Posted on 01/14/2005 10:10:31 AM PST by JohnHuang2
CBS News anchor Dan Rather continues to stand by the content of the documents used in a now-discredited "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment on President Bush's National Guard service, a panel investigating the botched story revealed this week."Rather informed the panel that he still believes the content of the documents is true because 'the facts are right on the money,' and that no one had provided persuasive evidence that the documents were not authentic," the panel's 224-page report said. Continues...
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Rather Saves Job; fall gals take rap
So, after killing half the trees in the Pacific Northwest forest to produce their report, probers into RatherGate report that the closer they looked at the documents, the harder it became to dismiss the possibility they were bogus. On a roll, they were also shocked to discover there's bad journalism at CBS (also known as the Dinosaur Channel). After three months hot on the trail of a story that took a few guys in pajamas 3 whole minutes to crack, the sleuthhounds probing Memogate noted that they "were not prepared to brand the Killian documents as an outright forgery," so staffers who aired the Killian documents should be fired. Especially if the staffers are chicks. Capping CBS's finest hour, fired were producer Mary Mapes, who tied Dan Rather to a chair and forced him to air the "60 Minutes" segment at gun-point; senior vice president Betsy West; top deputy Mary Murphy and her boss, Josh Howard. To avoid capture, Rather fled the country, hid somewhere in Sri Lanka for weeks, bravely emerging after learning his underlings took the fall. (According to the report, Rather had no knowledge of wrongdoing -- he was only running the place. The report was titled, CYA.)
Mapes stunned Washington by issuing a statement that she was "terribly disappointed." You get the feeling she wasn't thrilled. Bush knew she'd be fired and did nothing to stop it.
The controversy was sparked after CBS, on the heels of the Republican convention, aired a Fake-But-Accurate piece based on an Unimpeachable Source who lied to CBS which says it was duped by a screwball who claimed to know the answer to the eminently relevant question that ordinary people in Kansas had been losing sleep over: Did Bush skip a flight physical 35 years ago? The Unimpeachable Source is Bill Burkett, who says Bush, when governor, had shipped him to Panama where Bush had secretly produced a wicked virus which wickedly found him and infected him, so obviously this nut had no ax to grind. (He later said he made the whole thing up.) After a media interview last summer, Burkett "suffered a violent seizure and collapsed in his chair" -- like John Kerry did on election night. Richard Thornburgh, one of the probers, told ABC News that Rather "mischaracterized the source, referred to him as 'unimpeachable,' when it's well-known in the background of this particular source was a lot of bias and a lot of reason to pause." This would qualify Burkett as anchor for CBS News.
Approximately sixty seconds after the "60 Minutes" story aired, questions were raised about the memos, with bloggers patiently explaining to Dan Rather that Killian's Microsoft Word Documents were inconsistent with typewriters built during the Ottoman empire. According to the report, Rather says he still believes the story is true and that he would not go ahead with the story knowing what he knows today. "If those memos are fake, I'd like to break that story," says Rather. (Despite tips from 4 million document experts that the memos are fake, Rather is holding the story till it's ready.)
The report also notes that, except for CBS airing stories all year about Bush the Liar, the Fratboy, the Stupid, Lazy, Election-Stealing Mastermind Moron, there's no evidence of anti-Bush bias at CBS. (Bush -- felon, traitor, warmonger . . . but, hey, nothing Personal!) The election-year timing and content of the Bush Guard story was just a coincidence. Mapes put Burkett in contact with Kerry campaign spokes-hack Joe Lockhart -- another coincidence. For weeks, CBS didn't tell viewers -- all 20 of them -- that the documents were faxed by some freakshow in Abilene, and that was a coincidence too. CBS uses a sleazebag with a background of hating Bush as its main source, so probers conclude from this that there was no political bias. (CBS motto: We're not biased -- just incompetent.)
In e-mails to Josh Howard, Mapes writes that "there is some interesting Bush stuff shaking out there right now . . . lots of goodies . . . there is a strong feeling that this time, there is blood in the water" -- more evidence of how wonderfully impartial CBS reporters can be.
The "60 Minutes" segment marked the third time Rather and Mapes had tried to nail Bush on whether he skipped that flight physical. The second time was in '99 when he ran for president as Texas governor. I think the first time was when he ran for student president in High School.
Rather said mistakes were made because he was too pooped after covering the GOP convention and coming up with the scoop of the Century -- a hurricane in Florida. He was too tired to check. (Even covering the GOP convention was exhausting for Rather. He just didn't know who the nominee would be.) Twelve days into Memogate and under fire, Rather insisted the documents were authentic -- still too tired to check. Anyway, the incident was just a third-rate forgery. The L.A. Times quotes one CBS veteran as saying that "Rather's hectic schedule meant that 'he was not as involved as he should have been.'" The workaholic was too busy not doing his job. The CBS veteran, Linda Mason, was appointed Monday to the new position of vice president for "Standards and Practices." If you're a reporter, one standard might be that if someone's story smells like Michael Moore's knickers and that someone foams at the mouth when you whisper 'George Bush' -- those could be two early clues the witness isn't completely reliable. (Now, how did I know that?) But I guess airing a bogus story wasn't Rather's real mistake. He could've labeled it a Documentary and won the People's Choice Award.
