Posted on 09/12/2004 2:43:11 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
These days, CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his colleagues at the network's magazine program "60 Minutes II" are enduring an unusual wave of second-guessing by some of the public and fellow journalists.
For that, they can thank "Buckhead."
It was a late-night blog posting by this mystery Netizen that first questioned the validity of documents Rather cited Wednesday as proof that George W. Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duty more than 30 years ago.
Buckhead refuses to further identify himself, other than dropping hints that he is a male who lives on the East Coast — preferring to proclaim that the scramble to verify the contentions in his posting marks an extraordinary achievement for a medium that has operated more as an underground world of ideological venting than a source of legitimate news.
But Buckhead is vehement about one thing: He acted alone when he posted, to the conservative website FreeRepublic.com, what was widely believed to be the first allegation that the CBS report relied on documents that could have been forged.
"Absolutely, positively, on my own, sitting at my computer in my bedroom just before midnight — but not in my pajamas," he wrote in an e-mail exchange with The Times. "But once I posted the comment to Free Republic I was no longer working alone, and that is the real point of the story about the story about the story."
That story began Wednesday, 19 minutes after the "60 Minutes II" broadcast began, when another FreeRepublic poster, TankerKC, noted that the documents were "not in the style that we used when I came into the USAF…. Can we get a copy of those memos?"
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I'm forming the virtual chapter of "Buff FReepers". Want in?
"Bastion of Right Wing Lunacy?"
L0L nice try Smearboy!
Here's one...President Bush is eating in my undisclosed location
Karl, is that YOU?!
LOLOLOL! I'm lovin' this! Kudo's again Buckhead, Tanker KC and all involved.
Prairie
Yes they do list false FR accounts that can be used to get onto FR without having an account!
Addendum: Therefore, I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE FREEREPUBLIC!!! It's more than simply appreciate.. I'm grateful. There are posters from all over the world who post and get "posted" in FR. I no longer have to seek out "foreign sources" JUST in order to get a more comprehensive picture on the US; but I can now get it - focused. In past I had to weed out foreign commentary -- as their articles were written with focus upon their own countries (to their own country's benefit), with news on US being primarily, peripheral. Now I can get the news from within my own country, about my own country -- and with so many views, I get to become... news-educated. And by my own fellow countrymen.
Clearly Jim Jordan hates pajamas.
During this election, the divide between those who seek the truth and those who seek to deceive is strikingly clear.
I am proud to be on the side of the "good guys"!
I'm sorry to hear this but Jim should be able to lock them out if there are not too many of them and no dedicated effort to generate new ones. Unfortunately if there are enough DU'ers willing to share their login and password there is not much you can do about it.
After all, they're the ones who couldn't spot an obvious forgery, even when people warned them ahead of time.
And another thing the article fails to understand is that the anonymity of the posters makes for BETTER info...
Nobody can sit on their laurels or resume at Free Republic, you sink or swim based solely on the quality and documentation of the facts you add to the discussion.
And BTW, you're a particularly excellent swimmer ;-)
Nice monitor .. LOL!
They still don't get it. The network that thought America wanted to see Ronald Reagan taken apart in a sleazy movie-of-the-week, and the like-minded, just don't get it. You'd have thought that debacle taught them a lesson. I guess when Dan Rather is forced to admit the forgery, they'll get it, maybe a little bit.
Good point. If the MSM was interested in actually reporting just-the-truth, they'd consider the Internet and blogging a tremendous boon. The fact that we get in their way is telling.
Yea - what you said.
I think there's gonna be some great post-Rathergate fallout - good exposure for fr and the conservative blogs, and damage to Old Media credibility (we've always known cbs et al were arms of the dnc, but having actual proof is sweet).
Hearsay and anonymous sources don't hold any water here or on any of the reputable blogs -- as opposed to the MSM.
They have strayed so far from the path of legitimate journalism that they cannot even admit that it is facts that make the case, not anonymous unsourced propaganda.
ROFLOL
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