On Feb. 13, 1996, Bernard Goldberg, a reporter and producer for CBS News, took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Deeply bothered by his employer’s wantonly liberal slant — as personified in a hard news piece mocking presidential candidate Steve Forbes’ tax plan — and unable to air his concerns in a deeply partisan office that had no desire to listen, Mr. Goldberg opted for the avenue of last resort to get his potent message across.

“There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news, and one of them, I’m more convinced than ever, is that our viewers simply don’t trust us,” he scribed on the paper’s editorial page.

Andy Rooney, one of the most respected figures in network news and a longtime icon of CBS, sent Mr. Goldberg a short note upon reading his column, “In the future, if you have any derogatory remarks to make about CBS News or one of your co-workers….I hope you’ll do the same thing again.” Even the ageless face of “60 Minutes” realized the opinion piece to be a short term blow that might just inspire network executives to do some long term good.

But Dan Rather, the face of CBS News, had an entirely different reaction: Mr. Goldberg suddenly disappeared from the air. As documented in the book “Bias,” the whistleblower’s career at CBS was never nearly the same again and, before long, it was over.

Mr. Rather didn’t like being accused of airing liberally slanted pieces on his evening news program, and he apparently saw to it that anyone who would make such an allegation learned their lesson.

But Mr. Rather has never learned his lesson. And so, in a recent piece on “60 Minutes,” the network anchor presented a collage of documents indicating that President Bush had been derelict of duty in the National Guard and that the commander in chief of the military had once himself disobeyed an order. These were serious charges that looked to affect not only the outcome of the election, but the morale of the military under Mr. Bush’s wartime helm.

Yet there is one major problem with these documents, which Mr. Rather failed to mention in his attack piece: they are forgeries.

It didn’t take long for bloggers — hardly journalists with the resources of CBS News — to notice that subscripts seemed historically inaccurate, orders were not compatible with military norms and other aspects just didn’t seem right.

And now The Washington Post has turned up evidence that the documents most likely came to Mr. Rather and company care of Bill Burkett, a well-known Democrat who has compared Mr. Bush to Adolf Hitler. That this didn’t raise more warning flags at CBS News than a NASCAR race in the snow is simply a wonder.

But then again, it is probably unfair to blame this on Mr. Rather because he most likely believed the story. Someone as notoriously partisan as the 72-year-old anchor brings an inherent bias of hope to certain stories. Since he knows George Bush is an evil man, he knows the story must be true. Indeed, it is simply unfathomable in Mr. Rather’s world that such a horrifying allegation could be anything but the pure truth.

And this might help explain why he has thus far refused to retract the story despite everyone from the White House to the notoriously left-leaning Los Angeles Times’ editorial board pleading that he do so. In a certain sense, it is this supremely stubborn refusal to admit wrong that is so badly blackening CBS’ Tiffany eye. The storyline is not a new one, and it traces back to Watergate: the real damage is done in the cover-up.

But for Mr. Rather the damage goes far beyond. In the 1988 election, he revealed his true colors during an outright interrogation of George Bush (the 41st president) that drew national scorn. In 1996, he blacklisted a member of his staff who dared to point out the liberal bias that Mr. Rather refused to hear in private. And now the anchorman is seeking to check his objectivity at the door and become a player in determining the outcome of a landmark election.

These are not the values that Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite exemplified during their tenures at CBS News, and they ought not to be the values of the Tiffany Network. Andrew Heyward, the President of CBS News, ought to now embark upon the only course of action that might save any hint of dignity the network still has: to publicly fire Mr. Rather, retract the National Guard story in its entirety, and find a new face for the CBS Evening News.

And if Mr. Heyward is serious about running a dignified operation, he should make sure that Mr. Rather’s successor doesn’t share the same wantonly liberal bias. Perhaps he could begin the search by interviewing Mr. Goldberg.

Mac VerStandig ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in rhetoric.