Rather historical

To paraphrase the Dead Parrot Society, because Ryan puts it so well:
CBS has been arrogant, diversionary, misleading, bullheaded, dismissive, shameless, narcissistic, secretive and unethical. Good Lord, the press is supposed to illuminate that kind of behavior, not illustrate it.
CBS has screwed all of journalists over -- both with the way it ran the story and with the way it's handled the backlash. The network's behavior has confirmed every single nasty thing that everybody believes about the media, and it's not like the media has a nice fat reserve of goodwill to squander right now.
And a commenter adds:

An interesting question: how much of the media reporting of the 20th century was based on fraud and forgery, which couldn't, prior to the development of the internet, be exposed?

History marches on. I tend to agree with those who think this changes the nature of journalism forever. No one I have spoken to in person or on the internet fails to grasp what the main issue of the Dan Rather/faked Guard documents story is.