Actually, it was probably the only good moment — since King insisted on spending 45 minutes rehashing Memogate and asking Dan whether his secretary had to pack his belongings in boxes or not.

King — another supposedly biased liberal journalist — certainly didn’t handle his interview with the Bushes that way.

Here’s the Rather excerpt that made the hour worthwhile:

It’s important for the American people to understand that a journalist or journalistic enterprise that’s willing to be truly independent and fiercely independent when called upon and dedicated to pulling no punches and playing no favorites, have become in recent years a bit of an endangered species.

And it’s not for their sake. It’s not for journalists’ sake but for the sake of the country, you want journalists knocking on doors and saying, “What’s going on in there?”

Now, journalism is a human endeavor. And nobody can do it perfectly. Certainly I didn’t do it perfectly. A lot of people think I did it lousy. Maybe I did. And I’ve got my scars and I’ve got my wounds. And yes, people always want to put a sign around you and call you something bad if you refuse to report the news the way they want it reported.

I had my difficulties with Lyndon Johnson, with — certainly with Richard Nixon, with President Carter. It’s in the nature. If you’re an independent-minded journalist, then people who have a highly politically partisan and/or ideological point of view, what they come at you with in saying, “Listen, if you don’t report the news the way we want you to report it, we’re going to make you pay a price and we’ll damage you badly and if we can destroy you we’ll destroy you.”

Now, this is important for the public to understand. And forgive the personal reference if you must. But CBS News has a history. Edward R. Murrow took on Senator McCarthy and what he stood for. He took on with “Harvest of Shame” in a great documentary about the poor.

Then CBS News led with civil rights, led in coverage of the Vietnam War, led in coverage of the only president in history who resigned as an unindicted co-conspirator in a widespread criminal conspiracy.

Now, when you’re a reporter taking — involved in those kinds of stories on a regular basis, there are people and there are powerful people who say, we’ve got to get rid of this guy or we have to have this guy — we’re going to damage him up. And that’s when they start hanging the signs around you.

True dat.