NewsMax.com
Monday, July 16, 2001

Astonishing as it may seem, the CBS anchorman has yet to cover the 11-week-old Levy disappearance case.

"Dan Rather is tongue-tied when it comes to missing intern Chandra Levy – much to the shock and dismay of media mavens everywhere," the New York Post reported Sunday.

Depite heavy coverage from every other network and daily newspaper in the country, the Post reported that Rather "has yet to utter a single word on the air about Levy's disappearance or Rep. Gary Condit's alleged affair with her."

Even the revelation made late last week that Condit had self-administered and passed a lie detector test was not reported by Rather.

"They’re spiking news, there’s no question about it," Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center, told the Post.

Bozell said CBS's act of censorship was "extraordinary."

Rather refused to return a call of comment to the paper.

But other evening news network producers were baffled by Dan Rather's censorship effort.

Paul Slavin, executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight" told the Post his network "always looked at this as a news story."

Tom Brokaw's executive producer, Steve Capus, also told the Post that the Levy story "passes all the tests" for network news coverage.

Insiders at CBS say the censorship decision rests squarely on Rather's shoulders, as other CBS news programs have covered the Levy-Condit story.

Rather's bias on the matter may be motivated more by another controversial case: Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinksy. Rather dismissed the Lewinsky scandal story and championed the Clintons' defense.

Earlier this year, Rather told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that Clinton was an "honest man" despite the affair. As for Clinton's out-and-out lie to the public and press about his affair, Rather excused the lie because, he said, he tried to "understand" why Clinton had lied.

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Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Dan Rather/CBS
Levy-Condit
Media Bias