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Free Republic Mentioned on Scarborough Tonight
MrChips

Posted on 09/13/2004 7:37:21 PM PDT by MrChips

Free Republic was just mentioned on Scarborough as one of the sources who have discredited Dan Rather, and as part of the new Internet world with which people like Rather have to deal. Rather is Old School. He doesn't get it.


TOPICS: Free Republic; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cbsnews; killian; msnbc; rather
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To: M Kehoe
We're in the Wall Street Journal today:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110005611

I'd Rather Be Blogging
CBS stonewalls as "guys in pajamas" uncover a fraud.

Monday, September 13, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

A watershed media moment occurred Friday on Fox News Channel, when Jonathan Klein, a former executive vice president of CBS News who oversaw "60 Minutes," debated Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard, on the documents CBS used to raise questions about George W. Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service.

Mr. Klein dismissed the bloggers who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."

He will regret that snide disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries.

Mr. Klein didn't directly address the mounting objections to CBS's story. He fell back on what high school debaters call the appeal to authority, implying that the reputation of "60 Minutes" should be enough to dissolve doubts without the network sharing its methods with other journalists and experts. He told Fox's Tony Snow that the "60 Minutes" team is "the most careful news organization, certainly on television." He said that Mary Mapes, the producer of the story, was "a crack journalist" who had broken the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story.

But leaning on reputations does nothing to dispel the doubts raised by bloggers, experts and relatives and associates of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the memos' putative author. Gary Killian, Col. Killian's son, says CBS apparently didn't call several people he suggested they contact who would have contradicted the CBS story. Bobby Hodges, a former Texas Air National Guard general whom "60 Minutes" claimed had authenticated the memos, says that when he was read them over the phone he assumed they were handwritten and wasn't told that CBS didn't have the originals. He now says he doesn't believe the memos are genuine.
Hugh Hewitt, the unofficial historian of the blogging movement, says that "bloggers have been overwhelmed with e-mails from active-duty and retired military who scoff at the form of the memos." They point out the man cited in the memo as pressuring Mr. Killian to "sugar coat" the Bush military record had left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo was supposedly written. In addition, typewriters with perfect centering ability were nonexistent in 1972 and 1973, and National Guard regulations barred the maintenance of such records. Mr. Killian's widow adds that her late husband kept no personal files from his Guard duty, notes that CBS won't reveal its source, and says the memos are bogus. Earl Lively, director of operations for the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970s, told the Washington Times that the memos are "forged as hell."

CBS's fallback defense is that its story was only partly based on the documents and points to its on-camera interview with former Texas House speaker and lieutenant governor Ben Barnes, who claimed that he pulled strings to gain a place for Mr. Bush in the National Guard. But Mr. Barnes is clearly unreliable. The New York Times reported last February that an unnamed former Texas official--later revealed to be Mr. Barnes--was telling reporters he had interceded on behalf of Mr. Bush but that his story "was subject to change, and there were no documents to support his claims."

Indeed, Mr. Barnes's own daughter says her father's story can't be trusted. Amy Barnes Stites called a talk radio show Thursday to report that her father had told her a different version in 2000, when Mr. Bush first ran for president. "I love my father very much, but he's doing this for purely political reasons," she said. "He is a big Kerry fund-raiser and he is writing a book also. And the [Bush story] is what he's leading the book off with. . . . denied this to me in 2000 that he did get Bush out (of Vietnam). Now he's saying he did." When hostess Monica Crowley asked Ms. Stites if she believed her father had lied in his interview on "60 Minutes," she replied "Yes, I do. I absolutely do."

"60 Minutes" may have a sterling reputation in journalism, but it has been burned before by forged documents. In 1997 it broadcast a report alleging that U.S. Customs Service inspectors looked the other way as drugs crossed the Mexican border at San Diego. The story's prize exhibit was a memo from Rudy Comacho, head of the San Diego customs office, ordering that vehicles belonging to one trucking company should be given special leniency in crossing the border. The memo was given to "60 Minutes" by Mike Horner, a former customs inspector who had left the service five years earlier. When asked by CBS for additional proof, he sent another copy with an official stamp on it.
CBS did not interview Mr. Camacho for its story. "It was horrible for him," says Bill Anthony, at the time head of public affairs for the Customs Service. "For 18 months, internal affairs and the Secret Service had him under a cloud while they established that Horner had forged the document out of bitterness over how he'd been treated." In 2000, Mr. Horner admitted he forged the memo "for media exposure" and was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison. "Mr. Camacho's reputation was tarnished significantly," Judge Judith Keep noted.

Mr. Camacho sued CBS and eventually settled for an undisclosed sum. In 1999 Leslie Stahl read an apology on the air: "We have concluded we were deceived, and ultimately, so were you, the viewers."

