I don’t really expect much from USA Today, aka “McPaper”, and its holiday edition coverage of Dan Rather’s retirement did not disappoint my already low expectations.

The article, while heavy on Memogate’s tainting of Rather’s career, did not once reveal USA Today’s role in the fiasco.

The paper acquired the same memos from Burkett and ran a story the following day. But unlike cBS “News”, which at least pretended to research the documents, USA Today relied on cBS’ work to back the authenticity of the memos. The reporters also relied on the fact that the White House did not dispute the documents at the time, as if fact-checking their work is the government’s job.

Now that’s good journalism.

The “newspaper” is just as culpable in this mess, but Rather and Mary Mapes have taken the spotlight off of them.

A column on Rather’s retirement by Walter Shapiro that ran with the article takes a swipe at those who critique media bias:

It is naive to believe that accusations of bias will miraculously disappear once Rather gives his final sign-off March 9. But this is a proper moment to suggest that those who hold hyperbolic and personalized conspiracy theories about the reputed hidden ideological agendas of network TV news fail to appreciate the realties of deadline-driven journalism.

Mapes researched the story for five years. Wow, Mr. Shapiro, that sure sounds like terrible deadline pressure. The only deadline Rather and Mapes were laboring under was a Nov. 2. gift for the DNC. And given the boost that cBS’s chicanery gave to the Bush campaign in the end, maybe Rather should have picked out something for John Kerry from Sharper Image instead.

And to paraphrase the column’s author, this is a proper moment for me to suggest that Mr. Shapiro fails to appreciate the reality of ensuring that a news story is accurate before running with it. You do remember that important little tidbit from j-school, don’t you Wally?

I don’t wonder anymore why serial USA Today fabricator Jack Kelley got away with making it up for so long. (Ironically, one of Kelley’s fictional characters was an Israeli settler named Shapiro.)

As an interesting aside, we in the journalism community watched the Kelley fabrication scandal with a yawn, because we really don’t take USA Today seriously. As one commentor to Nancy Nall’s blog put it:

It’s USA Today, that bastion of journalistic integrity, the “Dick and Jane” of newspapers.

What did [Kelley] do, forge a pie chart?