Posted on 09/21/2004 4:16:55 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee
Posted Sunday, September 27, 2004
Having caught the scent of a juicy story from the MSM (mainstream media) to bite into, the bloggers were waiting to pounce like a pack of hounds behind the butcher shop. On Sept. 7, the day before the CBS broadcast, left-leaning blog talkingpointsmemo.com announced that 60 Minutes was to air "documents that shed light on Bush's guard service or lack thereof." The following afternoon, bloggers at freerepublic.com, a conservative website, began anticipating the coverage with comments such as, "CBS should have to register as a Democrat [campaign organization]." Minutes into the broadcast, another Free Republic blogger (known as a freeper on the site) questioned the authenticity of the CBS documents. A few hours later, yet another offered plausible evidence of fakery: the CBS documents could not have been produced by typewriters available at the time. "These documents are forgeries," said the writer. "This should be pursued aggressively."
The comments were penned by someone known online as Buckhead. And they might have languished had it not been for powerlineblog.com, a well-trafficked right-wing website that linked to Buckhead's claims. The rumblings filtered up to Matt Drudge, who linked to Power Line, setting off a surge of publicity. Soon 500 other blogs had linked to Power Line. Among the assertions: 1970s-era typewriters couldn't have produced the superscript th that appears in the memos (this was later disproved). The next afternoon, both the Washington Post and ABC News carried stories about the postings. The mysterious Buckhead had become a folk hero among red-blogged Americans.
But the mystery didn't last long. As first reported in the Los Angeles Times, Buckhead is Harry MacDougald, 46, a conservative, big-firm lawyer from Atlanta with a history of pugnacious activism. As an advisory-board member for the Southeastern Legal Foundation, he helped write the group's petition to disbar Bill Clinton and worked with former Clinton prosecutor Kenneth Starr to challenge a federal campaign-finance law. As the online avenger Buckhead, he has described Clinton as the "Ozark Caligula." Now identified, MacDougald shuns media attention; as one of his postings claimed, perhaps disingenously: "It wasn't me, it was the swarm."
—With reporting by Mark Coatney and Nathan Thornburgh/New York and Viveca Novak/Washington
Ping to Howlin for "Pajamarazzi"
Hey! I used to use a kaypro!
OMG! Great memories of computer class in 1981 !
What is on the real memo is a smaller "th" and is not above the line of text
There was a key with the smaller "th" on a Olympia typewriter as use by the TANG in the 70's...and it does match the "th" on the REAL memo but not the forage ...it is not superscript... and is no way the same as the forged memo
class!?... that was at work....god im geting old
We're the pajama-razzi and we're watching, watching, watching.
How about a Sinclair? LOL!
Time is an old toilet rag with free shower radio as a gift.
Had this not come from FR this would not have been history in the Culture War.
8" SS SD floppies?
More like Tall Tales to me.
It may have been disproved in the fantasyland of the leftwing 'mainstream' where BOOOSH is still the real criminal. But I'm sure people would pay money to see a CBS memo superscript available in a 1970s era typewriter.
ping
I think the party started without you.
But, you see, that's exactly what they are: stories. Reporters gather bits and pieces of information from various places -- a quote here, some documents there, a bit of research somewhere else -- then they weave all the bits into a story. The story may be accurate, or it may not be, but unlike other businesses the media rarely pays a price if the quality of its product is poor.
By "price" I don't mean the occasional embarrassment of a case such as Rather's, Jayson Blair, etc. I mean multi-million-dollar legal judgments against them, and jail time for outright fraud. By all means, I respect the First Amendment and recognize we need a vigorous press. But the freedom of the press clause has been so broadly interpreted as to essentially make our media immune from civil and ciminal law.
I see a little bit of Steve Forbes here.
The MSM is so lame. Buckhead is right. It could have been anyone of us that posted that first. The memo was so badly forged that it was only a matter of time until somebody figured out why it looked horrible. It was bugging me but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. From the point that it became suspect it became obvoius to anyone with a computer and a copy of Microsoft Word that these were forged documents.
Perhaps they prefered the term "Pajamadeen" to "swarm".
What is remarkable---I just finished writing a history of journalism and media bias---is that FreeRepublic has returned us to a forum almost exactly like that which existed in early Federalist/Jeffersonian times. "Broadsides" would be distributed to inns, taverns, cafes, and a literate person would read aloud, often during or after dinner. People would immediately comment and, since the news was usually local, would clarify, edit, or challenge stuff in the news. It was an instant editing/vetting process.
"Ozark Caligula." Pretty good.
We are the Pajamahadeen. All your newspaper are belong to us!
Interesting. As L.N. Smithee points out, they had 4 writers and still couldn't get it straight. Perhaps if they did the same as Howlin and pulled out the pertinent posts from the live thread (Howlin did all this work for them in a separate ppst that I can't put my finger on at the moment), they would have an accurate story. As well, there are factual errors in the Time piece including the misinformation about the "th" key (yes, a few typewriters had the key but with an underline and it was not raised above the other letters).
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