Posted on 09/27/2004 5:40:39 AM PDT by JesseHousman
The following appeared as a full page advertisement in the Naples Daily News:
Dear Mr. Rather:
My grandfather served in the U. S. Army during World War I. My Father served in the U. S. Navy during World War II. I served in the U. S. Navy during the Vietnam War. Now my son, a 2002 graduate (with distinction) of the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis is serving as a jet fighter pilot at a time when our nation is once again at war, against an enemy that is both ruthless and cowardly. An enemy like no other in the history of our country.
According to your published biography, Mr. Rather, you have never served in the armed forces. You went straight from college into journalism. However, you did cover the Vietnam War for a period of time. To that extent, I am totally amazed by your recent actions to discredit our nation's Commander-In-Chief during a time of war, using forged documents from a well-known discredited source!
Aside from trying to influence voters in the upcoming election in pursuing your own political ideology, what were you thinking? In Vietnam, did you ever even once discuss with our soldiers the impact news back at home has on the morale of our troops? We are at war, Mr. Rather, with sub-humans whose only purpose in life is to destroy our country. I believe your political bias has tainted your common sense, and destroyed your journalistic integrity.
Therefore I am calling for your resignation. Voluntary or involuntary. And since my only means of providing pressure on your network to make this happen is to withdraw my advertising from the local CBS affiliate, Channel 5, I have done so, effective immediately. I will use the money I save to pay for this newspaper ad.
I would not normally take such a strong stand, for fear of hurting my business, but the line has finally been crossed. I ask that all who agree with me, no matter what your political affiliation may be, to join with me in calling for Mr. Rather's resignation by calling, writing or e-mailing CBS and their local affiliate, WINK-TV.
Thank you for reading this, as I know Dan Rather won't (although I will send him a copy.) But please tell a friend.
Thank you.
Dave Goodenough, President
Dixie Plumbing & Air
Naples, Florida
Dave@WhistleDixie.com
OK, so how much money do we need to raise to buy a full page ad in the Sunday New York Times?
The only problem is that the NYT, generally, is read by those whose attention span can be measured in minutes.
CBS is toast and their stockholders should be demanding a complete housecleaning starting with Rather.
Are you kidding!!!! You don't remember his "reporting?"
Don't waste time reasoning.
The last time that progressives like "journalist" heroes such as Walter Durante, Edward R. Murrow, Cronkite, Rather supported the U.S. in war was after the August, 1941 attacks by Hitler on their Uncle Joe Stalin.
Even if you don't agree, surely you remember the mainstream media employees' declaration after 9/11. To wit, they virtually all declared: We are neutral, we are professionals. We just report.
Rather, for whatever reason, thought we was just reporting.
Perhaps this entire unpatriotic episode on the part of CBS will be a wake-up call to the other networks.
Brokaw, Jennings, Rather. What a team of (boat) anchors!
Rather has always been such a pathetic, wimpish liberal that it was difficult, during his tenure, to watch him for the five or ten minutes I spent doing so all these years.
Walter Crankcase was another liberal twit that keeps popping up frequently and being touted as the dean of television journalism.
John Cameron Swayze was one who reported the news.
Another that comes to mind is Roger Mudd, especially when he interviewed Teddy Kennedy and asked him why he thought he should be president!
Freep Dan
Email: evening@cbsnews.com
Let's fill up the mailbox.
Done!
Oh, to only have more Brit Humes! :-)
I can't hold a candle to what this man did, but I did more than nothing. I sent an e-mail to my local affiliate, with a copy to the firm that owns and operates them (Sinclair Broadcasting).
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:14:19 -0400 (EDT)
To: General Manager - Local CBS TV affiliate
Cc: Sales Manager - Local CBS TV affiliate,
Investor Relations - Sinclair Broadcasting
Subject: CBS NewsDear Sir:
You and I spoke on the telephone about two weeks ago regarding CBS's news reporting of the Killian memorandums. I thank you for your time and for the polite and frank exchange.
Please add my name to your list of people who are incensed by CBS News. Feel free to forward my comments to CBS.
When Dan Rather took to the air, oh, about two weeks ago, he did so after some of CBS's experts had advised at least Mary Mapes that the Killian memos might be forgeries. Before the story aired, Mapes, Rather and Heyward met to discuss the news piece that was based almost entirely on these memos.
As the days went by, and the public obtained clear evidence that the Killian memos were forgeries, CBS was recalcitrant, and in more than one amazing display of arrogance and bias, continued to fervently defend their authenticity.
To this day, CBS has not admitted that the Killian memos are forgeries, saying they "might be fake." CBS follows the "MIGHT be fake" with an incredible falsehood, "but their contents are undisputed to be accurate." Undisputed? What chutzpah.
