This should scare us all

Dan Rather keynoted the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) recent national conference. He received frequent applause, including two standing ovations. Accounts are here and here.

The IRE audience knew their fellow investigative reporter and editor used fake documents to attack the President's National Guard service.

It knew that Rather and the CBS network had assured the public that the then still anonymous source of the fake documents, Bill Burkett, was "an unimpeachable source" even though Rather and CBS knew Burkett was a Bush-hater who was actively campaigning against the President.

Rather and CBS did many other things to prop up an obviously false story. The IRE audience knew that, too.

Still they applauded. Not polite applause. Standing ovations.

For the IRE to enthusiastically applaud Rather is far worse than, say, an American College of Surgeons convention audience enthusiastically applauding a surgeon it knew repeatedly operated while drunk.

A drunken surgeon does a terrible wrong; so do surgeons who applaud such a colleague. But nothing like that has ever happened at an American College of Surgeons conference. If it did, it would be headlines and a national scandal. And rightly so.

But what Rather and CBS did and the IRE's applause is far worse than a surgeon operating drunk and fellow surgeons applauding him.

You can't have democracy unless citizens are given the truth. Rather and CBS didn't do that. First, they misled us. Then they lied to us. Yet the Investigative Reporters and Editors convention audience applauded.

That should scare us all.