Posted on 05/01/2008 6:38:52 AM PDT by BufordP
On 4/11/08, The Newseum opened its new quarters in Washington, DC. I was specifically interested in an exhibit in the Internet, TV and Radio Gallery. The exhibit was "Bias at CBS" and it featured the September 2004 "60 Minutes II" Dan Rather report aimed at discrediting President Bush's service in the Air National Guard. This 9/04 report was meant to hurt Bush's re-election chances in November, 2004.
Comments among FReepers quickly exposed inconsistencies in the documents and led to bloggers on the internet exposing the report as deeply flawed, as well as using forged documents. These inconsistencies ultimately forced CBS to retract its story.
The exhibit describes "how conservative blogs flexed their muscle and played a most significant role in the 2004 election "by discrediting documents used in Rather's "60 Minutes II' report.
Below is a copy of Buckhead's famous post #47 which started the unraveling of Dan Rather's story. His post is displayed as part of the exhibit. The red text are working links.
NYTIMES ^ | 09/09/04 | KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2004 11:10:56 PM by Pikamax
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the National Guard came under renewed scrutiny on Wednesday as newfound documents emerged ....
To: HowlinHowlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.
In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.
I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
This should be pursued aggressively.
It was thrill to see the key role played by Free Republic in exposing a media lie against Bush at a pivotal moment right before the November election. The Newseum will draw a lot of tourists and many will see this.
DC Chapter ping
Cool.
Wow. A FR post in a museum.
That...is astounding.
Congratulations to Jim Robinson, Buckhead and other FReepers for their great work in exposing this fraudulent report.
[Mr] T
Ditto!
But THANK YOU for taking time out and visiting the Newseum and getting the pics.
[Mr] T
In this one instance alone, history was made.
Very neat to see!
I’m still pretty skeptical about the Newseum - $20/ticket is awfully high, especially since all the ads about it seem to highlight their multiple movies screens.
A moment in history that will live for a long time...
This kind of stuff makes me proud to be a FReeper!
(even a lesser FReeper!)
Bump
History was made... and nothing will ever be the same.
Check this out!
As important as Buckhead's expert opinion turned out to be, look first at TankerKC's instant inkling that something about the form just wasn't right. It all snowballed from there.
Here's the best link I've found for the way it unfolded, kudos to kpp_kpp for the summary: Bloggers Run Rings Around The Partisan, Lazy Old Media
"And that's the way it was," Walter, on that day in history.
You done good.
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