The report said that CBS, in airing the segment, relied on shady sources, did sloppy work, rushed to air without vetting, failed to get their facts straight, failed to check sources, failed to follow basic journalistic principles. In other words, just another day at CBS News. The report blames competitive pressures for the rush to air and "myopic zeal". (They feared being scooped by "Weekly World News"!)
To show they take these charges seriously and to repair the damage caused by Dan Rather's work at "60 Minutes", network honchos are punishing him with retirement from the 'Evening News', where he played an Idiot Newsreader, and hiring him full-time for "60 Minutes", where he'll play an Idiot Newsreader. (Al-Jazeera turned him down.)
So, after three months of investigating RatherGate, the panel still can't tell if there's bias at CBS and still can't tell if the documents are fakes and still can't say who fabricated the documents but tells the big bosses to fire the secretaries but keep the guy who's the poster boy for Memogate because he didn't know what was going on all around him because he was too tired to do his job.
In other words, like my headline says: Rather Saves Job; fall gals take the rap
Anyway, that's...
My Two Cents...
"JohnHuang2"
Have a great weekend, y'all -- God bless.
Rather is a delusional paranoid psychopath, living proof that liberalism is a mental disorder.
Now and forever (AMEN)
He swearers he took it out of his Selectric typewriter just before the show.
Dan finally succumbed to a basic communist/socialist prinicpal. He told a lie so big that even he believes it.
dan rather is the love child of walter cronkite and helen thomas.
Rather is so hung up on the "truth" of this document, I'd be willing to bet that his own daughter is the source. How could he doubt his daughter?
"I am rooting for Rather to hang on as long as possible. Everyday that he is in the public brings more attention and shame to the lack of ethical journalim in SEE-BS. In turn he is aiding the demise of the entire MSM."
And you my friend are "right on the money"! rather = buffoon!
This is what Dan Rather means when he says he's a man of faith.
my head! my head! must get that image out of my head before it's too late .....
This is good. The longer Dan wears his delusions in public the more naked he looks. If CBS is suicidal enough to actually air any of his post-anchor reports, they'll have zero credibility. A win-win, really. Any network that was satisfied to let Dan and the ghost of Edward R. Murrow pilot their ship deserves to sink with no lifeboats.
| Sorry, SeeBS, even the "story" the phony documents are supposed to be about is phony ____________________________ Find an overview of the FACTS about GWB's Texas Air National Guard Service at http://www.hillnews.com/york/090904.aspx A summary of the salient points are at http://boortz.com/nuze/200409/09152004.html#guard STAUDT FINALLY SURFACES: DUBYA DID NOT GET SPECIAL TREATMENT AND "SUGAR COATING" WAS NEVER REQUESTED BY ANYBODY. See both Ed Morrisey, the guy who swore W into the TANG weighs in here: http://www.thedailytimes.com/sited/story/html/173996 (the paper's front page is at http://www.thedailytimes.com/ ) Find this: "The Air Force, in their ultimate wisdom, assembled a group of 102's [F-102 pilots] and took them to Southeast Asia. Bush volunteered to go. But he needed to have 500 [flight] hours, but he only had just over 300 hours so he wasn't eligible to go,” Morrisey recalls. ... Despite that, Lieutenant Bush stayed busy. ... "He flew in active air defense missions, training missions. Day, night, regardless of inclement weather," Morrisey says. ... Colonel Morrisey assured us that to the best of his knowledge Lieutenant Bush was treated like any other officer in the Texas Air National Guard. ... Morrisey says he considers himself to be more of a Libertarian than Republican or Democrat. Nonetheless, Morrisey says he is voting for George Bush come election day. -- in BOTH printable version AND video clip at http://www.volunteertv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2346701 See what Dubya's Wing Men (NOT boaters or yachtsmen, now, but FELLOW FIGHTER PILOTS) had to say (they were not in the SAME supersonic fighter plane with him, but they DID SERVE WITH HIM AND FLEW ALONGSIDE HIM) here: http://snipurl.com/6qkp A Commentary by Col. John H. Wambough, Jr. USAF (Ret.) is at: http://jb-williams.com/guest-kerry.htm Major General Hodges says GWB didn't get preferential treatment, didn't need any, and besides, he's mad at CBS for misleading him here: http://snipurl.com/a3y2 4 Eyewitnesses who saw GWB serving in Alabama are quoted and sourced HERE: http://snipurl.com/a3y3 See Exactly WHERE George W. Bush's TANG service fits in The REALLY Big Picture here: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3919 And don't forget, IT WAS GWB who signed the Standard Form 180 asking that ALL his military records be released and JFK who DID NOT. Physical exams were irrelevant to someone like GWB who'd already taken physicals and flown for 3 years and no more flying was required (on top of that, the F-102 had started to be phased out anyway); they were never considered worth writing him up for except in the FAKE memos, the source of which SeeBS refuses to identify. The attitude of SeeBS and everyone who sided with them seems to be that it's OK to plant evidence