The Truth is a Competitive Disadvantage in the Modern Media

The biggest scandal of the blogger era in the media was “Rathergate.”

It featured CBS’s iconic news anchor, Dan Rather, running a story that made it look like George Bush got preferential treatment in the U.S. National Guard.

The problem was that the whole story was based on an “unimpeachable” anonymous source providing documents that bloggers later proved were fraudulent. Later, the source was revealed to be Bill Burkett, a guy with a history of making accusations against George Bush, who lied about where he got the documents and never really gave a good explanation of how he got them.

The fallout of that story was enormous. It destroyed Dan Rather’s career and did significant damage to CBS News’s reputation for years.

This was an enormous story at the time that helped legitimize bloggers and genuinely made people question the mainstream media.

Do you know what a story like this is today?

It’s just another Tuesday.

By that, I mean stories this egregiously wrong are pushed every week as podc…