Nothing to see, just move along

The 9/27 Ad Age was the first issue to weigh in on the Rather/forgery scandal. It decided to dismiss the whole matter in a snide little column on page 75:

UNDERSTAND THIS: If the CBS News Bush-National Guard piece was factually inaccurate, there would be screaming from Bush-Cheney '04 on that point out the ying-yanq. It's not. And there isn't. As it stands, we're now-finally!-past marveling about how we're debating electric typewriter functions from 35 years ago. Credit the bloggers for uncovering the screw-up.

We'd whack CBS for not reading the fine print finely enough, but it's so busy fending off the frothing hordes, we will likely not be heard. Now, perhaps, our "friends" at the likes of FreeRepublic.com can get off the off-with-his-head stuff and get back on the important stuff, like cleaning spittle off their computer screens.

Does Rather go? The Buzz is a terrible predictor, and for all we know Rather will have fled to Guam by the time you read this. And we can extrapolate nada in terms of future response from an institution that seems stuck in 1974, judging from CBS's slow, grudgeful trudge of a walk-back, or the now-famous comparison of its' 'layers of checks and balances'' with' 'a guy sitting in his living room in pajamas" courtesy of former CBS exec Jonathan Klein

But forget this docu-drama for a moment and consider, instead, the bigger issue fa the network news-what The Buzz likes to call the France Problem Despite overweening self-regard, no one notices 'em until they infuriate the Western world-or at least the right-wing blogosphere.

It is hard to come up with a better example of ignorant knowingness. The factual accuracy of the story has been disputed from beginning to end-by TANG officers, by Killian's family, and by bloggers and journalists. All CBS had was the word of a Kerry fundraiser and some forged documents.

It is easy to make fun of the debate around fonts and typewriters. But the real story remains the fact that CBS News put its credibility behind a source and some documents that could not withstand twelve hours of public scrutiny.

One would think that advertisers should worry that the tarnish on CBS might rub off on their commercial messages that appear on the network. Given the high cost of brand building, even a small amount of blowback would be enough to make shifting to other networks and other media prudent.

Ad Age is wholly uninterested in that question. It prefers to slap at conservatives who are outraged at a blatant political dirty-trick masquerading as news. This bears out the point made here that the insular media/advertising world will ignore the crumbling foundations of their revenue model and the problem posed by the rise of new media. The ratings drop will be explained away-the lost viewers are not all that attractive, Republican truck-buyers don't care that Ford funds Mary Mapes's liberal adventures, bloggers don't have influence.

They are determined to test the viability of denial as a survival strategy.