Free Republic

Talk about bad timing. Echo Lake Entertainment is set to release its independent film, Truth, the story of former CBS anchor Dan Rather’s self-destruction. It’s based on the 2006 book Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power by Mary Mapes, the discredited CBS producer. Mapes documents and defends Rather’s 2004 attempts to use the forged “Killian documents” to portray former President George W. Bush as someone who shirked duty in Vietnam.

James Vanderbilt's Truth, the high-profile movie chronicling the scandal that derailed Dan Rather's career, has gotten the greenlight to begin shooting this fall. Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment will finance the movie, starring Robert Redford as the iconic news anchor and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, Rather's producer. At the same time, FilmNation has come aboard to represent international rights and will pre-sell the project to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night (based on the cast, it's sure to whet appetites). Mythology Entertainment is the driving force behind Truth, which was...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Liberal MSNBC host Chris Matthews continued his attacks on the Obama administration for the trade of five dangerous Taliban prisoners for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, slamming the White House’s claim that soldiers who served with Bergdahl are “swift-boating” him and asking “where is the dishonesty in the portrayal?” of Bergdahl as a deserter. Matthews, who strongly questioned the trade even while facts continued to pour in on Monday, has been the only host on his network so far to even remotely challenge the Obama administration’s narrative on the prisoner trade and Bergdahl’s history of service. And on Wednesday, he angrily...

Former CBS Evening News Anchor Dan Rather, despite being fired as a result of the bogus story, continues to maintain that he got it right in September 2004 when he aired forged documents concerning George W. Bush’s record with the Air National Guard. On CNN’s Piers Morgan Live Monday, Rather said, “No question the story was true” (video follows with transcript and commentary): [video] PIERS MORGAN, HOST: Let's turn quickly to what’s been going on at CBS, your old network. Your former colleague, Lara Logan, on leave of absence over this report from Benghazi. Many people believe there’s a slight...

Pardon the age of this item, but it's on an issue of campaign history. On March 13, NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviewed new CNN host Jake Tapper about politics and journalism, and whether there was blowback from presidents and candidates over tough questions. But Gross felt compelled to bring up the "lies" told about John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign -- without expressing anything specific. Tapper said he was assigned as a Swift Boat Veteran fact checker by ABC. Gross said, "So you were fact-checking some of the Swift Boat attacks against presidential candidate John Kerry. There...

“On his own.” To be clear, they think he should have the power to do this “on his own.” This is what years of screeching during the Bush era about “the unitary executive” has come to.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made headlines and raised eyebrows Monday when he said that while Hurricane Katrina was deadlier than Hurricane Sandy, the latter storm was “more impactful” over all and “affected many, many more people and places than Katrina.” Mr. Cuomo added that Hurricane Sandy had a greater economic impact, destroyed or damaged more units of housing, affected more businesses and caused more customers to lose power. For our part, City Room decided to undertake a little truth-squadding. While apples-to-apples numbers for the two storms are very difficult to come by, especially given that Hurricane Sandy’s costs are still...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Pat Buchanan said that he didn't mean to slur President Barack Obama by referring to him as "your boy" during a discussion with Al Sharpton. The former GOP presidential candidate and current MSNBC analyst appeared on "Morning Joe" Wednesday to explain remarks he made on that network's Sharpton show 12 hours earlier.

BIDEN: "I think Americans will recognize that there aren’t body counts . . .that they got 95,000 people home." Vice President Joe, Joey Buttafuoco, "Bite-me", Biden says there are no body counts from the Iraq war! We all know he's an idiot, but this one perhaps takes the cake. WTH is he talking about? Remember all the Bush Death Counts the left kept when it was Bush's war?... Hey Joey, there are indeed body counts. There are thousands of lives that have been lost, and many more that have been changed forever due to the sacrifices those in our military...

Think about it. Has there been a lousier 10 years in American history? OK, the Civil War, granted. And the Great Depression wasn't so hot, either, the pictures suggest. But this one has been close enough to an all-time bad to merit the kind of willful amnesia that I'm proposing. sajohnson@tribune.com

Friends at Black Rock say Looney Liberal Leslie Moonves may be on his way out the door at CBS. Moonves has overseen a number of CBS fiascos including The Demise Of The Dan (which Rather is about to play out again in a NY courtroom), the hiring of Ratings Remover Perkie Katie Couric as well as very bad ratings for the nightly entertainment (?) block. And of course, most important of all, stock prices are locked in deep declining do-do. Supposedly Moonves has lost the faith of Summer Redstone, and when you lose the faith of His Grace, The Chairman,...

