Update: My Rathergate Connection

It occurred to me today that I haven't been writing about radio hardly at all to this point, I've been so caught up with politics recently.

But with the new release of the CBS/Rathergate report, I thought I would update readers on what happened with my own Rathergate flap in September, as I still hear from people wondering whatever became of it.

At the time I had a strong sense that I was removed from Seattle's KIRO radio, a CBS affiliate and regional newsroom, because I had sharply and harshly criticized Dan Rather on the air. All of the signs pointed to this being the reason, but there was no smoking gun. I was clear about that to the AP, Fox News, and to the dozens of interviewers during that crazy week back in September.

What made it a story was the station management's strange and ever-changing reactions to questions they were asked by reporters about the allegations. It destroyed their credibility and
attracted the media's attention.

The central management contention, after two days of scrambling to figure out how to deal with the controversy, became to say that other hosts on the station had also attacked Rather and they had no problem with it. Then the excuse became that it was all about football scheduling conflicts (that's when I really started getting mail from people who said they looked like liars).

KIRO received at least 1000 email complaints about my firing that I can confirm, there may have been more and I know there were hundreds of phone calls as well.

Later, the smoking gun did emerge and several inside sources let me know: that is, that management had no idea others had attacked Dan Rather and went around their building asking if anyone was aware of other on-air people doing so. They were looking for "evidence" to back up their assertion that they knew all along several people were going after Rather.

They huddled in their offices on a Sunday, because the story broke on a Saturday, and tried to figure out what to do. Meanwhile the phones were ringing off the hook all over the facility. The most clever strategy they came up with was to have "conservative" hosts (worried about being the next to get canned) go after me in public.

It didn't work, for a number of reasons, and I base that on the feedback I got from listeners and conservative activists. Number one, it was about three days into it that they finally got that act together and the story was starting to cool down.

Second, a couple of the people they sent after me weren't even KIRO co-workers, they were from another station. One was primarily a producer. They didn't have first-hand knowledge of the situation, so it was easy to shoot them down.

The supervisor who canned me, Ken Berry, was himself terminated about 10 days later. Was it because of the bad publicity? It isn't clear.

I learned a lot about the media, the lifespan of a news story, how people arrive at conclusions about you and your credibility and the dirty tricks of the liberal media. I thought I knew plenty about all of those things previously but I know now that wasn't the case.