I don’t think that Andy Rooney is quite the bad cite you guys are making him out to be. He was a part of CBS for several decades and don’t think because he made massive amounts of money as a soft-headed, friendly old man, that his off-air persona matched his on-air one. Having worked for CBS news longer than most of us have been alive, I think it’s fair to say he knew far more about it than most.
That said, we don’t really know exactly what he said. We see a right-wing blog quoting a college newspaper which quotes one line from his speech.
I don’t know anything about the Tufts Daily, but in my experience college newspapers are not the most reliable of sources to begin with and since we can’t even see the original article or speech we don’t know if it was ripped out of context.
Rooney was famous for having an irreverent sense of humor and often when speaking had his tongue firmly tucked in his cheek, and was also famous for making contradictory claims.
What’s also true is that he, like many at 60 Minutes were outraged at the Rather story which they felt, understandably besmirched their program which many of them had spent decades of their lives building it up. He also, unlike most others, publicly spoke out about it and was furious at the fact that he felt several people, most notably Mary Mapes, were made into scapegoats and felt if Mapes was getting fired, then several other people, including Rather should have been(he didn’t explicitly name Rather, but it’s clear that’s what he felt).
Even if he did make such a comment in the context that the blog suggests it’s very possible he was overstating the case due to his resentment at how he felt they’d besmirched himself and the program and news division he’d devoted his life to.
He is. Unless he was involved in the story as opposed to simply spouting off, there’s no reason to take his opinion seriously. He wasn’t a reporter and wasn’t involved with the piece. If Shodan had cited someone who was actually involved in that fiasco and would have been familiar with the work that was done of the motivations of the people who worked on the story, that would be relevant. ‘My cite is the opinion of someone else who worked on the show’ isn’t much of a cite.
What do I need to have? You made an assertion about the reasons CBS News ran a bad story, and your cite is the opinion of a guy who didn’t work on the story.
Well, you’re the one who originally made the claim, so no one else has any responsibility for citing anything. Your cite was weak, as noted. Got anything better?
ABC blew this email story, but I don’t think it’s because they have it in for Obama. They thought they had something exclusive and that it would be a big story, and in the process they didn’t do enough diligence to find out if the emails were accurate. I’m not sure how that happened since you’d think the White House would have turned over the emails if asked, but they didn’t.
Andy Rooney was certainly very “familiar” with “the people” who did work on the story, as well as the standards CBS News engaged in and was presumably knowledgable a out the political leanings of the people involved and was certainly qualified to make informed speculations as their motives(admittedly informed speculations are still speculations).
Now, what I think is being ignored by all is that we really can’t say for sure exactly what Rooney said and what was the context.
Shodan cited an article from a website of a group dedicated “exposing the liberal bias” in the media and it quoted a single line from a college newspaper.
We can’t even say for certain whether Rooney wasn’t joking or being sarcastic.