if you think -- or at least hope -- someone's guilty. "In Texas in the late sixties and early seventies, it was so Democratic that no Republican had enough pull to have a parking ticket fixed [let alone get someone into the National Guard]." -- Robert, Lubbock, TX -- email to Fox NewsWatch, 9-18-04 Besides, Daddy Bush (GHWB) was only a junior Republican U.S. Congressman at the time and had absolutely NO influence in the LBJ/Barnes-dominated state government in Austin. THE reason they took W was because the Texas Air National Guard didn't have enough applicants to be pilots at the time, while almost all the other services did. Bush served HONORABLY, with multiple links HERE: "The [Texas Air National Guard] records released Tuesday also include orders for an August 1971 training mission in Canada, where Bush impressed his commanders. An evaluation written nine months later said Bush's 'skills as an interceptor pilot enabled him to complete all his ADC (Air Defense Command) intercept missions during the Canadian deployment with ease'." -- The Wichita Eagle, 10-5-04 Kerry's questions are answered here: http://snipurl.com/a71g This whole SeeBS fiasco was based on such an irrelevant non-story from the git-go that one can only presume there was a complete breakdown, or even lack, of standards and possibly, even malice aforethought, especially if you review the timeline of the SeeBS fiasco here: Golly, it would have been nice to say, well, they both were irresponsible kids who got away with really, really bad stuff, but hell, it's all water over the dam, etc. EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT IT TURNS OUT IF W GOT INTO ANY MISCHIEF, IT HAD NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH WHAT THEY'VE TRIED TO FRAME HIM FOR. The NYTimes' and Flim Flam Dan Rather's claims that yes, the memos are fake, but what they say is true -- amounts to saying it's OK to fabricate and plant evidence if you think -- or at least hope -- someone's guilty.
The latest attempt to prove the phony memos are "real" (this time by Utah Professor David Hailey), is shown to be yet ANOTHER fraud here: http://wizbangblog.com/archives/003851.php The Texas forgery code provides that publication of two or more fake government documents is a felony. Follow the updates on CBS's tampering with the evidence in this crime HERE: http://snipurl.com/9eqw Further, there may have been a criminal conspiracy to use forged documents in an attempt to influence a Presidential election, a federal crime. -- from THIS PAGE. |
www.newsmax.com: Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005 4:03 p.m. EST
Ex-CBS News Prez Can't Stand Rather
Former CBS News president Van Gordon Sauter said Thursday that Dan Rather's liberal bias has so permeated the "CBS Evening News" that even he can't stand to watch anymore.
"I stopped watching it some time ago," the ex-network news boss writes in today's Los Angeles Times. "The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me."
Sauter, who ran the Tiffany network's news division in the early 1980s, said he still checks in from time to time, but "less and less frequently." Instead, "I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC," he said.
The former news exec said this week's firings of four CBS employees in response to the Rathergate scandal exposed the real problem for network news:
"A large swath of the society doesn't trust the news media," he contended. "And for many, it's even stronger than that: They abhor the media and perceive it as an escalating threat to the society."
If the erosion of public trust isn't stopped, warns Sauter, viewers will look elsewhere for their news product.
"Those readers and viewers most comfortable in the center – will try to find something ... in the center," he argues.
But that could lead to "a lot of scrupulously impartial . . . news sources, managed by research-driven executives who find it a good marketing approach."
Ultimately, says Sauter, "banality will trump opinion."
Anyone who has read or heard parts of the Thornburgh report will see that basically Rather tried to cover his @ss and let the others below him take the fall. He also used his influence to circumvent normal journalist reporting.
I been suggested all day yesterday and I will again today, that we coin a few new phrases in the aftermath of Rathergate.
1. The Dan Rather Syndrome
The Dan Rather Syndrome: Noun. A pervasive attitude in one's work environment where the boss often has his subordinates take the blame for any of his (or her) wrong doing so as to cover his own @ss.
For example:
"My boss has Dan Rather Syndrome. He let two of us take the hit for his screw up on those mutual funds."
2. danrathered.
dan-rath'-erred: verb 1. to be let go to cover the incompetent missteps taken by a superior. 2. using one's influence to overturn the will of a majority of people.
Example:
"My boss danrathered me. He let me take the fall for his blunder that cost us the Anderson account."
3. Danrather Journalism
danrather journalism: noun. A term that denotes politically biased journalism.
example:
"The editorial displayed evidence of danrather journalism, portraying the republican senator as a racist."
Let this be Dan Rather's legacy.
nikos
In the final analysis, Dubya has had numerous physicals since 1973 - and Dan Rather has told more lies.
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