YES! and I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those darn FReepers!
Posted on 01/10/2005 8:57:57 AM PST by FreeTheHostages
Indeed. I just hope Mapes' career is finished for good.
Freepers did really good!!
THANK YOU ALL ... YOU ROCK!
Here you go Jen, see post 17
Prophetically can get really scary--Buckhead even mentions "tsunami" in post #76 of that thread. :oD
Were federal laws broken. Perhaps. Not by CBS. A document was passed in interestate commerce that was fraudulent, so that's the mail fraud statutes. But the FBI doesn't investigate every case of interstate fraud.
The real *crime* here -- CBS's stupidity, which took a penny-anty, garden-variety document fraud and made it and themselves a national scandal -- is stupidity.
Not everything that is really stupid and really evil is a real big crime. This was really stupid and probably (although the panel rightly didn't have proof) motivated by evil (politically biased journalism), but the underlying forgery is just not worth the fed's attention.
The punishment for the crime of stupidity is being paid in the court of public opinion. The crime of stupidity is eventually paid, as both the Bible and Darwin teaches. It's all a matter of time and trusting in the sovereignity of God.
I went to school, college, with these journalism types. They honestly don't get that they're not that bright -- that the much brighter kids when onto PhDs or MDs or JDs or anything other than just jack-of-all-trades. It takes a certain kind of arrogance to be a journalist, to really think you have the ability in 5 hours or days to find THE TRUTH of a situtation. The people I knew who went on in journalism -- and I went to Harvard and knew many -- were distinguishable not in their intellect but in their arrogance. Jeffrey Toobin (CNN), Adam Cohen (NYT editorial board), etc. (I must say that the people write for the WSJ and NYT on the straight news, the actual reporters, were often nice, candid, more humble people. I knew David Sanger when he was but a puppy and he didn't have that arrogance disease. Maybe TV news attracts more than a fair share of the arrogant ones?)
TomT in NJ, I live in Washington. I tell you, once I went to a hockey game and -- who'd have thunk? -- me and my honey were sitting right in front of some CNN producers. (what were they doing at HOCKEY?!) And there they were, ruining the game for us by opening discussing how they were going to slant/spin a Monica Lewinsky news story. My boyfriend finally turned around and just told them to go run the world somewhere else. I think we were most offended that they weren't even hiding their plotting from the surrounding hockey fans -- as if we little people and our opinions couldn't possible come back to haunt them.
The media guys in this town -- the special treatment the Chris Matthews and Bob Schaeffers of this world insist upon -- the stories get around. As a cab driver: they'll tell you Ken Starr was a perfectly gentlement, and these guys are NOT. I think the fourth estate really thinks they are an estate or something.
Sigh, maybe if we ignore the TV media guys they'll go away. Viva la bloggers!! (And, I insist, the news division of the WSJ and some NYT reporters: print media's not totally unobjective IMHO.)
Incpen made a classic with this graphic arts eye.
She spent 5 years trying to get this story and hurt the President. They somehow believe that this story was important even after Bush has proven himself as commander in chief. The Kerry less than honorable discharge, negotiating with the enemy in Paris while a reserve Naval officer, and phony purple heart reports were apparently not important.
That's pretty good.
5.56mm
Yes indeed!
Anytime.
-CD
Check out this ping -- has some great visuals of you guys.
She could always work at PBS/NPR...
CBS must think the whole world is stupid and that this whitewash/minor brooming makes everything OK. My 3 big problems:
- Dan rather is still employed by CBS.
- The report states "Mary Mapes contacting Joe Lockheart of the Kerry campaign created an appearance of a conflict of interest". No Dick Thornburg, this IS A CONFLICT OF INTEREST!
- The source of the forged documents has not been revealed. Who is "him"? Why don't we know the name of the person who should be procuted for sedition?
"This is the only reporting that has actually given credit to Free Republic for being the first to catch these bogus docments"
Yes, but it's more or less an official source: an independent investigation commissions by CBS.
In fact, if there's anything nice you can say about CBS, it would be that they actually put Dick Thornburgh on an investigatory panel. As if they realize that perhaps a Republic could do a good job of this, who'd have thunk?
It's weird the way CBS and the other liberal media just wouldn't say the words "Free Republic" -- even though FR was a big part of the story breaking. They wouldn't name any of the blogs. It was so pertinent but it was just too distasteful for them to name us --
....
kinda like media have trouble naming a competitor.
.....
a lot like a competitor.
Big corporations were late to the internet and they're late to blogging. They're just waking up and it's completely panicked them, the idea that news might not be tightly controlled by them. They talk about all the quality control problems of news on the internet. Hee hee. Quality control.
It's all a question of knowing your source. Some people here I read, some I don't. The internet lets me do my own sourcing to some extent. And the internet teaches quickly that if someone lets you down once, be hesitant to trust them again. CBS's credibility in the eyes of my generation is dust.
EXACTLY - and Rather never apologized for slandering a decent, honorable young Lt.George W. Bush - who spent over 600 hours training in his fighter/interceptor, on duty and in harm's way.
Trainee pilots are at risk just as combat pilots....ask John McCain who lost a couple of jets off the side of a carrier.
"I was too, until I read the part where they conclude that there was no political agenda behind the story"
Careful as you go. They actually didn't say that. They said that, on the set of facts before them, they couldn't *prove* that. They added in a section -- see pages 140 et seq -- that such things are difficult to prove.
I'd agree. To prove bias here, you'd have to look beyond the facts of this case, outside their purview and into CBS's entire pattern of behavior over a number of years.
There are laws against defamation and slander. It's easy to fire someone because "For whatever reason, you did a lousy job." Firing someone because "I know what you were thinking and that's why you did a lousy job" can have post-termination legal repercussions, where your powers of telepathy are challenged in court.
I've no doubt that Attorney General Thornburgh's private opinion is that bias drove this -- shoot, just look at the timing of this story! -- but I commend the wisdom of admitting that, on the four corners of this story, absolute proof of that doesn't exist. I'd do the same thing IF I had his job.
But I don't. Without his restraints of lawyerly proof, from where I sit and where you do too, it's all rather obvious, isn't it? Obviously biased.
The corporate media always says we call things biased when we don't agree with them. I wonder how in this case, where CBS was provably wrong and the whole thing was so political, how the media can avoid worrying that perhaps that doesn't completely explain our suspicions of them? Exactly how many denial pills do they take each day?!
Repeating NonValueAdded's question:
Were Buckhead and the bloggers interviewed for the panel's report?
I like all three of your points.
I do think they know the source. Nah, not prosecuted for sedition. You can always, at any time in this country, find a politically motiviated crank that will tell you ANYTHING YOU WANT TO HEAR about a Democrat or a Republican candidate. It's the job of the media not to go wallowing in pig farms for news stories.
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