the validity of the documents.
Their findings were contained in a 224-page report made. While the panel said it was not prepared to brand the Killian documents as an outright forgery, it raised serious questions about their authenticity and the way CBS New handled them. The panel identified five essential claims made about Bush's Guard service.
1. President Bush received special treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard
2. President Bush received special treatment to transfer to Alabama
3. President Bush skipped a required physical which violated a direct order.
4. President Bush failed to report to his new duty station.
5. President Bush didn’t complete his service obligation.
Once copies of the documents were made available on the internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed other modern typographic conventions unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Chicago Sun-Times.
All that were to verify the accuracy were immediately fired. They were Mary Mapes, the story’s producer; Josh Howard, executive producer of “60 Minutes Wednesday”; Howard’s top deputy, Mary Murphy; and CBS News Senior Vice President Betsy West (MSNBC, 2005).
On September 19, 2007, Rather’s filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom. The Dan Rather lawsuit centered on claims that there was a breach of fiduciary duty on the part of his employer CBS when CBS failed to provide the anchor enough air time. He held a job as a news anchor for 24 years. This was shortly after a CBS scandal in which Mr. Rather played a large part. Dan Rather sued CBS claiming that they breached their contract with him by limiting his airtime as a news anchor before his contract ran out. The Appellate Division of New York ruled that so long as CBS paid Mr. Rather, they were entitled to "warehouse" him and keep him off the air. It dismissed Mr. Rather's claims of fiduciary duty because his relationship with CBS was an ordinary employee/employer relationship (Hilden, 2009).
News broadcasters have a basic job, that of supplying their viewers with the facts. With this occupation news anchors and reporters can remain seen as human beings, humans with feelings and opinions. However, their job is not to reveal these to the public. Viewers should be able to feel confident that a program will be sharing factual information on subjects and then they will be able to form their own opinions and judgments. Unfortunately with many of today’s newsmakers this ideal cannot always be made possible.