J$P Instant Transcript! Bill Lynch and Cliff Kincaid discuss Dan Rather's legacy on Dayside

From Dayside with Linda Vester, March 9 2005:

LINDA VESTER [FOX NEWS]: So here we are. It's March now. Dan Rather's career has been dramatic to say the least. Some would say impressive, others would say checkered. But as of tonight, a big part of it is over. Tonight is his last time in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News. Bill Lynch spent 23 years as a correspondent at CBS; Cliff Kincaid is the editor of Accuracy in Media. Welcome to you both.

KINCAID: Great to be with you.

VESTER: Bill, I'm going to start with you--

BILL LYNCH: OK.

VESTER: --since you worked so closely with Dan.

LYNCH: Well--

VESTER: And I know you have both positive and negative feelings about him. There is one story, though, that comes to my mind that I heard about, where Dan had you woken up in the middle of the night, about something he thought was happening. You were at the Pentagon at the time, and he wanted you to check it out. What happened?

LYNCH: Well this was 1982. Britain and Argentina were fighting a war over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. And Dan called three, four o'clock in the morning, woke me up at home, and said he'd been told by a high-ranking source that in some way US forces were assisting the British in their campaign against Argentina. This of course would have meant that the US was going to war against Argentina under the Reagan administration, so he said check it out. I spent the better part of a day and a half doing just that, and came up with nothing. There was no there there. And we didn't go with the story, nothing happened. It died.

VESTER: And in terms of how Dan felt toward you?

LYNCH: He never said, but my understanding was he wasn't too pleased that his scoop didn't pan out.

VESTER: Cliff, I know there were times when you contacted CBS and you wanted them to change some of Dan's reporting. Can you talk some more about that?

KINCAID: Well I'll give you another example of a so-called scoop that turned out to be completely phony, back in 1987. Rather went on the CBS Evening News with the Soviet charge that the AIDS virus had been manufactured by the Pentagon. Now there was no evidence for this; it was complete Communist disinformation. Rather never bothered to go to the Pentagon, or the State Department, or the US Government for a comment. He simply put it out on the air. We tried to get them to correct it, to retract it. We sent letters; we went to their annual meetings. They never to this day have retracted that, or corrected or apologized.

VESTER: Hmm. Bill, let me ask you about some other things about Dan Rather. Because we certainly saw him lashed to a pole or a tree or whatever that was in hurricane coverage. And we saw him in Afghanistan. Is he part showman and part journalist, or is there, does one side win out over another?

LYNCH: There's certainly that element to it, and showmanship doesn't necessarily come easily or naturally to Dan. He tries; sometimes it seems forced, some of his down-home Texasisms don't always fly. But I think Dan realized he's in a medium, he's a hot personality in a cool medium, and maybe went too far once in a while. But I've got to say, and I'd like to correct you a little bit, Linda--

VESTER: OK.

LYNCH: --I did not work closely with Dan. I, for about four or five years, was covering the Pentagon and the Washington beat, contributed stories to the Evening News, but we were never close. And for 15 years thereafter I did radio in New York, so it was a more distant relationship.

VESTER: OK, fair enough. Cliff, in terms of other things that have been going wrong at CBS, will there be some sort of sea change after tonight, when Dan is no longer the figurehead in the chair?

KINCAID: We've seen no change so far since the unveiling of the RatherGate panel report. They're supposed to make changes, but we've got some examples up on our web site that Rather has put on the air over the last few weeks that are wrong, that are mistakes, that have not been corrected. CBS is still putting out these old exclusive interviews that Dan Rather had with Saddam Hussein. And it's amazing when you look at those and compare Rather's interviews with this tyrant, this dictator, to how he handled the two President Bushes, we still raise the question, why was Dan Rather so much harder on the Presidents George W and George HW Bush, than the Iraqi dictator? Even in the interviews that CBS is still putting on the air--one last night, apparently, where Rather interviews one of Saddam Hussein's interpreters who says, well, Dan, the dictator thought you were tough, but you were very very polite. And Rather says, basically, well I'll take it. In other words, thanks. But why was he so polite to a dictator, and so hard on our own Presidents, our own country, to the extent that he was part, he was an instrument in the search and destroy incidence against President Bush last year--the memogate scandal--during a time of war, trying to damage our Commander-in-Chief?

LYNCH: Well Cliff, if I could interject here--

VESTER: Yeah, quick final word, Bill.

LYNCH: --part of the journalist's job is to be tough on leaders, whether they're American Presidents or Iraqi tyrants. And Dan did that very well.

KINCAID: Well he didn't do it well regarding Saddam Hussein. And if you're going to go after a President of the United States, you better have the facts, and not some forged documents.

VESTER: All right fellows, we have to leave it there. Well, tonight will be the end of that legacy. Bill Lynch, Cliff Kincaid, thank you very much.