Still not managing to report the news, the whole news, and nothing but the news

– BBC News Online reports on the final appearance of Dan Rather as anchor of CBS Evening News, US news anchor Rather signs off, noting that:

…his retirement has been marred by criticism he received over a recent report questioning President George W Bush’s military service record.

And that’s all they say about the circumstances of Blather’s retirement – conveniently omitting to mention a) Rather’s use of plainly forged documents; b) Rather stubbornly sticking by the story, attempting to prop it up for many days (including the infamous “fake but accurate” claims) in the face of mounting evidence before finally bowing, but never quite fully admitting, to the inevitable truth; c) the context of the scandal during the US Presidential Elections; or d) the direct link between the scandal and Rather’s subsequent tarnished retirement.

BBC1’s lamentable Breakfast show didn’t do much better either, with Dermot Inconsequential describing Rather’s retirement as coming:

…after a report which mistakenly questioned President Bush’s military service.

They then showed a ‘package’ that mentioned that Rather’s retirement comes after a report “which mistakenly used forged documents”, but that in itself is an innaccurate glossing over of the truth, suggesting as it does that the whole Rathergate scandal amounted to a mere mistake (‘whoops, silly me!’) – if that’s all it was then it was a rather prolonged and painfully realised mistake.

For the history buffs among us, my estimable colleague Scott Campbell’s lengthy Faking it USA is “a real-time history of the week blogs changed the world (or, at least, tried to get an old hack the sack)”.