Dan Rather slammed CBS Tuesday for trying to keep his court fight with the network out of the public eye. The newsman - who has filed a $70 million lawsuit against the Tiffany network, where he anchored the "CBS Evening News" for 24 years - said "corporate overlords" are conspiring to withhold several key documents. The 76-year-old was back in Manhattan Supreme Court for a hearing on his suit, which accuses CBS of sidelining him to make nice with the White House following a September 2004 report that questioned President Bush's Vietnam-era military service. Rather left the anchor's chair in...

National Review's KerrySpot looks at a NPR feature that interviews swing voters, and one swing voter in particular: John Ridley, who is also an NPR contributor. First, isn't getting your "man on the street" from the payroll list a little on the lazy side? It's like Ted Baxter using Bernie as his "common man." And does NPR really think their staff represents a sample slice of America? Next thing you know they'll refer to Cokie Roberts as a "soccer mom" and Click and Clack as "NASCAR dads." Anyway, Ridley doesn't seem terribly unbiased. He thinks the Swift Boat Veterans for...

Ken Paulson took over as editor at USA Today in the wake of the Jack Kelley scandal. Kelley had embarrassed the paper by writing a series of stories filled with lies. Paulson said that would never happen again. Then, he presided over USA Today's own version of the CBS Memogate scandal. Like CBS, USA Today used those bogus documents to discredit President Bush's National Guard service. But Paulson managed to exercise a form of damage control because CBS used the documents first and put them on TV. Paulson acted as if the scandal was confined to CBS. Many in the...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- During the 2004 presidential elections, the mainstream news media frequently engaged in bias -- especially on pro-life issues such as abortion and stem cell research. As with previous polls, a new survey confirms most members of the media voted for Democrat John Kerry over President George W. Bush. The University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy found journalists picked Kerry over Bush by 68 percent to 25 percent. The college sampled 300 journalists, from both newspapers and TV. The poll also found that Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 and twice as many self-identified themselves as...

Report just issues, mapes finally fired

REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW PANEL DICK THORNBURGH AND LOUIS D. BOCCARDI ON THE SEPTEMBER 8, 2004 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY SEGMENT “FOR THE RECORD” CONCERNING PRESIDENT BUSH’S TEXAS AIR NATIONAL GUARD SERVICE JANUARY 5, 2005 KIRKPATRICK & LOCKHART NICHOLSON GRAHAM LLP Michael J. Missal, Esq. Lawrence Coe Lanpher, Esq. 1800 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 778-9000 Counsel to the Independent Review Panel i TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1 II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...............................................................................................4 A. 60 Minutes Wednesday Background..............................................................................6 B. The Pursuit of a Story on President Bush’s TexANG Service ......................................7 C. Obtaining Documents ....................................................................................................8 D. The Production of...

Tuesday night, I went down to the graduate student lounge in my college for an election night “party;” mostly just people camped out in front of the television with snacks and drinks. My idea for this column was to take along my laptop, which I did, and chronicle what an expat election party was like. Advertisement I figured my fellow Trinity Hall students were good for some amusing and interesting quotes, which they were, and that any British students in attendance might provide a different perspective, which they did, and that even if the night didn’t go my way I...

Courtesy of Newsweek, mainstream media’s pet blogger Wonkette takes a cute little slap at the bloggers who broke the Dan Rather fraud story: Fast Chat: The Wonkette. What did you think of the bloggers’ role in the Dan Rather affair?I think they did a disservice to the debate because they made the debate about the documents and not about the president of the United States. There was another half to that story that had to do with verifiable events of what Bush may have been up to. While blogs like LGF were doing a “disservice to the debate” by exposing...

Former "This Week" host and National Public Radio veteran Cokie Roberts blamed conspiracy filmmaker Michael Moore on Sunday for causing Sen. John Kerry to lose the presidential election. "I think Michael Moore actually had a very major impact - a negative impact - on the Democratic Party," Roberts told NBC's "Chris Matthews Show." "I think he exemplified all of the things that people hate about Democrats. And the fact that he was - it was a hate-America-first campaign and that hurts the Democrats every time." Adding insult to injury, Roberts also contended that Moore's "physical appearance did not help."