Blog-GateYes, CBS screwed up badly in ‘Memogate’ — but so did those who covered the affair

Columbia Journalism Review ^ | January 3, 2005 | Corey Pein

[hineybona]

I just wrote to him about his moronic article..More should do the same. He deserves it .

[supercat]

Even worse, typerwriters of the day were awful. They dropped, slanted, missed, and generally had impurities in the final product -- even the vaunted IBM with the typeballs. To exactly match a document produced in that era would take hours -- shifting over to the right a point, dro;pping a letter a 1/2 point, etc. etc.

The "documents" are sufficiently munged by faxing and crumpling that it's not clear that any defects that would have been present in typed originals would be identifiable in the faxes. Had the documents been set in a monospaced computer font whose horizontal and vertical spacing were 0.1" and 1/6", respectively, and had the typist been careful to avoid any "Word-isms" (superscript ordinals, etc.), it could have been harder to identify them as fakes.

The problem here is that unlike monospaced fonts whose letterspacing can be described using two numbers (horizontal and vertical, global for the whole font) getting the spacing right for a proportionally-spaced font requires many dozens of numbers. The likelihood of all of those lining up on two fonts would be exceptionally remote unless one font was designed to precisely match the other, or both were designed to precisely match a common "ancestor". Since Times New Roman was not designed to precisely match any pre-existing font, the "documents" must have been created to precisely match Times New Roman's spacing.

[jellybean]

The most glaring evidence that these were fake is the fact that there were no typos. Even the most accomplished typists make errors from time to time. Yet we were supposed to believe that LTC Killian, who rately used a typewriter, was able to type these 4 memos with no mistakes. I wouldn't even want to guess what the odds are on that.

[Cosmo]

"obtuse" comes to mind.

[Libertina]

Welcome to FR!

[GeronL]

I notice how they link all the critics to conservatism to discredit them as partisan, but somehow they don't feel liberals are partisan. Amazing.

[codercpc]

Bump for later reading.

[FormerACLUmember]

Columbia School of Jounalism is one of the key elements in the democrat party's overwhelming control of the media. This is the most deceitful spin I have ever seen.

[Jonah Hex]

That's when and how I found FR.

[Rodney King]

These supposedly damning rants, alluded to in USA Today, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, are not really any loonier than an essay in Harper’s or a conversation at a Democratic party gathering during the campaign.

Very telling indeed.

[Oberon]

I stopped here:

"We don’t know whether the memos were forged, authentic, or some combination thereof. Indeed, they could be fake but accurate..."

[dirtboy]

But CBS’s critics are guilty of many of the very same sins. First, much of the bloggers’ vaunted fact-checking was seriously warped. Their driving assumptions were often drawn from flawed information or based on faulty logic.

Which was subsequently debated in detail on FR - and claims that could not be supported were discredited long before the MSM did the same (such as the claim that typewriters back then couldn't do superscripts - FR debunked that almost immediately).

This guy is engaging in the favorite tool of the MSM - lies through omission. The problem is, the blogs quickly spot those omissions and throw them right back into their faces.

[IncPen]

Teaching the liberals is SO time consuming!

Mr Pein

I have read your recent piece in the CJR, and am troubled by your observations.

Clearly you believe that the efforts of the 'experts' at CBS outweigh the amateur sleuthing of 'bloggers' on the internet. Let's look at a few items from your piece:

>>First, much of the bloggers’ vaunted fact-checking was seriously warped<<

Last time I checked, 'bloggers' - actually, amateurs discussing current events on a political forum - ought be not held to the same rigorous fact-checking as a corporation that accepts money for and advertises itself under the guise of being a 'news organization'. Can you see the distinction?

>>Second, and worse, the reviled MSM often followed the bloggers’ lead.<<

Please show examples of the 'mainstream media' that held Rather's feet to the fire on this. When did Brokaw, Jennings or Wolf Blitzer call for Rather's head? Washington Post? NYTimes? (Hint: They didn't. Even Bill O'Reilly defended him, for Chrissakes)

>>We don’t know whether the memos were forged, authentic, or some combination thereof. <<

Yes, exactly! Neither did CBS. Precisely why Rather shouldn't have used them! You can't possibly be this stupid!

>>Indeed, they could be fake but accurate, as Killian’s secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told CBS on September 15.<<

Um, no. "Fake but accurate" is Orweillian double-speak for "lie". Please Corey, define accuracy as you - the journalist - understand it.

