Posted on 09/20/2004 7:07:29 AM PDT by Reynolds
CBS News plans to issue a statement, perhaps as early as today, saying that it was misled on the purported National Guard memos the network used to charge that President Bush received favored treatment 30 years ago.
The statement would represent a huge embarrassment for the network, which insisted for days that the documents reported by Dan Rather on "60 Minutes" are authentic. But the statement could help defuse a crisis that has torn at the network's credibility.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Sounds like CBS may soon be willing to give up the source in an attempt to protect themselves.
Dan Rather must apologize on air for this or he's finished. He may be finished anyway. Looking like a partisan tool or looking like an imbecile, which is better? That's the choice he has now.
The key to any CBS statement is whether they continue to claim the story is true while finally recognizing the documents are forgeries. If they do that, any statement will just be another shovel-full in the hole they are digging for themselves.
Here's going to be spin, "If Bush can be misled on Iran, we can be mislead on some memos. At least nobody got killed because of them." You just wait, that will be their mantra.
CBS - Planned to lie and got caught.
You don't collect documents and statements for five years and then be "misled" to base your whole story on 4 - 6 fake documents.
I can't believe CBS NEVER laid out all their documents for review and could not detect the real ones from the fakes.
The fakes are so bad it does not take an expert to figure out the problem.
CBS reported with malice is the only answer.
Iran=Iraq
Anything less than Dan Rather saying, "because of this story, won't be enough.
How about "because of this story, I resign"
My typing can't keep up - more coffee needed, obviously.
if the very best people at CBS can be misled by such incompetent forgeries that aren't out an hour before they're discovered by ameteurs, then CBS has some realy competency issues!
CBS designates a fall guy. And like the 9-11 Commission, will find that they are blamless... that the hired-help let them down.
Well Bill Burkett makes for a nice scapegoat. Independent of the Kerry campaign, history of mental illness... CBS will pray the WaPo takes it at face value and declines to investigate into Cleland, who leads directly to John Kerry.
Either way, Rather is finished. This was gross negligence at BEST, complicity in a crime at worst.
There are crimes! Who at CBS volunteers to take the fall?
I hope the truth ends up being that Max Cleland sent the materials to CBS after receiving them from that wacko Burkett guy in Texas. That would implicate the DNC, since Cleland was in Texas on behalf of the Kerry Campaign to showboat at the Bush ranch.
I would be surprised if Rather apologizes directly to the President for making those kinds of accusations. I want to see this guy on his knees in repentance, but that's too much to ask for a baffoon running CBS.
SeeBS is deflecting again...they're pointing out that the person who raised the forgery questions is a freeper as if it matters. First-rate news organization, those guys.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml
"Here's going to be spin, "If Bush can be misled on Iran, we can be mislead on some memos. At least nobody got killed because of them." You just wait, that will be their mantra."
Only difference is that CBS had many people tell them the docs were forged before they went to air -- so they weren't REALLY misled.
I'll bet it's just a statement read by someone other than Rather. If it's by him, there will definitely be a qualifier...at least a jab.
Oh no, there goes the credibility of CBS which means they`ve lost nothing.
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