Posted on 09/08/2024 5:18:03 AM PDT by T Ruth
An important anniversary [is today]. This anniversary carries implications for how we receive news, how political campaigns are conducted, and the credibility of almost everything we see or hear from the media.
On September 8, 2004, CBS’s “60 Minutes” used forged government documents as the basis for a story that attacked the military record of then-President George W. Bush. It was bad enough that CBS used forged government documents, but what made it worse was that CBS aired this story during the presidential election and timed the airing to coincide with the rollout of Democrat John Kerry’s “favorite son” campaign theme. CBS thus provided the “news” upon which the Democrat candidate based his attack ads. The CBS story was quickly disproven and eventually forced CBS into personnel changes and investigations. Dan Rather was forced into retirement a few months later. But CBS did not give up before a lengthy battle in which bloggers demonstrated that the font and other features in the forged documents did not exist in 1972 (the date placed on the forgeries).
The battle over the truth became a story in itself. The truth about the font spread like wildfire through the blogosphere and the internet, quickly picking up steam. ...
The result was a victory for the truth and a blow to the establishment media. CBS was proven to have lied to influence a presidential election. ...
Why is a 2004 scandal at CBS still relevant [twenty] years later? Even without Dan Rather, the network has not truly changed. The other networks are just as bad – if not worse. Rathergate serves as one example of what the establishment media do. They lie. They lie regularly, and they lie during election years to help elect Democrats. ...
***
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I will never forget that post. My god. What a time that was.
Buckhead is lawyer Harry MacDougald. I have no idea if he’s still on FR, but you can look him up by name online; he’s been fairly prominent as one of the lawyers involved in the Georgia election interference lawfare case.
I don’t know anything about TankerKC.
FR was on top of it all back then. I think we’ve gotten older?
I can’t believe it’s 20 years already. I remember clear as day Freepers posting his name “Dan RaTHer” like that.
Election interference is legal for leftists, didn’t you know that? Hillary can claim Russia collusion, can even use it to participate in an attempted coup, Biden can use the FBI and justice dept. to interfere in the election time and time again, and the one guy who DIDN’T interfere in the election is the guy who gets indicted: Donald Trump
Heady days then!
Me, too! One of FR’s finest hours.
“Superscripts came with MicroSoft Word in the mid-’90s?”
Before that. Gates wasn’t the first in line for this. In the ‘70us, I used word processing by Wang in the ‘70s with proportional spacing, and the MTST/MTSC by IBM.
“I remember reading it almost real time”
I remember where I was when I first heard the news. I was listening to Rush on my Walkman-type thingie at Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills in an outdoor garden area. I was so happy that Rather got caught.
📌
This is just one example of MSM being nothing but the propaganda ministry of the Democrat party which they have been for decades and it has only gotten worse. It has been a near miracle that the opposition ever wins. Thank God for Elon and the others for mobilizing an alternative.
Here is a reason why its important to remember Rathergate. At the time, Bush/Cheney was evil incarnate to the Left. The Democrats, and their media minions, had told every lie possible to demonize Bush and Cheney, including the Rathergate lies. The Right rallied around Bush and fought back. 20 years later, how to Bush and Cheney repay conservatives? By buying into the same BS lies about Trump that the media told about them 20 years ago. By endorsing Harris or making a non-endorsement endorsement, in effect signaling that they believe what the media says about Trump. And 20 years from now, there will a new Republican president who is demonized just like every prior Republican president.
JournOList.
Yes it was
Yup, Freepers exposed Dan Rather / cBS.
I watched it unfold in the threads here.
Great work Freepers!
I joined Free Republic about a month before this broke...I was immediately hooked!
Not exactly. The Times Roman font used in the fake memo (and which is the default Word font) did exist in 1972. There was no typewriter that used it in 1972 however.
Yep. And IIRC, Tucker uncovered that.
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