One part of the transcript that may interest folks here:
MARVIN KALB: People react to journalists in a different way. I mean, for example, let me jump ahead weeks are discussing differences between, in a way, old media and new media, and we're very much old media.
DAN RATHER: You are Marvin, of course. I am not out there on the cutting edge of new media as you well know.
KALB: Every now and then it even looks as if the new media is at war with the old media. I want to go back to the National Guard story of last year. It was the blogger, the internet blogger who instantly went after you and CBS with an effect that was very damaging all the way around. And played an impact, indeed, on the presidential campaign.
I have always been astonished that even before the program ended, it was still on. A blog site called FreeRepublic.com run by an active air force officer blasted the program. Four hours later, another website called Buckhead ran a detailed critique of the document that you used in the report.
Now, I have always wondered to myself. That's an amazingly swift bit of research. You watch something on air, four hours later, you are prepared to run pages and pages of detailed criticism of the document. How does somebody do that that quickly?
Now, the Los Angeles Times identified Buckhead as a Republican lawyer in Atlanta named harry McDougal. I don't know if that's true. What happened then was dozens of other bloggers joined in. Then the mainstream media joined in, and then everything shifted, and the focus was on you, the focus was not on the substance of your story. The national guard aspect of the whole thing sort of dropped to the side and this media focus was on you. [...]
DAN RATHER: One of the things I learned about the bloggers... is not to overgeneralize about bloggers in going down the list of things that happened to us. And, yes, there are some strange, and to me, still mysterious things, certainly unexplained things that happened about how it got attacked and why, even before the program was over. But I try not to bog down on it. What I learned is there are bloggers who have as much integrity as I or the most integrity-filled people I know have, and who feel that it's their mission in life to ask questions and keep on asking questions.
There are other bloggers, and I'll go ahead and say it, that some of the quote, "mainstream press" seemed to take, if not delight in our dilemma, uh, they picked up pretty quickly on those bloggers who were partisan politically affiliated and/or had ideological axe to grind with us.
And instead of saying, well they've raised these questions, for example, about the documents, are these questions true? Next thing I know, they were in mainstream newspapers, and away it went.
BUAHAHAHAH! Could they have screwed up this anymore? Clearly the Old Media can't even get BASIC FACTS from the New Media. I mean, this is Reporting 101. Or 099.
But there is no excuse for Marvin Kalb to get HIS facts wrong. Reports of falsified documents did not begin "while the show was on." That confusion came from a failure of early reporters to pay attention to the difference between Pacific Time and Eastern Time.
Of course, there was no website known as Buckhead. And by the end of day two, enough experts on printed, typed and computer-generated documents had cropped up (of ALL political persuasions), that it was clear that the Rather documents were a) a fraud and b) CBS had amply reason to know that BEFORE the broadcast, if Rather and his team had been competent and honest journalists.
Kalb might as well interview Billyjeff Clinton for a denial that he did the nasty with Monica Lewinski. That cat is out of the bag. That dog won't hunt. And the same goes for Rather's so-called Texas Air National Guard story.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column: "The 'Hard Bigotry' of Incompetence at the NY Times"
The next question should have been, "tell me, Dan, what is a false question"?
The clueless and the deranged, on public exhibition. A freak show.
FR is a "blog"?
Jim is an active Air Force officer?
Buckhead is a website?
And on and on and on. They just can't stand it, that they can't still lie and lie and LIE and get away with it and we won't allow them to manipulate an election with tromped up, phony, FRAUDULENT garbage. LOL
I'll have you know, this is a journalist talking. They always check their facts, so don't ever question or correct them.
Marvin Kalb is right about one thing. He really is Old Media.
Its called doing their job for them. They don't do the simplest research on a story before they run with it and the results of their laziness and political agenda gets into the living rooms of people all over the world.
Words fail me.
Wow. Four glaring factual errors in three sentences.