Dan Rather’s Corporate Enablers

On Wednesday, September 8, CBS broadcast a "60 Minutes" program in which CBS "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather used alleged Texas Air National Guard documents to attack President Bush's service in the Guard.

Since then, numerous experts have persuasively demonstrated that the documents were forgeries. Remarkably, however, even before Rather broadcast his story, two document experts hired by CBS told the network they had problems with them. One, Emily Will, told ABC News: "I told them [CBS] that all the questions I was asking [about the documents] at that time, which was Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran with the story." CBS nonetheless ran with the story and, as late as September 20, Dan Rather was still insisting to the Chicago Tribune: "Do I think they're forged? No."

What do you think of Rather's performance in this fiasco and his continued status as the anchor of CBS's "Evening News"? The corporate sponsors of "60 Minutes" and the "Evening News" ought to be interested in your views. Below are the names and corporate contacts of some of the advertisers who have sponsored these programs between September 8 (when the forged-documents story aired) and September 26. A complete list of "60 Minutes" and "Evening News" advertisers in that time period is available here.