Students and professors at the elite Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University are relieved that Dan Rather kept his job at CBS News.

From a Daily Northwestern article by Diana Oleszczuk:

“He’s an amazing man, an amazing journalist,” said Medill senior Alexis Wiley, a reporter for Northwestern News Network. “Who would think that (Rather should be fired)? It’s sacrilege.”

Last time I checked journalism, lying and stonewalling was sacrilege. Then again, maybe it’s just me.

The article parrots the investigation’s conclusion that competitive pressure created the nightmare of the Sept. 8 broadcast — it does not address whether liberal bias had anything to do with Memogate.

As a humorous aside, the article’s author wrote that incidents such as Memogate “prompt strict fact-checking procedures” at Northwestern’s media outlets. The procedures don’t seem very strict at her newspaper, or she would not have written that CBS “ask[ed] three executives and the segment’s producer to resign.” Producer Mary Mapes was fired.

UPDATE: Oleszczuk e-mailed me apologizing for the minor error, which was corrected in Tuesday’s (Feb. 1) paper. The above comment, in hindsight, was a little strong — I’ve made some hilariously stupid errors as a journalist.

The biggest howler came from journalism law and ethics professor Craig LaMay:

“A news organization that takes news seriously does what CBS did,” LaMay said. “It gets serious and qualified people to re-report the story and see where the train left the tracks.”

On what planet? CBS failed to “re-report the story” for 12 days, despite a mountain of evidence that the memos were forged. As the investigation concluded, CBS used the same idiots who created the mess in the first place to keep “re-reporting” the story, and they defended it rather than double-check it.

To this day, their hero Rather believes the memos are genuine.

I can only say this: Could you see the staff and students of Medill defending Brit Hume as a victim of “competitive pressures” if Fox News was responsible for Memogate?

It is dismaying to see one of the nation’s best journalism schools concluding that Rather’s glorious past gives him a “get one major lie free” card. I look at our college journalism programs and see a whole new generation of Jayson Blairs and Mary Mapeses incubating.

I have worked with several Medill graduates, and they are some of the best, ethical journalists I have ever met. Comments like these are an insult to them.