>>Ultimately, we don’t know enough to justify the conventional wisdom: that the documents were “apparently bogus” (as Howard Kurtz put it, reporting on Dan Rather’s resignation) and that a major news network was an accomplice to political slander.<<

Bullsh!t. Rather has not, cannot and will not refute those questioning his use of the documents. This alone reduces their validity to zero. You ought to Google "Occam's Razor".

>>The very first post attacking the memos — nineteen minutes into the 60 Minutes II program — was on the right-wing Web site FreeRepublic.com by an active Air Force officer, Paul Boley of Montgomery, Alabama, who went by the handle “TankerKC.” Nearly four hours later it was followed by postings from “Buckhead,” whom the Los Angeles Times later identified as Harry MacDougald, a Republican lawyer in Atlanta.<<

You didn't note Dan Rather's political leaning in your piece. Or anyone supporting Rather's claims. Why?

>>Hailey wasn’t the only one to feel the business end of a blog-mob. The head of one CBS affiliate said he received 5,000 e-mail complaints after the 60 Minutes II story, only 300 of which were from his viewing area.<<

Is accountability in the media a local or global issue? Better that this affiliate only hear from his constituents?

>>In order to understand “Memogate,” you need to understand “Haileygate.” David Hailey, a Ph.D. who teaches tech writing at Utah State University — not a professional document examiner, but a former Army illustrator — studied the CBS memos. His typographic analysis found that, contrary to widespread assumptions, the document may have been typed.<<

I'm with Hailey on this. Typed indeed! It would take forever to hand draw all that lettering. But, Corey, you've already dismissed the use of copies as legitimate. Why bring up Hailey?

>>Someone found a draft of his work on a publicly accessible university Web site, and it wound up on a conservative blog, Wizbang. The blog, citing “evidence” that it had misinterpreted, called Hailey a “liar, fraud, and charlatan.” Soon Hailey’s e-mail box was flooded. Anonymous callers demanded his dismissal.<<

Hailey has to learn to hide his stuff on the internet. I will go on record against Hailey if it helps get him fired. Some tech writer! What a moron!

Corey, your greatest error is the most telling:

Free Republic is not a blog. It is an amateur political discussion forum that pre-dates 'blogs' and the even the internet as it is today known. Free Republic is not a 80 year old corporation that accepts money and promotes itself as an icon of independence. Free Republic started as a repository and discussion forum on Prodigy's BBS, early in the Clinton years. A 'blog' or 'web-log' is understood (by the unwashed) to be the diary of an individual or a small group. Even a rookie reporter would not have made such an obvious error.

Have you visited FR?

You are clearly bent on partisanship at the expense of reputaton- hardly the sort of accusation an aspiring journalist ought to open himself to in the post-Jayson Blair/Dan Rather world. And your snide manner belies your obvious higher cause in writing this dreck: You want to be noticed by the 'club' of liberal elites and brought into the fold for the selfless act of having thrown yourself on the pyre of Dan Rather's career.

Bravo! We can't wait dissect you!

- Incpen - FReeper #179, exposing morons like Corey Pein since (before) 1997

Look here, chumpo:

Chump

More Chump

[JoeSixPack1]

OMG,, finally!! A writer who has less of a grasp on the english language than I!

[massgopguy]

Try using money that is "fake but accurate".

[Earthdweller]

After your post, this just jumped out at me.

"...it wound up on a conservative blog, Wizbang."

(WIZBANG, BOOM, POW!!! Duhh..did that sound good..bahbahbah Batman?..er..uhum...ratman?)

Are the super-journalist wannabe's tights on too snug or did his mommy tell him to write this?

[Howlin]

We be oldsters. :-)

[<1/1,000,000th%]

We don’t know whether the memos were forged, authentic, or some combination thereof. Indeed, they could be fake but accurate, as Killian’s secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told CBS on September 15.

Huh? I didn't get any farther than this.

[Jonah Hex]

I'm not old, just.... well-seasoned.

:-)

[Mr. K]

"Newcomer begins with the presumption that the documents are forgeries, and as evidence submits that he can create a very similar document on his computer. This proves nothing "

WRONG! The likelihood of a current word processor producing a nearly exact match to a 1970 document is so small as to be negligable. This IS proof.