Now I wonder what OTHERS consider to be naive in our current opinions, and how far the statists will go.
Posted on 09/08/2021 7:10:28 AM PDT by T Ruth
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. With persistence, they established that CBS was wrong. The documents were forgeries, and CBS personnel committed misconduct in airing the story. Investigations and lawsuits and an independent panel followed.
***
*** 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. (bolding added)
***
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
You still around, Buckhead?
Now I wonder what OTHERS consider to be naive in our current opinions, and how far the statists will go.
He used Times New Roman font which was not used on the typewriters but only in Word software..
‘KEY’ TO A MEMO SCAM – ‘70S TYPEWRITERS COULDN’T PRODUCE DAN’S ‘EVIDENCE’
https://nypost.com/2004/09/19/key-to-a-memo-scam-70s-typewriters-couldnt-produce-dans-evidence-2/
Killian documents authenticity issues
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_authenticity_issues
"Howlin, 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."
I watched the board as Freeper “ Buckhead” started the ball rolling by questioning the font and kerning of the documents. This website exploded after that and other blogs soon weighed in. It was a wonderful thing and Rather and his hench woman Mary Mapes were completely discredited very soon thereafter.
PAJAMAHADEEN!!!!!!
Rather and his producer, Mary Mapes, almost certainly knew that what they had were forgeries, yet Rather used them on the air, and both Rather and Mapes continue to defend them.
Of course, Dan Rather is the person who told Bill O'Reilly in a 2001 interview that "I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things." This is the mainstream media. This is how it works. And Rather admitted the standard by which it operates.
Within 15 minutes, FReeper Buckhead had determined that the memos were "in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman", and alleging that this was an anachronism: "I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively."
Credit also to Powerline and Little Green Footballs.
From the left-wing biased Wikipedia:
[CBS's primary source and supplier of the memos, Bill Burkett (a Democrat activist in a county where the Democrat chair was Rather's daughter) "ad received publicity in 2000, after making and then retracting a claim that he had been transferred to Panama for refusing "to falsify personnel records of [then-]Governor Bush",[20][21] and in February 2004, when he claimed to have knowledge of "scrubbing" of Bush's Texas Air National Guard records.[22][23] Mapes was "by her own account [aware that] many in the press considered Burkett an 'anti-Bush zealot', his credibility in question."
"Mapes had also been in contact with the Kerry campaign several times between late August and September 6, when she spoke with senior Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart regarding the progressing story."
"On September 5, CBS interviewed Killian's friend Robert Strong, who ran the Texas Air National Guard administrative office. Among other issues covered in his interview with Rather and Mapes, Strong was asked if he thought the documents were genuine. Strong stated, "they are compatible with the way business was done at the time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being." Strong had first seen the documents twenty minutes earlier and also said he had no personal knowledge of their content; he later claimed he had been told to assume the content of the documents was accurate.
"Emily Will noted discrepancies in the signatures on the memos, and had questions about the letterhead, the proportional spacing of the font, the superscripted "th" and the improper formatting of the date."
"In an appearance on CNN that day, Rather asserted 'I know that this story is true. I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been.'"
[That was a lie -- of course they would have. They DID.]
"In Rather's narration about one of the memos, he referred to pressure being applied on Bush's behalf by General Buck Staudt, and described Staudt as "the man in charge of the Texas National Guard". Staudt had retired from the guard a year and a half prior to the dates of the memos."
"On the evening of September 15, CBS aired a segment that featured an interview with Marian Carr Knox, a secretary at Ellington Air Force Base from 1956 to 1979, and who was Killian's assistant on the dates shown in the documents. Dan Rather prefaced the segment on the recorded interview by stating, "She told us she believes what the documents actually say is, exactly, as we reported."...In response to a direct question from Rather about the authenticity of the memo on Bush's alleged insubordination, she stated that no such memo was ever written; she further emphasized that she would have known if such a memo existed, as she had sole responsibility to type Killian's memos in that time period."
"In an interview with Rather, Burkett admitted that he misled CBS about the source of the documents, and then claimed that the documents came to him from someone he claimed was named "Lucy Ramirez", whom CBS was unable to contact or identify as an actual person. Burkett said he then made copies at the local Kinko's and burned the original documents. Investigations by CBS, CNN and the Washington Post failed to turn up evidence of "Lucy Ramirez" being an actual person."
[Makes an excellent pen name, however.]
Remember the statement from Rather that I quoted above: "I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things." THAT is the standard by which the "mainstream" media really operates. It's worse than just bias; it's out and out dishonesty. Bias is so 1960s.
Raqhtergate proves that beyond the shadow of a doubt.
I so enjoyed hearing the truth from Trump and having him call out the corrupt media and fake news. I really miss that and it was an important reminder to the sheeple to not trust the msm.
I mostly read, but not comment, and I wasn’t signed up in 2004, but I did read it. I remember someone’s comment, that it was actually reasonable that proportionally spaced fonts could have been used in a 1972 typewriter. That IBM made such typewriters, and the same technology found its way into circa 2004 Word. Also, that it would not be unusual for a high ranking officer to have had some extra money in the budget to spend and buy something extravagant, like a high end IBM typewriter.
There ended up within a couple of days, some 60 lines of evidence that the letter was fake, including who the ‘informant’ was with which Kinkos he’d sent it from, and that it wasn’t even within the proper month for the physical (a much bigger deal than you might think).
Here is the instruction manual for the Selectric Composer from 1969. The Selectric Composer was released in 1966. https://archive.org/details/ibm-selectric-composer-training-guide/mode/2up
So here’s a question: Why did Dan Rather continue to ‘claim to’ believe it, and CBS not immediately fire him?
Why did Dan Rather continue to ‘claim to’ believe it,
and CBS not immediately fire him?
Yeah, that line of argument was rather quickly debunked by reality.
Good post.
Thanks.
Oh, and in the end, it was admitted that the document wasn’t from 1972 at all anyway.
Nope, but nice try!
I was because of my mother and many millions more like her. If CBS/Rather admitted being duped, that could easily anger mainstream Democrat voters. But as long as their #1 trusted correspondent and his network stuck to the story, then they could, and did, dismiss everything else as ‘Fake News’.
We’re not Useful Idiots to the left (at least those of us who vote in November elections, that is), but people like my mom are...they’re wedded to their (glamorized) Democrat Party of JFK and FDR...they risked a blow-out if they broke that veneer.
Nice way to show you're unbiased.
There’s something missing in that post.
Ping.
5.56mm
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