Posted on 09/22/2004 5:42:42 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
Humiliation for a CBS Goliath is a victory for the Net's Davids, says Miranda Devine.
The humiliating fall from grace this week of American CBS News and its star journalist Dan Rather hasn't made many headlines here. But the reverberations for journalism are being felt around the world in what could be seen as a victory of new media over old media.
It's a David v Goliath victory by "bloggers in pyjamas" over a $US7 million ($10 million) network anchorman and the most prestigious television news organisation in America.
Rather, the Ray Martin of America, finally admitted defeat on Tuesday and apologised for his US Sixty Minutes "scoop" two weeks ago, which relied on forged documents to allege President George Bush used family connections for favourable treatment in the Texas National Air Guard in the early 1970s.
In the middle of a super-charged US election campaign in which Bush has been polling ahead of his Democrat challenger, John Kerry, this was dynamite news, proof at last of the suspicion long-held by Michael Moore fans that Bush had been a rich-boy Vietnam War shirker.
But the memos, supposedly written by Bush's long-dead squadron commander, were such obvious forgeries that within hours of Rather's story going to air, the blogosphere - as the internet world of webloggers, or bloggers, is called - had declared them hoaxes, because they could never have been written on a 1970s typewriter.
Bloggers - private individuals with their own websites - had "blown the cyber-whistle", as the Washington Post called it. One of the first bloggers on the case was Charles Johnson of the little green footballs website (www.littlegreenfootballs.com), a 51-year-old Californian web designer who quickly demonstrated why the memos were frauds.
He downloaded them from the CBS website, retyped one memo in Microsoft Word format and then superimposed his version on top of the CBS one. Because it was an exact copy, with the same spaces between letters and the same word-wrapping between lines he concluded the downloaded memo must have been typed on a computer using a sophisticated program that didn't exist in 1972.
All sorts of forensic detail about typefaces and kerning and proportionate spacing was being supplied to bloggers by their readers, who number in the tens of thousands.
At the height of "Rathergate", the Instapundit website recorded 440,000 page views in one day. For instance, it was claimed that the little raised "th" used in the CBS memo couldn't have been produced by a 1970s typewriter. As Johnson told the Washington Post: "We've got a huge pool of highly motivated people who go out there and use the tools to find stuff. We've got an army of citizen journalists."
The mainstream media soon joined in, uncovering more evidence of forgery. Rather and CBS were forced to apologise. Bloggers gave each other cyber-high-fives and began gleefully calling themselves the "Pyjamahadeen", in honour of a disparaging comment during the week by a former CBS executive, Jonathan Klein.
"These bloggers have no checks and balances," said Klein. "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances and a guy sitting in his living room in his pyjamas, writing."
A small group of protesters, some in pyjamas, even rallied yesterday outside the Washington headquarters of CBS News.
Australian pyjamahadeen loved the story, too. Bulletin columnist Tim Blair, 39, whose three-year-old weblog (timblair.spleenville.com) has between 50,000 and 80,000 "unique visitors" a week, described it yesterday as "the perfect storm".
"Everyone's always thought Dan Rather was biased and the forgeries were so stupid and easy to [reveal]." Blair, a friend and former senior editor at Time magazine, says the mainstream old media can benefit from the blowtorch of the blogosphere in lifting its standards of accuracy. "As long as they don't dismiss people as wearing pyjamas. The garment isn't the issue."
Some of the most successful bloggers, such as 41-year-old Anglo-American former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan, boast of 100,000 readers a day, more than some newspapers. His four-year-old weblog (andrewsullivan.com) now makes a small profit, thanks to donations from readers. Their growing influence is leading to a reluctant revolution inside newsrooms around the world.
Relentless pressure from bloggers and their readers is credited with forcing The New York Times to sack executive editor Howell Raines last year after reporter Jayson Blair was found to have made up stories.
Earlier this year Tim Blair (no relation) raised suspicions in his blog about an article in the Chicago Tribune, quoting an Australian psychiatrist making racist remarks about Aborigines. "These people always complain," the psychiatrist "Graham Thorn" was quoted saying. "They want it both ways: their way and our way. They want to live in our society and be respected, yet they won't work. They steal, they rob and they get drunk. And they don't respect the laws."
