The feisty watchdog site edited by Matthew Sheffield indicated its mission had been complete with Dan Rather's announcement yesterday that he'll be stepping down as CBS News anchor.

Excerpts from Ratherbiased.com's release follows:

The news comes as no surprise as Rather's retirement had long been in the works. While he would have preferred to retire after his 25th anniversary as anchor, the scuttlebutt inside CBS had Rather stepping down soon after the 2004 elections due to a combination of bad ratings, long-time affiliate discontent, and viewer dissatisfaction over CBS's 'Memogate' story.

Frankly, it's a shame that it has to end this way for Dan. In the end, he became the person he most despised, Richard Nixon. Had Rather and the CBS management been more serious about viewer input and fairness, they would never have had to stonewall about a story they shouldn't have run.

As a reporter, Dan Rather had a number of good moments. When politics weren't involved, he could be a good journalist. He also was one of the holdouts against the commercialization and Scott Petersonizing of television news.

The fact that CBS did not announce a successor is a good indication that all the in-house candidates don't appear up to snuff for the Viacom suits. We expect that whoever takes over (be it White House correspondent John Roberts or "60 Minutes Wednesday" reporter Scott Pelley) will be in a very tenuous position.

Our sources indicate that part of the reason that Rather has lasted as long as he has in the anchor chair was because he made sure that no young guns arose to challenge his name recognition.

We hope that CBS will learn from its mistakes and will make a commitment to reporting the news without liberal spin. The first step in doing that would be for the network to become the first commercial television news operation to hire an ombudsman/viewer representative and having the guts to discipline anyone involved in the National Guard story or the subsequent coverup, including news president Andrew Heyward.

Editor's note: