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PC World: Top 10 Internet Scandals of All Time (Free Republic & Rathergate)
via MSNBC ^ | 6 FEB 2007 | Dan Tynan, PC World

Posted on 02/06/2007 4:37:21 PM PST by Polybius

The Web is a great way to deliver information, but it's also a great way to expose, spread, or jump-start a scandal.

SNIP

The Net's biggest scandals are nothing if not democratic, touching everyone from the most ordinary individuals to the highest office in the land. Not everyone deserved the notoriety. Some were hapless victims of privacy breaches; others were exposed by hackers or misguided crusaders. But in almost every case, somebody ended up getting fired, sued, or mortally embarrassed.

SNIP

3. Dan Rather Bids a Font Farewell

They were supposed to be the smoking gun the Bush Administration was desperate to conceal: four documents, dating from the early 1970s, that allegedly proved that powerful friends of our current president pulled strings to keep him out of Vietnam and put him into the National Guard. But shortly after 60 Minutes host Dan Rather revealed the documents' existence in September 2004, the gun blew up in his face. Conservative blogs Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, and Power Line questioned the authenticity of the documents--specifically, whether a 1970s-era typewriter could produce the superscript th and curly apostrophes found in the four memos.

Instead of focusing on where W actually was when he was supposed to be serving with the National Guard in 1972, political bloggers immersed themselves in the arcana of typewriter fonts--and the mainstream media followed suit. Twelve days after airing the segment, Dan Rather publicly apologized for the story, saying he could not vouch for the documents' authenticity. A few months later, he quietly left CBS--with the inevitable "gate" permanently appended to his name.

(Excerpt) Read more at tech.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Free Republic; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: buckhead; fr; frinthenews; frmilestones; greathreads; memogate; pajamapeoplerule; rathergate; waronerror
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To: All; nutmeg

.

DAVID SHAW: RATHER's work 'Shoddy, Slipshod'...not LIBERAL..?

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227809/posts

.


101 posted on 02/08/2007 8:34:08 PM PST by ALOHA RONNIE ("ALOHA RONNIE" Guyer/Veteran-"WE WERE SOLDIERS" Battle of IA DRANG-1965 http://www.lzxray.com)
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To: pyx

"Dan Rather Bids a Font Farewell"

Well Dan.......uh....font you!


102 posted on 02/08/2007 8:38:02 PM PST by stephenjohnbanker (Our troops will send all of the worlds terrorists to hell in a handbasket with no virgins!)
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To: Polybius
Free Republic and Rathergate make it to Number 3 in the Top 10 Internet Scandals of All Time as ranked by PC World

The whole premise of the article regarding the exposure by certain online sources of Rather's and CBS's attempted use of forged documents to influence a Presidential election is a lie. It was not an "internet scandal" at all - it was a "broadcast network news scandal". THEY are the ones who lied, and got caught. They OWN the scandal.

103 posted on 02/08/2007 8:49:59 PM PST by tarheelswamprat (So what if I'm not rich? So what if I'm not one of the beautiful people? At least I'm not smart...)
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To: don-o

HEAR HEAR


104 posted on 02/08/2007 9:35:31 PM PST by do the dhue (DEM ARE RATS!!!!!)
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To: tarheelswamprat
The whole premise of the article regarding the exposure by certain online sources of Rather's and CBS's attempted use of forged documents to influence a Presidential election is a lie. It was not an "internet scandal" at all - it was a "broadcast network news scandal". THEY are the ones who lied, and got caught. They OWN the scandal.

The article is not about scandals OF the Internet.

It is about "the Net's ability to expose scoundrels, scalawags, liars, cheats, and fools--and then broadcast the scandal to a billion glowing screens".

It is about the power of the Internet to break the so-called "Mainstream Media's" previous information distribution monopoly. It is about the Internet's power to not only expose information that the MSM would previously have kept hidden but to expose even the scoundrels, scalawags, liars, cheats, and fools of the MSM itself.

In the case of Rather-gate:

"But shortly after 60 Minutes host Dan Rather revealed the documents' existence in September 2004, the gun blew up in his face. Conservative blogs Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, and Power Line questioned the authenticity of the documents--specifically, whether a 1970s-era typewriter could produce the superscript th and curly apostrophes found in the four memos .............. A few months later, he quietly left CBS--with the inevitable "gate" permanently appended to his name."

Thus, the Number One scandal was:

"1. Monica-gate and Whitewater ........ On January 17, 1998, Matt Drudge broke the news that White House intern Monica Lewinsky was having an affair with President Bill Clinton. The story appeared on his Web site, the Drudge Report, and quickly turned into one of the biggest scandals in our nation's history--and established the Internet as a news source to be reckoned with."

Before the Internet, there was so-called "Freedom of the Press" but that actually meant "Freedom of the Press Editors Only".

If the Press did not want the American People to know about something, they kept it hidden and ten thousand citizens writing one hundred thousand letters to the editor did not have the power of the arrogant editors who decided what the American People would be allowed to know and thereby exerted political power though the uninformed and misinformed electoral mass.

The Internet plus a Forum such as Free Republic allows somebody at home in his pajamas to put out information to America and the World that can bring down the credibility of CBS.

The article is about the dawn of the era of "Freedom of the People's Say" and the end of the era of "Freedom of the Press Editor Only".

105 posted on 02/09/2007 7:33:33 AM PST by Polybius
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To: Kermit the Frog Does theWatusi; Polybius

Dan Rather - the gift that keeps giving.

We still need to design those honorary Rathergate pajamas.

106 posted on 02/09/2007 11:42:33 AM PST by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: COUNTrecount

Poor ol' Dan. He really thought he was going to bring down the President with this nonsense - I bet he cries about it today every time he thinks about it.........


107 posted on 02/12/2007 8:10:35 PM PST by greccogirl
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To: dalight
The soft underbelly of the conservative movement is that it has no mechanism to deal with the double standard of the left and no stomach to make the left live by the same rules. We just shrug it off and decide thats how the game is played.


its time for conservatives to "MAN UP" or walk into Whigdom

108 posted on 02/13/2007 11:39:25 AM PST by Nat Turner (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME)
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To: radiohead
Yep! I've told friends that one day our grandchildren will be reading about how FReepers and bloggers brought down an entrenched member of the media establishment.

too bad FR doesn't have a torphy gallery. We could stick Rather's and Kerrey's heads in it. i'm sure we could add more.

109 posted on 02/13/2007 11:55:06 AM PST by Centurion2000 (If you're not being shot at, it's not a high stress job.)
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To: ken5050
Anyone remember "Deep in the Heurtgen Forrest?" LOL

hehe.

110 posted on 02/16/2007 11:48:24 AM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: MarkL
Nope, they just say, "nobody concentrated on the charges, but on the fonts."

Except that we did. Lt. Bush wasn't due to have the physical until his birth month.

111 posted on 02/16/2007 11:55:39 AM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: SuziQ
FR didn't focus on where George W. Bush was because we KNEW where he was at that time, and they knew that the National Guard knew where he was, because he'd received permission to do his NG duties at a different post. So since we already KNEW that, we focused on the fraud being perpetrated by CBS, as it was the more important story.

That's a different fraudulent scandal. Rathergate was about whether he was ordered to show up to a physical, whether a *retired* general was putting pressure on a LTC that it turns out liked Lt. Bush.

112 posted on 02/16/2007 11:59:08 AM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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