Posted on 09/10/2004 7:54:07 AM PDT by Smartaleck
Since CBS still says they stand by their story, is it possible to go after the advertisers (with lawsuits) since they are the ones supplying the funding, allowing all this electioneering to occur?
This is like the Abu Garieb porn-site pictures that the Boston Globe couldn't wait to publish.
A Forgery Exposed:
Democrat pollster Pat Cadell just said on Fox News that if the documents are proven to be forgeries the Kerry campaign will be tied to it and the election is OVER!
Ditto, but we also have to give a lot of credit to those who feel a real obligation to post news immediately. Its so much easier than visiting hundreds of web sites and sometimes gives us time to take some sort of corrective action!
There's no doubt that even at CBS, some news pros would have been questioning this story. Some might even have been going ballistic over running with it (I've seen phone books thrown across the bullpen during hot editorial disagreements).
Rather might even had disagreements with the senior editors/reporters, though he'd be the big dog because it's his face on the tube. So ultimately he won, and ran with a bogus story.
I'll venture that right now, several CBS news staffers want Rather's head on a plate, perhaps to the point of threatened resignations and unfettered newsroom grumbling. Rather has embarrassed the entire CBS staff.
The coin of the realm for Rather is the validation of his own political beliefs. He's not supposed to do that, and he knows it, but he's obviously lost his news judgement. I don't believe there's a "payoff" beyond that.
"Ditto, but we also have to give a lot of credit to those who feel a real obligation to post news immediately."
AMEN to that. Better to wade through a few extraneous-have nothing to do with politics-vanity- who cares about the koby Bryant trial- stories....than to every news story written each day. LOL
Welcome. I wish you could have been here in 2000 for the election debacle. It was a place of refuge and hope for me.
"but I believe they pulled this stunt "
Makes sense...are they that smart? LOL
Here's to hoping this is the future of news reporting! Faster, more accurate, more interactive, more diverse opinions, better citations, more humorous/entertaining, more accountable... while the idiot box can only hope for more idiots!
(Did you hear that, ABC?)
skypilot (1000+ posts) Thu Sep-09-04 10:46 AM
If they were forgeries... someone other than a dumbass freeper would have figured that out by now. Jesus, we are in the 21st century we don't need some goofy ass freeper to figure out if something is real or not. There are professionals out there that are very good at these things.
Rumors around Austin suggest that it is barely visible.
Meanwhile, Terry McAuliffe is, nearly at the same time, saying that CBS was set-up!
Amazing. Just amazing.
I got news for Pat (whom I greatly respect): it's over without this. The only remaining question is how big will be the margin of victory, and CBS may well have turned a 300 vote victory into a 400 EV victory. Thanks, Dan Rather.
Dan Rather is STILL defending his piece, saying the story is true, the memos are authentic. Not "I believe" or "We still think" but "THE STORY IS TRUE. WE KNOW THE STORY IS TRUE." This as of about a half-hour ago (noonish ET), as every other network is exposing CBS's fraud. What a maroon! (He says the focus should not be on the documents, but what the documents say. Pfffft! Yeah, right.)
Sorry I don't have the link right now....received this via e-mail from a friend.
From TAS: (The American Spectator)
Anatomy of a Forgery
By The Prowler
Published 9/10/2004 12:09:06 AM
More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.
The oppo researcher claimed the source was "a retired military officer." According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign.
"More than a couple people heard about the papers," says the DNC staffer. "I've heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for them to decide to how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night. But I know this much. When there was discussion here, there were doubts raised about their authenticity."
The concerns arose from the sourcing. "It wasn't clear that our source for the documents would have had access to them. Our person couldn't confirm from what file, from what original source they came from."
The documents that CBS News used were not documents from any of Bush's personnel files from his time in the National Guard. Rather, CBS News stated that they were documents uncovered in the personnel files of Killian. That would explain why the White House or the Pentagon had never before released or even seen them.
According to a Kerry campaign source, there was little gossip about the supposedly hot documents inside the office of the campaign on McPherson Square. "Those documents were not something anyone was talking about or trying to generate buzz on," says the staffer. "It wasn't like there were small groups of people talking about this as a bombshell. I think people here weren't sure what to make of it, because provenance of these documents was uncertain."
A CBS producer, who initially tipped off The Prowler about the 60 Minutes story, says that despite seeking professional assurances that the documents were legitimate, there was uncertainty even among the group of producers and researchers working on the story.
"The problem was we had one set of documents from Bush's file that had Killian calling Bush 'an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot.' And someone who Killian said 'performed in an outstanding manner.' Then you have these new documents and the tone and content are so different."
The CBS producer said that some alarms bells went off last week when the signatures and initials of Killian on the documents in hand did not match up with other documents available on the public record, but producers chose to move ahead with the story. "This was too hot not to push. If there were doubts, those people didn't show it," says the producer, who works on a rival CBS News program.
Now, the producer says, there is growing concern inside the building on 57th Street that they may have been suckered by the Kerry campaign. "There is a school of thought here that the Kerry people dumped this in our laps, figuring we'd do the heavy lifting on the story. That maybe they had doubts about these documents but hoped we'd get more information," says the producer. "If that's the case, then we're bigger fools than we already appear to be judging by all the chatter about how these documents could be forgeries."
ABC News' political unit held a conference call at 7:00 p.m. Thursday evening to discuss the memo and its potential ramifications should the documents turn out to be a forgery. That meeting took place around the time that the deceased Killian's son made public statements questioning the documents' authenticity.
According to one ABC News employee, some reporters believe that the Kerry campaign as well as the DNC were parties in duping CBS, but a smaller segment believe that both the DNC and the Kerry campaign were duped by Karl Rove, who would have engineered the flap to embarrass the opposition.
STOLEN HONOR
A documentary exposing John Kerry's record of betrayal
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