Posted on 09/17/2004 10:14:51 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Back in March, American journalists and news organisations celebrated a special anniversary. Exactly 50 years before, CBS broadcaster and TV news pioneer Edward R. Murrow took to the airwaves with a blistering indictment of Red-baiting drunk and Cold War smear artist Senator Joe McCarthy.
As the feared prime mover behind the anti-communist witch-hunt and Hollywood's blacklists, the credibility of the man who made paranoia the guiding principle of American politics was out of bounds until Murrow began his broadcast, which coolly and methodically exposed McCarthy's lies, distortions and moral corruption.
That was the end of "Tailgunner Joe", who would never regain his power to sow fear and ruin lives.
And it was the start of something else - the national media's monopoly to define stories and determine the who, what and when of America's national conversation.
Last week, like McCarthy, that trust had crashed and burned. The catalyst was a sheaf of documents that purported to confirm what had long been rumoured about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard - that he was a ne'er-do-well whose family pulled strings to keep him from Vietnam, that he disobeyed his commanders and went absent without leave.
The allegations were aired 10 days ago on CBS' 60 Minutes in a segment introduced by Murrow's heir, the veteran anchorman Dan Rather.
The big difference between then and now - and the reason the mainstream media won't be celebrating this event in half a century's time - is that the documents were fakes.
But the TV networks and national newspapers had little to do with exposing the dirty tricks behind this election-season assault on Bush.
Yes, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal belatedly advanced the story. But they weren't by any means the chief agents of the allegations' demolition. That credit goes to America's "citizen journalists" - the amateur sleuths who are sitting in their homes and pounding out web logs, exposing what they see as the institutional biases of the Establishment media.
Seventy years ago, the celebrated American commentator A.J. Liebling wrote that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one". Now, thanks to the internet, everyone does, and politics and the media can never be the same again.
The flap over Bush's purported service records explains why.
No sooner had Dan Rather broadcast images of the documents than a poster at the right wing bulletin board FreeRepublic noted that the typeface was that of a modern personal computer, not a 70s-era typewriter.
Other posters piled on, bringing their own multiple varieties of expertise. The memos weren't in standard US Air Force format and the paper wasn't Pentagon-issue size. One of the commanding officers supposedly critical of Bush's performance had retired from the service 18 months earlier. Other documents, official ones, were available for downloading that further contradicted the forgeries' timeline.
Rather and CBS reacted angrily. Who were these people to question Murrow's heir, a network exec sneered? Why, nothing more than strange little men who sit at home and "write in their pyjamas".
It did no good; the flap refused to subside. Powered by the internet, it expanded.
Bloggers and FreeRepublic-types checked the credentials of the one expert CBS quoted as confirming that its documents were genuine. He turned out to be not only unqualified but something of a nut. Show him a woman's signature, he had written, and he could tell if she was likely to be good in bed.
As news organisations joined the hunt, the pyjama-clad legion set the pace. Who manufactured the damning documents and why? Tapping into the internet's wealth of public records and old news stories, they soon established a network of personal connections leading straight back to Rather.
His daughter, Robin, was a Democrat activist in Texas, where a local powerbroker, Ben Barnes, had thrown her a fund-raising party at which her famous father was the guest speaker.
Barnes' connection? In Rather's 60 Minutes report, the former deputy-governor was the key witness for the prosecution, claiming that he had been approached by friends of the Bush family to secure a safe, non-combat berth for the future president.
When Barnes' own daughter went on a local radio station to accuse him of lying for political gain, the mainstream media mostly missed it. Not the bloggers, who posted links to archived audio files and transcripts, just as the sainted Murrow once damned McCarthy with his own words.
True, Rather had described Barnes as "a Kerry supporter". But the bloggers checked records for political contributions and found he was rather more - the third-largest contributor to the Kerry campaign, responsible for more than US$500,000 ($756,000) worth of cheques.
By late last week, the internet horde was closing in on the forger's identity, with the Establishment press bringing up the rear.
Instead of being couched in Air Force lingo, the bogus documents were peppered with Army jargon, the bloggers noted. Well, guess what? A 20-minute drive from the Abilene copy shop where they were faxed to CBS, there lives a retired Army National Guard officer with a history of mental disorders, Bill Burkett, who was the source of previous allegations against the Bush family, all of which proved false.
Burkett blames the Bush clan for denying him workers' compensation after a series of nervous breakdowns.
The normally garrulous Burkett wasn't talking last week, and Barnes, too, had suddenly gone quiet.
Meanwhile, the Kerry campaign was issuing statements denying that its latest ad campaign, which lambasts Bush as a draft-dodging plutocrat, had been cooked up on the quiet with CBS, the game plan being to ride the wave of publicity generated by 60 Minute's now-discredited scoop.
As for Rather, his stonewalling and bluster had degenerated by week's end to a petulant assertion that while his story's evidence might be bogus, its thrust was not.
For us ink-stained wretches, it's tantamount to a diagnosis of cancer on our profession. If we choose not to do our jobs - if, like Rather, we permit the perception that political sympathies count for more than facts - what credibility do we have?
The short answer: about as much as Joe McCarthy on the morning he awoke to find that Murrow had exposed him as a bully and a fraud.
CUTE!!
Has to happen.. that malfactor(Blather) has earned the decription "infamous".. Then Lemmings and Brokjaw might exit stage right for fear of the spotlight on thier master baiting exploits.. Would strenghten this old fellas faith in "what comes around goes around".. Ah! would be a delight to see..
The kids are in bed, the wife is snoring and so should I.
But instead, I climb up the extra half flight, boot up my PC and find cutting edge political debate at 1am in the morning.
It's latenight FreeRepublic.
I've got Patrick in the front and Squidward in the back, of mine...
She prolly considered a slur, since it sounds like mujahadeen. I kinda like Pajama Warriors myself. Libs don't like warriors; too mean and militaristic, so that works in our favor!
They aren't 'Dr. Dentons' but they do come in Burgundy at the Vermont Country Store
Now you've done it, I love the Vermont Country Store, and need some warm new jammies.
Heh, heh! The DO look comfy, don't they?
These do look comfortable. And I need a new pair of sheepskin-lined suede mocs to go get the paper in the winter. Those look about right. Think I'll go check out that place . . .I've heard they have old-fashioned stuff no one else has anymore . .
Now, for all you folks out there with Webcams, I suggest the Cary Grant/Thin Man/Hugh Hefner stuff. Don't know where one gets that gear, but one does have an obligation to one's audience. "Dilbert Types" are exempted from this, as everyone knows we're just lucky you remember to wear clean underwear.
Sometimes. :]~
Dan Rather is not fit to wipe Joe McCarthy's mummified a**, let alone be compared to him in the same paragraph.
BTW: I haven't pyjamas. Will a birthday suit do? Should I change my handle to "theCommando"?
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