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What if it is fake on purpose? Sort of...

If I was a PA on 60 Minutes charged with creating the digital graphics for this story the following might happen:

After scanning the original documents I find they are illegible digitally. So I retype verbatim screen shot, bring it into PhotoShop, paste, apply a dimestore old XEROX filter, then photoshop out the signature and place it. Deadline met, the stylized graphic for production has been created. In general the networks do not require the actual document be shown, they have often in the past insisted it is ok to display the actual text in whatever format meets their production needs. So long as the content is not changed.

It needs to be confirmed that those images on the web, and in the show are images of the actual documents before this story goes on.

I am just saying we should start with the question are these the real documents? Cause these images are not consistent with the period.

-- l8s
-- jrawk

I think someone who has extensive experience with the current versions of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Photoshop should do an analysis of the documents CBS has. If they find out that the documents were faked there will be h*ll to pay at CBS, Boston Globe and the New York Times. Not to mention the fact that several Democratic National Committee staffers could get the boot.

By the way, IBM's proportional-font typewriters were very rare and VERY expensive back in the 1972-1973 time period. I highly doubt the Texas Air National Guard would have access to such expensive machines back then.

sorry, that's a bogus rationalization.

First, have you ever worked with a scanner? It doesn't make things less legible.

Second, they'd retype the documents, and then create all the artifacts to make it look like an old document?

Third, instead of putting up the original document online, they put up their re-created document, and pass it off as original?

Sorry, this theory is ridiculous.

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What if it is fake on purpose? Sort of...

If I was a PA on 60 Minutes charged with creating the digital graphics for this story the following might happen:

After scanning the original documents I find they are illegible digitally. So I retype verbatim screen shot, bring it into PhotoShop, paste, apply a dimestore old XEROX filter, then photoshop out the signature and place it. Deadline met, the stylized graphic for production has been created. In general the networks do not require the actual document be shown, they have often in the past insisted it is ok to display the actual text in whatever format meets their production needs. So long as the content is not changed.

It needs to be confirmed that those images on the web, and in the show are images of the actual documents before this story goes on.
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Then they faxed the fakes to the WH and published them on their web site as originals. Extremely sloppy and unethical. Especially since they would have affixed signatures to re-created documents that they had prepared.

They could easily do what you suggest by displaying the text of the document in a more readable format but also displaying a copy of the original(s) that allow anyone to review whether their transcript of the original was accurate.