CBS's reaction to its self-inflicted damage is purely in its own interest, and strongly against the public interest. No person in possession of the facts can reasonably conclude that CBS was duped into airing the story. Instead, it is CBS that was attempting to dupe its viewers.
I do not accept that there were "mistakes," other than being caught. Even if CBS was duped by the unimpeachable Mr. Burkett, its ignoring of its own experts before airing the story, and continued urgent defense of authenticity for over a week, were unreasonable and irresponsible.
If CBS's lapse of honesty, ethics, and integrity was not on the serious point of attempting to affect the vote by slandering a candidate for the office of president, it might be funny. Obviously, it is not a laughing matter to me, and I trust that you take it as a serious issue.
Know this, I hold your station responsible for broadcasting CBS's partisan political propaganda, deceptively passed off as objective news. I refuse to permit any of my televisions to be tuned in to receive your programming. My family and I will listen to football on the radio instead of watching your broadcasts.
"Say no more! A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh? Eh?
There once was a plumber named Dave.
Rather must not continue to misbehave.
Wants Danny to quit.
The biased blathering nit wit.
By putting this loser’s career in the grave.
CB^)
I have conservative friends and family in Florida. I don't know how close they are to Naples, but I will tell them about this plumber.
Then came them: the ideologues.
Just a couple years later came Newton Minow's Vast Wasteland speech to the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961.
Though not talking about TV news Mr. Minow did describe the sorry state of TV programming. The public was already being turned away from cognition and toward feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings.
Minow stated something that the ideologues knew and the ideologues had already determined to capture it for their side in the nascent culture war.
"The power of instantaneous sight and sound is without precedent in mankind's history. This is an awesome power. It has limitless capabilities . . . ."
Today every home has the power of instantaneous sight and sound -- and the press!
We are more powerful than them.
Great letter, Choldt.
BRAVO ZULU to Dave Goodenough!
Three weeks after every thinking human being on the planet has decided that the Bush "memos" were forgeries, CBS 60 Minutes Wednesday still has the story on its website.
Go here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/08/60II/main641984.shtml
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Thanks for posting this Jesse!
Here is the latest Ratherings by c BS. This deals with another phoney story about GW implementing the draft in 2005.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1229888/posts
CBS Uses Phony Documents to Promote Draft Hoax
RatherBiased.com ^ | September 28, 2004
Posted on 09/28/2004 7:11:30 PM PDT by RatherBiased.com
Daniel Irvin Rather must be a masochist. You'd think that in the midst of the terrible publicity he is currently getting for working closely with a partisan Democrat bent on bringing down President Bush that Dan Rather would have the good sense to lay off the liberal bias for a while. But common sense seems to be in short supply at CBS News these days.
Three weeks after he denounced the internet as being "filled with rumors," the embattled CBS anchor ran a story on his Tuesday "Evening News" program hoping to stir up fear of an impending military draft.
In a story that was a textbook example of slipshod reporting, CBS reporter Richard Schlesinger used debunked internet hoax emails and an unlabeled interest group member to scare elderly "Evening" viewers into believing that the U.S. government is poised to resume the draft.
At the center of Schlesinger's piece was a woman named Beverly Cocco, a Philadelphia woman who is "sick to my stomach" that her two sons might be drafted. In his report, Schlesinger claimed that Cocco was a Republican and portrayed her as an apolitical (even Republican) mom worried about the future.
Schlesinger did not disclose that Cocco is a chapter president of an advocacy group called People Against the Draft (PAD) which, in addition to opposing any federal proscription, seeks to establish a "peaceful, rational foreign policy" by bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Like Schlesinger's Cocco, the group portrays itself as "nonpartisan"although its leadership seems to be entirely bereft of any Republicans.
The group's domain is registered to a man named Jacob Levich, a left-wing activist who in a 2001 essay compared the Bush Administration to the totalitarian government portrayed in George Orwell's 1984.
PAD also lists Anita Dutt, a Green Party activist who is also a member of an anti-war group called Bronx Action for Justice and Peace. In a March 3, 2003 New York Times profile of the group reprinted on the organization's web site, Heidi Hynes, one of its leaders, said of her fellow members that "none of us are Republicans."
Also left out of the CBS story was the fact that while there are two bills in Congress that are seeking to reestablish the draft, both of them (S-89 and HR-163) are sponsored exclusively by Democrats and have been pronounced DOA by the Republican leadership.
Much more on this to come but in the mean time, click read more to see the transcript or watch the clip by clicking on the picture to the right.
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