I'm curious about Rather's role/accountability as Managing Editor of CBS News. Was it a figurehead position or did he have actual editing duties?

Here's how one managing editor is reported to have handled an attempt to bring down a President:

**************
All the President's Men

WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN, nervously watching BRADLEE come. As soon as BRADLEE is within earshot, ROSENFELD starts his sell.

ROSENFELD
Benjy, we got a present for you.
Above the fold on page one for sure.
It may not change our lives one way
or the other. Just a good, solid
piece of American Journalism--
(beat)
--that The New York Times doesn't
have.

BRADLEE by this time has taken the story, grabbed an
unoccupied chair, sat down, started to read. His only response
to ROSENFELD is an intermittent "uh-huh, uh-huh."

CUT TO:

WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN, watching as the silence goes on.
ROSENFELD too. He wants the story too, but he doesn't want
it like WOODWARD and BERNSTEIN do. They were, as they said,
proud of their work. The silence goes on. Finally BRADLEE
looks up.

BRADLEE
You haven't got it.
(before they can reply)
A librarian and a secretary say Hunt
looked at a book.
(shakes his head)
Not good enough.

He begins editing the piece, slashing paragraphs out of it.

WOODWARD
I was told by this guy at the White
House that Hunt was investigating
Teddy Kennedy.

BRADLEE
How senior?

WOODWARD
(edgy)
You asking me to disclose my source?

Other reporters are watching now. BRADLEE is impatient, as
always.

BRADLEE
Just tell me his title.

WOODWARD
I don't know titles.

BRADLEE
Is he on the level of Assistant to
the President or not?

WOODWARD doesn't know. BRADLEE continues to hack at their
piece. Done, he stands, walks away.

BRADLEE
Get some harder information next
time.

WOODWARD and BERNSTEIN watch him go, they are embarrassed,
angry, crushed. HOLD on their faces.

If Rather wasn't the managing editor, who was?

Along this same line, I about LMAO last night watching Chris Matthews. Evidently the only thing he hates more than conservatives is Dan Rather.

At the very least, Moe, Larry and Shemp...err, sorry, wrong stooges.....that is, Rather, Roberts and Heyward have to go...CBS will not regain its credibility with anything less...or is that Groucho, Zeppo and Chico?.....I'm so confused....

- Well capitano....thats the old saying....when its a question of who sits in the big chair and gets all the credit for anything positive that happens you're the "Managing Editor"... When some serious legally liable chit goes down you're suddenly just a "figure head".... rule #23 in the "Good ole boys club" guide to corporate survival......

So Dan Rather is trying the "amiable dunce" routine?

Believe me, there is nothing amiable about Dan.

Have you read Bernie Goldberg's "Arrogance"? He tells a story that is relevant to your suggestion. The story is at page 31 of the hardcover edition. Briefly, a CEO who was the subject of a hostile 20/20 interview recorded the interview himself. Goldberg reports that the CEO, "fearing his comments might be taken out of context and that the interview might be edited to make him look bad" [editor's tongue-in-cheek note: does that ever happen in real life??] "took the unedited transcript and video of the entire interview . . . and put it out on the World Wide Web."

And ABC's reaction? They were not happy. As an ABC Vice-President told the New York Times: "We don't want other people attempting to get into and shift the journalism process." And another former ABC News Vice President, now a professor at the Columbia Journalism School, called the CEO's action "a not-so-subtle form of intimidation."

Got that? Making the whole interview available was "intimidation," in this fellow's view.

In the aftermath of this episode, a president of another major network news organization put out a memo directing that any interviewee would be allowed to record interviews, but would not allowed to rebroadcast the full recordings.

The president couched the issue in terms of the network's copyright. However, his memo also mandated that the interviewee could tape the interview only while the network's tape was rolling. What does that have to do with copyright? One suspects that the real concern was that articulated by the ABC News Vice Presidents: lack of control over what the public hears.

Here's the kicker: guess who the network president was who issued that memo prohibiting the release of full and unedited interviews?

You guessed it: Andrew Heyward.

Journalists resent bloggers for the same reasons that hookers resent nymphomaniacs.

The amateurs are more enthusiastic, often better, and they give it away for free!