What Did You Say This Is Called -- Fisking?

From Drudge this morning:

Auletta: The End of an Era at CBS
Sun Feb 27 2005 10:21:45 ET

For the first time since CBS released an outside panel's report on the controversy surrounding its broadcasts on President Bush's National Guard service, Dan Rather speaks publicly about the report's conclusions in Ken Auletta's "Sign-Off," in the March 7, 2005, issue of The New Yorker.

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"To people who have been so loyal and true, I'm not going to give up on them," Rather says, referring to Mary Mapes, who was fired immediately after the release of the critical report, and three others (Who were sacrificed in unfulfilled hopes of calming things down at CBS), who were asked (But have refused) to resign by CBS's co-chairman, Leslie Moonves.

"I appeared beforethe panel two times for a total of eleven hours. Both times, I told the panel that if I had to move this afternoon on a big story, one that had the potential of being controversial, I'd be very happy to go on that story with the same people, each and every one."(I'm still as stupid as ever) Auletta also reports that Rather was puzzled that the fact that the panel declared that it couldnot prove that political bias motivated CBS's journalists or that the documents were fake did not make headlines (looks like the presumption of innocence was trumped by the presumption of the obvious here).

Rather, who hoped to leave the anchor's chair in 2006, will instead leave next week (It's the Ratings stupid). He tells Auletta that when he took over as anchor from Walter Cronkite, in 1981, he worried that by just staying in the studio he "would come across as something phony,"(No,he's just seriously biased both indoors and out) but that now "the one thing I hope, and I believe, is that even my enemies think that I am authentic (yeah,authentically goofy). In my heart, my marrow, I am a reporter. And one who doesn't play it safe (or objective)."

One producer who has worked with Rather for thirty years says, "A lot of people know Dan, and nobody knows him (Nobody can figure him out)." Peter Jennings says, "If I got in trouble anywhere in the world, and I had twenty-five cents, I would call Barbara"-Barbara Walters. "Then I'd call Dan." (That'd be FIFTY cents, Peter)