If it turns out that the Killian memos are indeed forgeries, the Internet will have played an invaluable role in exposing the fraud much faster than the 18 months Mr. Camacho had to twist in the wind. Free Republic, a Web bulletin board, raised early warning signals about the memos within hours of last Wednesday's "60 Minutes" broadcast. Powerlineblog.com, a site run by three lawyers, reposted those comments, which were amplified by indcjournal.com. Then design expert Charles Johnson, who blogs at littlegreenfootballs.com, retyped one of the memos using Microsoft Word and showed them to be a perfect typographic match.
A defensive Dan Rather went on the air Friday to complain of what he called a "counterattack" from "partisan political operatives." In reality, traditional journalism now has a new set of watchdogs in the "blogosphere." In the words of blogger Mickey Kaus, they can trade information and publicize it "fast enough to have real-world consequences." Sure, blogs can be transmission belts for errors, vicious gossip and last-minute disinformation efforts. But they can also correct themselves almost instantaneously--in sharp contrast with CBS's stonewalling.

41 posted on 09/13/2004 8:25:52 PM PDT by jq2
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To: Jim Robinson

God Bless you Jim, and thank you


42 posted on 09/13/2004 8:28:18 PM PDT by BurbankErnie (I am an oxymoron - a California Republican)
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To: MrChips

Rather is old for even a Zombie.and needs to go away.


43 posted on 09/13/2004 8:32:00 PM PDT by Fast1
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To: OhMike

I prefer to log on in my granny gown.


44 posted on 09/13/2004 8:32:06 PM PDT by spitlana
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To: Pete
I haven't heard Freepers mentioned on T.V. before but I have heard Rush refer to it several times.
We ARE on our way.
I must have missed O'Reilly defending Dan Rather other than he said he knew "Dan Rather" and he more or less left me with the feeling that O'Reilly thinks Rather is an honest man.
Did I miss something --- Frannie
45 posted on 09/13/2004 9:05:20 PM PDT by frannie
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To: MrChips

New members WAY up in the last few days :-)

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/weekday-report?r=s


46 posted on 09/13/2004 10:48:54 PM PDT by Tamzee (Free Republic .... Partisan Pajama People)
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To: mcg1969
Did you notice the subtle under-current of the comment that Howard Fineman made in attempting a re-definition of what has become defacto lingo? That is the term "MSM" or Main Stream Media, now an web-blog term of derision. After a few guest on tonight's show had used the "MSM" term, Fineman substituted the term "Big Media" when he spoke, which others started using right away.

Last time someone tried this word substitution in a time of turmoil was in 1917. It was the terms "Bolshevik" and "Menshevik" in Russia. If Fineman believes that the MSM is really the "Big Media", then that must imply that he feels that this web site, other blogs, talk radio and Fox News are the "Little Media".

Thank you for playing Howard, but I think we will stick with MSM ("old media") and the "New Media".


dvwjr
47 posted on 09/13/2004 11:17:04 PM PDT by dvwjr
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To: writer33

Great "new media" essay!


48 posted on 09/13/2004 11:23:16 PM PDT by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: frannie

O'Reilly has jumped the shark by a mile. Hannity & Colmes has passed him on TV, and he's an also-ran on radio. Pompous a$$.


49 posted on 09/13/2004 11:25:05 PM PDT by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: Pete

I was quoted in the International Herald Tribune, rather than refer to me as "Taxrelief", they called me "a colleague of..."

Guess they couldn't stomach writing "FReeper Taxrelief" in their high and mighty paper.


50 posted on 09/14/2004 4:29:23 AM PDT by TaxRelief (Kerry lied and good men died, and Moms worried, and heroes were spit on, and children were ostraci..)
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To: VisualizeSmallerGovernment

How long will it be before someone writes a book about Free Republic?


51 posted on 09/14/2004 4:40:26 AM PDT by Constantine XIII
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To: spitlana

I had just been thinking about setting up a "blogging room" in my basement. Freepers could visit with their laptops and sit around in big overstuffed chairs, blogging to their hearts content.

Wireless would be the way to go...


52 posted on 09/14/2004 5:21:31 AM PDT by TaxRelief (Kerry lied and good men died, and Moms worried, and heroes were spit on, and children were ostraci..)
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To: MrChips

People watch Joe Scarboring? He is such a dud, no emotions or fire.


53 posted on 09/14/2004 7:33:24 AM PDT by OregonRepublican (Say no to war... unless a democrat is president BUSH/CHENEY 04)
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To: Travis McGee

Thank you.


54 posted on 09/14/2004 1:29:32 PM PDT by writer33 (Try this link: http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/books/electivedecisions.shtml)
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To: writer33

No problem, it was great. Somebody has to write the history of Free Republic and the "new media," and it seems like you have a head start!


55 posted on 09/14/2004 3:44:32 PM PDT by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: Always Right
Here's Registered's CBS version:


56 posted on 09/16/2004 12:03:20 AM PDT by Nan48
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