Posted on 09/10/2004 5:11:47 PM PDT by John from Manhattan
A special report on the CBS program Sixty Minutes II this week raises new questions about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. The story relied in part on documents that critics say appear to be forgeries. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
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I told a liberal coworker today that once NPR did a story on Memogate that CBS would be sunk. So, I am very pleased to hear this report.
regards,
Maybe enough folks know that Bush will win and don't want to be on the same sh#t list that CBS is going to be on during the next 4-year administration term.
This is very unusual for NPR. I'll bet they have two or three opposite stories tomorrow after their listeners phone in.
Well, I guess NPR is really on the ball.
It's all about text...can't we just move font?
In the commentary to the Futurama DVD's, Matt Groening notes that the entire alien alphabet had been deciphered on the internet before the first episode had ended.
This was because one word: "SLURM" was used as a Rosetta stone of sorts and everything else fell into place.
Pretty darned good report. It flat out destroyed the memo's authenticity. The only wierd thing was at the end when they thought the bloggers reacted too quickly. Hey, NPR: Proportional-Spaced typing is easy to recognize.
These must be more of those "living, breathing" documents. They can change over time to adapt to the situation.
Actually if you were only typing a single page and not twelve carbon copies, depending upon how your typwriter was set up, the paper could move a bit as you typed, so the "kerning of a single letter like Y could happen but not in a repeatable way.
As to being easy with computers. I remember some of the first computer driven printers, and they would produce both upper an lower case letters but would not kern, until you go to laser and inkjet printers.
From what I have read the letters were printed via a laser or injet printer as opposed to something that was available in the time frame the documents are dated.
In my mind these are fakes, but you got to love the stupidity of CBS saying that it doesn't matter if the documents are not genuine as the facts they proport to present are true and have been checked with unimpeachable sources. LOL!
SHAME ON CBS!
Not really. They're trying to grasp at straws to save Rather's bacon with the timestamp thing. The problem is that this story is like the Swiftvet story. You can't report on how evil the Republicans are being without backing up and explaining the whole story.
Another problem is, the Media isn't all that monolithic. They're glad to turn on one of their own. Everyone slaving away at NPR thinks they should have Dan Rather's job. Their loyalty for people in their profession is roughly the same as the average Hollywood starlet's.
If the documents are kerned, they're fake. If Dan and CBS had done the job right, they would have asked the expert, "Are these douments kerned?" I'd like to see what the experts say about that. Do they all agree?
I bet this one winds up split into factions. I'm not an expert, so I'm not qualified to comment...any more than a layman can after trying to educate himself by reading all the stuff on the web. That's why I want to see how many credible, unbiased, experts think the documents are kerned.
"All ... things ... considered" .... LOL .. wow, we got the thing onto NPR! ;)
Looks like we still need to set them straight on the details though!
The touchy feely journalism types are out of their depth when dealing with (relatively) technical subjects like this. We'll probably see more more botched reporting along these lines, much of it unintentional. I also think there are folks who will capitalize on the technical fog, knowing full well what they're doing. CBS's deceptive rebuttal (with the period document showing superscripts) is an example of the latter.
Even if someone tried to play around with half backspaces on a typewriter, firstly, back in the early 70s no one would have thought to kern, and secondly, even if some completly anal person thought it up, imagine all the trouble to do it!
I watched Dan Blather on while stonewalling and had a good laugh when he got to the "preponderence of the evidence" claim. DR as judge and jury? - ha!
My hubby heard yesterday on NPR about Bush being AWOL, etc..
He was questioning my info regarding possible forgeries last night and this morning. I sure hope he listens to NPR and hears this report as he drives home from work!!!
Now, if I can only convince my DIM neighbor. (Hah!)
I am not surprised....I dont remember NPR ever faking evidence....
they may have their left bias...but if they go along reporting the Dan Rather Forgeries, they may get hit when pledge drive rolls around.
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