Posted on 01/03/2005 3:13:27 PM PST by TankerKC
Well, you have started the new year off right by finding this site. Be sure to wave to your family once in a while...you'll be stuck in front of the computer.
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 you could make a replica of almost any document using Word. Yet Newcomers aggressive conclusion is based on this logical error.
This is simply not an honest representation and the author probably knows it. What you can produce isn't "similar," it's an identical document, and you can do it with Word set up to its defaults. The conclusion that it is a forgery is based on the relative likelihoods of someone managing to produce the document on a typewriter that somehow exactly recreates that setup, or someone simply sitting down to do in in an application that did not exist at the time.
The author's approach here is either biased or simply stupid. The number of factors favoring that point of view, including rare hardware, even rarer training in it, lack of prevalence of that hardware in the field, and the fact that the putative user couldn't even type, are so slender put together that to cling to them as a likely alternate explanation to forgery is the act of a willing suspension of disbelief. This author ought to be ashamed of it.
Awesome! Welcome.
Forums like this are nothing more than an electronic pickle barrel. As one FReeper mentioned, ideas get tossed into consideration and accepted or discarded. If the Founding Fathers had a magic telescope and could see what we are doing over the Internet in the 21st century, they would be delighted.
The entire Rather affair has been... remarkable. I watched Buckhead et. al dissect the Rather memos in real time, and it was fascinating. Frankly, I didn't think the "forgery" angle was going to have any legs (due to my cynicism towards the MSM) but the process in and of itself was glorious to behold.
So, I will chock Mr. Whatshisname Journalism Student in the "et tu" column and gloss over anything else he manages to eek out on that electronic piece of plastic he uses for his craft. Buhbye now. Please forget to write.
APf
Here's an example of "fake but accurate".
Oh, look what I found:
corey@coreypein.com
>> With such big names and old grudges in play, journalists are obliged to keep digging.
Can we assume there will be more digging into John Kerry's military record?
And CBS has yet to retract the story.
Most liberals aren't going to be ashamed of shilling; they are, however, ashamed that they got caught.
Your point about Colonel Killian not being able to type is worthy of re-mentioning, too. Those 4 CBS forgeries had no clerk's initials on them, something that no clerk in that day and age in the military would have ever omitted; which indicates that to be authentic that non-typist Killian himself would have had to have used some of the most sophisticated typesetting equipment of that time-period for informal *memos* that he never intended anyone to see but himself.
Who would believe that a non-typist Colonel would engage such sophisticated equipment for his own notes, rather than either write such a note out by hand or have a clerk type it up?!
The CSofJ's "analysis" of this situation doesn't pass even the most rudimentary smell test.
But again, such denial works in our favor. Leftists aren't cleaning up their own act, which makes them easy targets to be exposed in the future.
Dr. Haily's report was totally discounted. The blogs were correct and the memos were fake. This guy is just trying to make CBS look better and it isn't going ot work. The memos were definately done on a computer using MS Word. No doubt about it. Case closed.
But one should "consider the source." The Columbia Journalism Review is the "house organ" for the establishment press. That explains why the Dan Rather fall back position, the memos may be forged but the charges are correct, rears its ugly head in this article.
An honest article on the downfall of Dan Rather will not appear in CJR until the School of Journalism accepts the blogosphere as a legitimate part of American journalism. I don't think that will occur in my lifetime.
Congressman Billybob
TankerKC: No no no, you are VERY cool, not wrong. You are like a demi-deity to us. And yes, in the past (as little as five years ago) they would have been considered "middle of the road" as far as analysis, I believe. But many things have changed about the business of journalism in the last decade, and it's a shame that they now view independent journalists (bloggers included) as threats rather than allies...
Howlin, is that "Prospect" as in "American Prospect"? Interesting...
Except, I don't want to write him/her. I don't want such leftists to have the benefit of my constructive criticism. Let such liberals continue to cover for their own kind rather than clean up their own act. It makes their attacks easier for us to publicly expose and discredit with simple, uncontestable facts.
w00t, you are queen!
Well, if the dead can vote why can't they come back and type lying memos?
Aggressive is the new lefty word for biased.
http://www.coreypein.com/
He's a blogger.
It was flat-out lies like that one that really made CBS look bad. Relying on experts who make a good-faith error is one thing. Claiming you relied on them when you actually ignored them is quite another.
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