Posted on 09/14/2004 9:43:28 PM PDT by charleston1
The standard against the media is very high: must prove either "knowledge of falsity" or "reckless disregard for the falsity." Unless someone in Dan Rather's inner circle turns "state's evidence," the first will never be shown. However, this 5th document issue goes a LONG way toward showing "reckless disregard" by CBS.
I now believe that CBS can have its socks sued off for this incident. And I think the public announcement by CBS News has been delayed today because the suits and the lawyers are screaming at each other behind closed doors whether the damages are worse if CBS fesses up, or continues to stonewall.
Since I understand damage control in the First Amendment area, I expect that CBS will fess up, and announce the departure of Rather, later today.
Congressman Billybob
J. Armor, Esq.
Bump
I still giggle when I remember another reporter at the time (Britt Hume, I think) referring to Rather as "Gunga Dan"...
Allah is in the House , and he has added points you may want to read.
Good work!
"Freepers, what can we do to further the charge that CBS is guilty of malice and intent to defraud"
First we need a copy of the 60 Minutes transcripts/video to prove that there was no mention of six documents and that in fact CBS repeatedly planted the number four with regard to the documents in both the spoken word and visually as well--how many times was the number four mentioned? We get that story on the blogs refuting CBS and then reemphasize this thread. Why is CBS now misrepresenting the facts, and doing so only now, coincident with the appearance of this thread and the ABC report outing them last night.
After that it is pretty straightforward. We need to find some scientific papers that establish that the best practices of the trade require that any examiner be given all of the available documents to examine. That goes to due diligence by CBS. Obviously the MSM would have to pick up on the story with interviews of well respected document examiners and then ask CBS News for what reasons they withheld the very documents that Will and James rejected. Also why didn't CBS allow their best examiner, Matley to see the document(s) rejected by Emily Will and Linda James?
Both Will and James need to be reinterviewed to see if they thought that the documents they were asked to examine were all of the available documents.
Finally, Will claimed she sent the "CBS Producer" an e-mail. She could boost her credibility if she produces a copy of the e-mail with headers and depending on what she wrote, do much more to lay out the facts for everyone.
We cannot let Dan Rather get away with this crime. We must contact all local affiliates of CBS and let them know that we will boycott all of their local advertisers and we will call all of their local advertisers to advise them of this.
Rather and the CBS news team must be fired!!
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