HODGES SAID HE WAS MISLED BY CBS

Noted Now - ABC News The Note ^ | 09/11/04 | ABC News The Note

[Ed Zoekuiper]

Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."

[gswilder]

If ABC or NBC wanted to regain their credibility and their ratings, they would go after this hard. The would regain thousands if not millions of viewers. At this point, what harm would it do, even if they too are Kerry/Dem supporters? Kerry is toast anyway. Even before this. Even is this were proven to be true. NO one cares about the Bush TANG story except the folks who are voting for Kerry anyway. Let this story flounder around for 7-10 days. It will drown Kerry out just like the SBVets. The MSM thinks they are helping Kerry, but are just hurting more every day.

[Lancey Howard]

Thanks for the reply. Well said!

The problem is, Lancey, as I see it, anyway, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings and the rest of the network talking heads live in a bubble of security that they do not understand has burst.

The networks have for so long had a monopoly on the dissemination of the news that the emergence and recent dominance of the "new" media has not yet registered with them. Incredibly, they have failed to recognize that they are obsolete.

And maybe that is understandable.

For decades, Americans got their news after getting up from the dinner table and finding only three channels on their TVs, all spitting out the same news with the same liberal spin. The networks had a captive audience and there was no alternative to their news and no dissent; they were the only game in town. That same news was only regurgitated in the morning papers and the weekly news magazines. It's no wonder they all believed they were invincible - - they were invincible.

But now that world to which they were so accustomed has been brutally smashed to pieces by the "new" media - - talk radio, the internet, C-span, and 24-hour-cable news. It all came on them like a freight train and they don't know what to do. Their panic is palpable and the implosion at CBS is a perfect example of that hysterical panic.

It's all over for them except for the crying.
Good riddance to bad garbage.

[Prost1]

There is only one question left. Who made the forgery???

Martin Frost? He has a bone in this fight.

Just kidding Martin. It's a joke, you know.

[bigbob]

Wait til the Investor Relations department at Viacom starts getting inquiries, then you'll see some folks at CBS get instant religion.

[Texasforever]

So I guess your advice is to let it drop huh?

[cookcounty]

Funny how the Lamestream press keeps using the word "hoax." If this was done against Kerry, they'd be calling it "dirty tricks," asking what way Karl Rove is connected and running endless retrospectives about Republicans, Donald Segretti and the White House plumbers.

"Hoax" implies a college prank gone a bit far.

You can take this to the bank: No matter how bad it gets, the Lamestreamers will not use the word" fraud."

[hole_n_one]

#6 Florida St. 10
#5 Miami 10
0:30 4th quarter

[Conservababe]

I smell a sneaky trick about to be sprung, and this explains why Rather isn't backing down. They are going to proclaim the originals WERE handwritten, and that all this internet frenzy about "forgeries" is "much ado about nothing".....

I believe that you are correct. What worries me the most is that 34567 PO address.

[Petronski]

I don't get it, Sam. These memos are all shabby frauds.
One after another. Who did they think they were fooling!?!

[alnick]

CBS's alphabet rivals have an interesting decision to make. They can destroy the competition by pursuing this, but that would mean destroying the Kerry campaign in the process. Will they accept that kind of collateral damage?

I'm thinking it's more like they're going to abandon the sinking swift boat. Kerry's toast. Why would the alphabets put their necks out for a sure loser?

[OMrGrant]

Advertisers don't want to be anywhere in the middle of this. It's amazing how CBS can't learn their lesson (remember the Reagan movie being shuffled off to Showtime). Rather is close to retirement and this could be the push or the lose of advertising revenues could do it.

[radicalamericannationalist]

I say we get John Edwards to represent us in a class action consumer action against CBS for fraud. I mean, he;s all about truth and justice, right?

[Texasforever]

There is only one question left. Who made the forgery???

It would have to be someone at least passingly familiar with the military and jargon. The producer was the same one that got hold of the Abu Garab photos and she got them from David Hackworth. I am starting to smell a rat.

[F16Fighter]

"CBS stands by their story."

Then let them drown in their own vomit.

[litany_of_lies]

The PO Box address is correct (present on other valid docs, and verified at USPS.com that it's real--current zip is 77234 instead of 77034 most likely because of running out of 9-digit zips in 77034).

[airborne]

But they've been passing these off as copies of the originals, and defending the typed documents as legitimate circa 1970's.

[A Citizen Reporter]

"Notice the wording of Rather's remarks tonite: "people are focussing on the documents instead of what they say..."

That's nothing. There was some guy on the live thread with us Wed night who was saying the exact same thing. They are only talking points.

If CBS news put these docs on their website, and now want to say that they were entirely transcriptions from handwritten docs......the whole network is done.

[Loyal Buckeye]

Thanks for the bio.

[libs_kma]

Possibly as a result of this is that on the today show web site, Kitty Kelly is not listed to appear on Mon-Wed like earlier reported. Has anyone heard that she has been cancelled??

[timestax]

All you posters predicting DOOM, and GLOOM for CBS, and or Rather, remind me of all the dire consequences predicted for Bildo Clintoon, and Hitlery, and lyinAlGore,and Sid Vicious Blumenthall,,Sandy Burgler,Janet Reno,and...etc.etc.