It’s well past noon EST, and still bupkis from CBS. My guess is that either Dan Rather is perparing his farewell speech or there’s a major argument going on inside CBS at the moment. Quite frankly, when even The LA Times is saying that CBS is full of it you have to start facing the writing on the wall.
My guess is that if they were going to offer a defense, they would have done it by now. I’m interpreting the delay as a sign that something big will be said, and my guess is that big thing is that Rather is going to get canned… but then again, only CBS can tell us for sure at this point.
UPDATE: 1:25PM EST: On the other hand, the rumors say this won’t be a retraction… then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if the delay is related to a shareholder revolt that’s forcing CBS to confront this thing head-on. I would love to be a fly on the wall at the CBS offices, because whatever is causing the holdup, one has to imagine it’s big…
UPDATE: 2:44PM EST: CBS is expected to make their statement at 3:30PM EST, or in about 45 minutes from now.
UPDATE: Michele Catalano is expecting a whitewash. Based on recent history, that’s true. The problem is that the rest of the media still smells blood and would love to reduce the competititon for the few eyes that still watch network news, and we bloggers won’t let this go. I’m interpreting the delay as being a sign that CBS is figuring out the best way of ditching Dan without getting too much blood on the carpet – then again, I’m an optimist.
UPDATE: 3:39PM EST: Obviously CBS didn’t get the message out yet, it’s now been delayed again to 5:00PM EST. My guess is that if they’re pushing things back this far, it means that there’s something serious going on at West 57th…
UPDATE: 4:47PM EST: I wonder if this has something to do with the delay in CBS’ statement…
UPDATE: Here’s their statement:
We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating [sic] evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that’s what we are doing.
Unbelievably lame and way too little far too late…
True, but if the head honchos step in and give Rather the boot, it won’t matter.
If the nutballs running the news division have their way, they’ll stick to the story and take CBS down with him. I have a hunch that the delay is due to the fact that other, wiser heads are getting involved before that happens.