Rooney Being Used?

Is Andy Rooney being used by CBS News higher-ups? When he purposely left out Dan Rather’s name in a list of esteemed TV journalists in his commentary on 60 Minutes Sunday, Nov. 16, was he speaking for himself or his bosses? In a paean to newspapers entitled “Andy’s Homage to Newsprint,” Rooney lists a few TV journalists deserving of praise for their work in TV newsrooms, although what they do, according to Rooney, can’t compare to what print journalists do (no disagreement there). Here’s the relevant paragraph from his commentary:

Television news is on the screen one minute and gone the next. We’re lucky that television journalism has been as good and reliable as it is because of operatives like Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Peter Jennings and countless others [emphasis mine], but it is not the same as print journalism.

Glaringly absent from this esteemed list of TV journalists, of course, is Dan Rather’s name, the former anchor of the CBS Evening News. Rather, you’ll remember, resigned his position as anchor of the program in 2005 after a September, 2004, report on a weeknight 60 Minutes broadcast questioning President Bush’s National Guard Service during the Vietnam War. The report was found to have lacked proper procedure by a panel investigating the incident. After his resignation as anchor, Rather still retained a position as reporter at CBS News but later claimed that CBS failed to live up to its agreement with him by relegating him to a marginal position on 60 Minutes. He later resigned from CBS News and subsequently sued the network.

Rooney, of course, had previously expressed his displeasure of Rather in a USA Today story in January of 2005 and in an MSNBC report in November of 2006. But the timing of his commentary yesterday coincides with a New York Times report Monday (published online on Nov. 16) that suggests that Rather may have a case against his former bosses. The Times states:

Among the materials that money has shaken free for Mr. Rather are internal CBS memorandums turned over to his lawyers, showing that network executives used Republican operatives to vet the names of potential members of a panel that had been billed as independent and charged with investigating the “60 Minutes” segment.

These network executives finally decided on a two-member panel to investigate how the story got on the air: Dick Thornburgh, a former Republican U.S. Attorney General under both Reagan and Bush senior, and Louis D. Boccardi, the former head of the Associated Press. But subpoenaed notes from a vice president of CBS News, Linda Mason, seemed to disqualify the former Republican senator from New Hampshire, Warren Rudman, because he wouldn’t “mollify the right.” Thornburgh may have been approved after further “testing” by CBS as shown in Mason’s notes, which stated, “T comes back with high marks from G.O.P.”

Another memorandum turned over to Rather’s lawyers showed that CBS News executives had given preliminary consideration to conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, and Roger Ailes as potential members of the panel. Those people weren’t chosen, but the fact that they even made it to a preliminary list shows that CBS News thought it necessary to seek approval from the G.O.P. for at least one member of the panel.

Rather may have engaged in some sloppy journalism, although that has yet to be definitively established; but Rooney especially, it seems, has gone to extra lengths to show his displeasure. Is he aware of how his complaints about Rather and others at CBS News dovetail nicely with Republican complaints about the so-called liberal bias in the media? Did CBS News err in its reporting of President Bush’s military record, or did it cave to White House pressure and fire solid journalists and force the resignation of another long-serving newsman? Is Andy Rooney speaking for himself or doing his bosses’ bidding? Has Andy Rooney been used?