Why it's important to remember Rathergate

The American Thinker ^ | October 5, 2020 | David Lanza

[T Ruth]

An important anniversary passed this month and predictably received no attention. ***

On September 8, 2004, CBS’s “60 Minutes” used forged government documents as the basis for a story that attacked the military record of then-President George W. Bush. It was bad enough that CBS used forged government documents, but what made it worse was that CBS aired this story during the presidential election and timed the airing to coincide with the rollout of Democrat John Kerry’s “favorite son” campaign theme. CBS thus provided the “news” upon which the Democrat candidate based his attack ads. The CBS story was quickly disproven and eventually forced CBS into personnel changes and investigations. Dan Rather was forced into retirement a few months later. But CBS did not give up before a lengthy battle in which bloggers demonstrated that the font and other features in the forged documents did not exist in 1972 (the date placed on the forgeries).

The battle over the truth became a story in itself. The truth about the font spread like wildfire through the blogosphere and the internet, quickly picking up steam. CBS, Rather and the left clung to their story as long as they could. They even invented the “fake but accurate” standard to defend the forged documents. CBS and its surrogates belittled the bloggers but ended up making them famous. Conservative bloggers would embrace the “pajamas” epithet thrown at them during the battle – some of whom still use it today. ***

Why is a 2004 scandal at CBS still relevant 16 years later? Even without Dan Rather, the network has not truly changed. *** Rathergate serves as one example of what the establishment media do. They lie. They lie regularly, and they lie during election years to help elect Democrats.

[MinorityRepublican]

Wonder if he’s on Facebook. Of course we have to respect his privacy.

[Ben Hecks]

As I remember, Tanker KC questioned the format of the document then Buckhead noted the proportional fonts and it took off from there. Other websites picked it up and I think John Hinderaker at Powerline Blog was also involved.

[algore]

it does not matter, if it was fake or accurate, only

that as per the Communications Act of 1934 that the broadcast licensee was operating in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”

i am surprised y’all didnt know that

just before he retired the Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler commented:

“My ‘aha’ moment was that the public interest was a pretty malleable concept. The public interest is determined by the old adage, ‘Where you stand depends on where you sit.’ And so, what I have tried to do is say, ‘OK, we need another standard.’ And I kept saying to myself, ‘What is it that is in the common good, as differentiated from the public interest?’ Because the common good is how you can serve the good of the most people the best way.”

[newzjunkey]

I remember that thread and working on the typeface research used in period typewriters

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Don’t forget “Sore/Loserman”!

[who_would_fardels_bear]

If I remember right there were other documents with questionable attributes including the possibility that the document we saw that was supposed to be the original or a copy of the original actually seemed to have multiple levels as if put together on a modern word processor not available in Hawaii at the time.

[OHelix]

That was the event that caused me to notice that I did not watch the news to find out what had happened, I generally already knew the details from reading posts here... I was watching to get a sense of how dfferent personalities spun the stories.

It was when I was telling people what would be on the news that night that it clicked I had been doing that for a couple of years and had not really noticed.

[Republican Wildcat]

Courage!

[lepton]

I remember showing that the layout and etiquette did not fit military standards, and that it wasn’t even the right month for the physical.

[Jimmy Valentine]

Buckhead kicked it off and it caught fire on FR. What a great night that was! By morning the media were back peddling.

[TigerClaws]

Props to everyone that participated in that takedown of Rather.

That was really the moment that citizen journalists overtook the MSM in terms of relevance and actual reporting.

Since then the MSM has never had control of the narrative. Places like the donald.win are more likely to break an actual story that the scripted billionaire blogs disguised as news sources.

[Chickensoup]

I was here that night. It was amazing.

[Don@VB]

####”I was on FR when Buckhead sent out the call and within an hour various Freepers had torn those documents to pieces. It was a beautiful thing.#####

I was reading our FR Community posts then too; watching our folks expose the CBS fraud in real time. Yes, it was indeed a beautiful thing experience!! Three Cheers for Free Republic!!