Blair smelled a rat. The quote was too perfect, "almost a parody". So he wrote an email to the Tribune. Freelance writer Uli Schmetzer admitted to fabricating the name and the occupation of "Graham Thorn" and the Tribune "terminated" his contract - sacked him, in other words.
The Tribune's public editor Don Wycliff, thanked Blair and declared: "In the internet age, there are fewer and fewer places where the Chicago Tribune cannot be accessed and read critically by people about whom we write. And that is a very good thing."
Another case Blair cites is of the "plastic turkey". Last year George Bush flew to Iraq for a Thanksgiving meal with his troops and was photographed holding a platter of golden turkey. It was a real turkey, reported the Washington Post, dressed and primped for display at the front of the mess hall, in Army tradition.
Newspapers around the world called it a "plastic turkey" and a myth was born, which bloggers have taken delight in hammering ever since. Finally, nine months later, said Blair, the bloggers were victorious and The New York Times published a correction.
Back at CBS, Rather seems to think the pyjamahadeen are part of some vast right-wing conspiracy. By the end of last week, before he formally apologised, he told the Washington Post: "I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces."
Some newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times, were also drawing import from the fact that some of the bloggers active on the Rather story were conservatives, Republican activists even. D'oh. But it makes no difference whether the bloggers were partisans or not. CBS and Dan Rather must have been blind to run a story based on such bogus documents. They have blown their reputations.
The good news for consumers of journalism is that journalists are increasingly on notice from the pedantic fact-checkers of the pyjamahadeen.
Sorry,
MAM=MSM
"The good news for consumers of journalism is that journalists are increasingly on notice from the pedantic fact-checkers of the pyjamahadeen."
I am a FReeper; I am one of those pedantic fact-checkers of the pyjamahadeen. I'm very proud to be a member of both.
I get my news where I want; not where it's force fed. I read my favorite blogs daily. I despise the MSM and their arrogance.
In the end, I'm simply an American who thinks our country deserves better than forgeries and the spin of the MSM.
Do sweatpants count?
Not only is the MSM biased, but their ugly too! LOL
That's his salary ............. no wonder consumers have to pay more for advertised products b/c CBS has to charge high ad rates to create income to pay Dan and all the other CBS (gag) personnel.
"My name is Rather and I'm a dick."
$10 million - to commit a felony? In the long run, that could pay off...
Dan Rather and CBS have reduced the fifth estate to a new low.
Let them print or say lies about GW we are waiting to POUNCE and denounce them and their lies. The day when the elite socialist media ruled the news is DONE..stick a fork in it.
Don't mess with the
How about over sized T-shirts?
I think that's okay......right after the snipers were nabbed, I broke a story about them (AP picked it up 45 minutes later) being a member of a Muslim-offshoot prison gang, and I was wearing a bathtowel and wet-hair-turban the whole time.
"We've got an army of citizen journalists."...who have assumed the responsibility that professional journalists have neglected and the authority that they have abdicated.
"The mainstream old media can benefit from the blowtorch of the blogosphere in lifting its standards of accuracy."Yes, it can, but it won't. It has no interest in accuracy or truth. It is committed to propaganda. That's the problem.
"Back at CBS, Rather seems to think the pyjamahadeen are part of some vast right-wing conspiracy"...and that truth is a right-wing contrivance.
"CBS and Dan Rather must have been blind to run a story based on such bogus documents.Yes, in the sense that Oedipus and Jocasta were blind (i.e. before their epiphany). They were all blinded by hubris and denial.
Rather and the rest of the CBS staff would have been wise to pay attention in Greek Lit. class back in college. They might not have had to repeat some very unpleasant history if they had.
cool, my favorite sleep shirt has a graphic with a cave man with a club on it...saying Nay Saying Ninny Neanderthal Taxpayer (which is what the RATS called us because we didn't want an IT_...I made in to war to the protests when they attempted to shove an income tax down our throats here in TN.
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