Posted on 02/21/2005 2:46:08 AM PST by Liz
The corporate suits over at CBS thought they were free and clear. Uh-uh.
Following last month's release of a scathing report by a blue-ribbon panel on their self-inflicted "60 Minutes" Memogate mess, the CBS execs hoped to get away without truly cleaning house.
True, the one-time Tiffany Network had to accept a public rebuke for the way its journalists had handled the phony document scam relating to President Bush's Vietnam-era military service.
But its two stars, news chief Andrew Heyward and anchorman Dan Rather, were spared the ax — unlike producer Mary Mapes, who was fired, and three others, who were asked to resign.
Those actions, CBS President Les Moonves said at the time, would allow the network "to put this crisis behind us."
Not so fast.
Those three other producers — including "60 Minutes" Executive Producer Josh Howard — aren't going quietly. They've refused to quit and are readying lawsuits — not only to defend their actions, but to charge that the network's report deliberately ignored evidence that implicates top CBS brass in the ongoing fiasco.
To which we say to the CBS Three: Go to it.
We think the public is entitled to know whether Heyward played a key role in CBS' obstinate public defense of the segment — long after it became clear the documents were deeply flawed and probably blatant forgeries.
We'd also like to know just how "overworked" poor Dan Rather was that both the report and the network held him blameless in the whole farce, reducing him to nothing more than a talking prop.
This was a watershed moment for the mainstream media in general, and for CBS in particular.
To be sure, any lawsuit will stay far away from any suggestion the network was motivated by political bias.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
LOL. Yeh, I guess we're Rainmen, Idiot savants.
...........155 matches from that matchbox.
****
Anatomy of a Freeper...http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1303577/posts
For those of you who just stumble around Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, Powerline or The Corner, and a couple of internet sites to get your dose of non-Ratherised news, you may not have ever heard of a "Freeper". In a minute, I'm going to use the following example to give you a window into their world.
Freepers are people who post to a rather interesting bulletin board service called Free Republic. A lot of my blogging friends know about them, but surprisingly enough, not very many of them view them as a news source they visit frequently. I think the Freepers are an essential element in gathering news. If you go in with the right mindset, and know what you are looking for, it can be a goldmine of information.
Hugh Hewitt has often called freepers the Coast Watchers of the new media. When news happens, either in print, on radio, or on television, someone will post a link, and much of the meat of the story, as the beginning of a thread. Within minutes, if the story is juicy enough, just like flies, freepers all over will descend on the story and give their two cents worth.
Here's where the discernment of the person surfing has to come in. There are saboteurs who will immediately try to spin the story, especially if it's political, and there will be people from every walk of life taking their shots until the end of the thread takes the original picture the story paints and turns it into a Picasso.
*****
When the Rathergate story broke, there were responses, theories, and updates literally every time you hit the refresh button. Freepers are very much part of the face of new media. They are also very much a part of the blogosphere. The speed at which news travels on sites like this is the reason why liberals can no longer dominate the media and control the spin to suit their agenda. The news moves too fast. There are too many people who see stuff and post it, and there are too many smart people to praise it and spread it around if it has merit, and dissect it like a frog in biology class if it's bogus. In cases like Rathergate, a bogus story can be proven false, spread all over the world, and completely discrediting of the original reporter before he/she comes to work the next morning.
Baby seal MMMMMMMMMMMM!
It sounds like a scene from "Austin Powers".
Dr. Evil:
"OK, here's the plan. Back in the 60's, I started a radical political movement with strong leftist tendencies. More recently, one of their members has become a prominent figure in the democrat party. We will get him appointed as the head of the DNC, causing a precipitous decline in the power, integrity, and relevance of the democrats. That is, unless they pay us a hefty ransom?"
Number 2:
"Eh-hmmm. Dr. Evil, that already has happened."
I love the metaphor here, which can be taken to compare the MSM stories with steaming piles of sh*t, which most of them are!
LOL! What you say is funny, but when I first read this months ago I was a little bummed that we were called "flies". But what you say about the MSM (Oldmedia) is so true.
About the MSM ............. from years ago:
***
Upton Sinclair: As I have said, I know several of the men and women who help to edit [The Los Angeles Times]. These men and women will read this book, and I now request the general public to step outside for a few moments, while I address these editors privately. I speak, not in my own voice, but in that of an old-time journalist, venerated in his day, John Swinton, editor of the New York Tribune. Sinclair is answering, at a banquet of his fellow editors, the toast: "An Independent Press":
There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns.
You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to writes (sic) his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with--others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things--and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.
You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an "Independent Press."
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
I had a guy that tried that once. He kept showing up for work.
He got the message, only after payday.
Yeah, that bothered me too, but it's worth it to be able to put MSM stories in their proper context!
Right, Karl Rove planted the fake documents and told Jeff Gannon about it, who exposed Mary Mapes as the recipient. That's their tin foil hat theory.LOL
To quote a red-headed toupeee wearing blowhard from another network: Just say "You're fired." Box their sh** up and put it in fron tof the building. Escort them out.
"Those silly Democrats. There ARE NO "amateurs" on Free Republic. The eeeeeeevil Bush-Rove-Scaife Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Fund pays us, we're PROFESSIONALS. And paying us WELL. Just how well? Let's put it this way: I have platinum pajamas. LOL!" ROFLOL!
Someone needs to start a "CBS", or "Rathergate" ping list.
Don't you know that Charlie Rangel has declared that redneck is now a term of endearment and not an epithet?
-PJ
How does he explain the apparently coordinated release of the DNC's "Fortunate Son" campaign video?
-PJ
You'd think they'd have enought sense to do that.......oh, wait, according to PC rules, that would be too judgemental, too aggressive.
They're learning the hard way.....FReepers are not insignificant.
Actually Liz, they are so arrogant, they never learn.
GW is Dumb. Rove/Halliburton rule the universe, and Freepers are stupid right wingers.
That arrogance will eventually lead to their demise as a political power.
This just keeps getting more and more fun!
Congratulations FreeRepublic! You put the CBS libs in the hot seat with a ribbon and bow attached! Thumbs up!
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