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Interesting Trio.

The CBS scandal gets worse every day. Now, in an amazing twist, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek was on Chris Matthews' MSNBC "Hardball" show on Wednesday night claiming that CBS had been planning to air a story about the White House using forged documents to make the case for war against Iraq. CBS postponed the story so it could go on the air attacking President Bush on the National Guard issue. It backfired when 60 Minutes itself got caught using forged documents. Still, Isikoff indicates that 60 Minutes is planning to air the anti-Bush piece, perhaps as early as Sunday night,...

Complaints About Broadcast Journalism Background The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) receives numerous consumer complaints about broadcast journalism (television and radio journalism). Consumers complain that networks, stations, news reporters and/or commentators have given inaccurate or one-sided news reports or comments, have either failed to cover certain events, or have covered them inadequately. Some consumers complain that the news has been staged or that news reports overemphasize or dramatize certain aspects of events. Other consumers object that broadcasters have announced an illness, accident, or a death of an individual before his or her family has been notified, or have in some way...

The "Fake But Accurate" Media We can't say when the obituaries of the CBS news division will finally be written, but we now know what it will say on the tombstone: "Fake But Accurate!" The phrase first appeared in a September 15, 2004, New York Times article about CBS's "exclusive": Texas National Guard memos attesting to dereliction of duty by George W. Bush, memos supposedly typed in 1972 and 1973 but actually produced on a personal computer. All credit to the Times headline writer, but he was only crystallizing CBS's corrupt defense of its bogus story. Dan Rather admitted he'd...

Dan Rather said "if I knew then what I know now," he would not have aired the documents. This is unbelievably disingenuous. CBS News knew document experts had serious concerns about their reliability. CBS News knew about the Killian family's doubts and was provided names of people who served with Killian who could have confirmed their suspicions. If people in their pajams could rip the memos to shreds in a matter of days, if not hours, CBS News could have vetted them more thoroughly. The claim that the Bush Administration's non-denial was grounds is also ludicrous. The documents were not...

Posted on Mon, Sep. 20, 2004 Text of statements by CBS News President Andrew Heyward and anchor Dan Rather Associated Press Statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward and Dan Rather about the authenticity of documents used to support a "60 Minutes" story that questioned President Bush's Vietnam War-era National Guard service: Heyward: "60 Minutes Wednesday" had full confidence in the original report or it would not have aired. However, in the wake of serious and disturbing questions that came up after the broadcast, CBS News has done extensive additional reporting in an effort to confirm the documents' authenticity. That...

On August 11, Bob Tuke, the Tennessee state chair of Veterans for Kerry, told a Nashville radio station that, soon, "We may also know why Bush failed to show up for his medical exam that caused him to lose his flight status." A few weeks later, on September 1, liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall reported that Dan Rather was working on a 60 Minutes story about Bush and the Guard. On September 2, the day Bush accepted his party's nomination in New York, the online magazine Salon published an exhaustive investigation into the "unanswered questions" surrounding the president's service. On...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. --- Media Research Center President Brent Bozell today challenged CBS News to apologize to the American people for its false and misleading reporting on President Bush’s National Guard service, as well as to come clean with the public and expose the people who forged documents that falsely cast Bush in a negative light. “Until CBS atones for its complicity in this character assassination attempt of President Bush, the letters ‘CBS’ will stand for ‘Can’t Believe Squat.’ With every Watergate-like denial, the integrity of CBS News continues to crumble,” Bozell said.

As you know, we have been working on a set of FR Forgery Facts at this thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1214226/posts By far everyone agrees that the best rebuttal is at: http://www.flounder.com/bush.htm However, that site has had a server issue with the number of hits. An experimental cache is at: http://www.flounder.com/bush2.htm Since the above site is critical to our CBS Forgery fact sheet: Is there someone that can host this site by contacting the e-mail link at http://www.flounder.com/bush.htm Also, we are going to need a site to host a pdf and Microsoft Word document of the FR Forgery Facts which likewise will take...

As you may know a thread was started friday evening to attempt to summarize the important forgery points. The extension of the original thread is at Evidence Against Rather (cont'd): FR Forgery Talking Points and can be found here. This was initiated by SkyPilot and I agreed to help out. This is a continuation of that thread. The information below needs your review, analysis, and suggested changes in the form of final edits. If you see things that should be changed, please retype the suggested revision including the line number in a new reply.While we have tried to capture the...

If you're a media buff - and who isn't, in America in 2004? - then circle Thursday, Sept. 9, on your mental calendar. Because that's the day weblogs came into their own. And politics and journalism never will be the same. What happened Thursday is that webloggers or "bloggers" latched on to a controversial "60 Minutes"/CBS News story - and then worked the thing, with a stubbornness and tenacity that would have done credit to a pack of bulldogs or a turn of snapping turtles - or, yes, an army of investigative reporters. As a result, CBS was forced to...

*Lt Col Killian didn't type; *Lt Col Killian's family says he did not maintain such records; *Guard regulations prohibited the maintenance of such records; *General Bobby Hodges didn't vouch for the docs as CBS said he would; *Colonel Buck Staudt --cited in the memos as pushing Killian to "sugarcoat" a Bush evaluation-- had retired more than a year before the meo was allegedly written; *Bloggers have been overwhelmed with e-mails from active duty and retire dmilitary who scoff at the form of the memos; *Typewriters with proportional spacing were rare in '72/3; *Typewriters with superscripting capabilites were rare in '72/3;...

A former Texas Air National Guard general relied upon by CBS News to support the authenticity of memos about President Bush's military service said he never saw the memos before the show aired, and that he doesn't now believe they are authentic. Retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges of Arlington also said that one of the memos' references to undue pressure to "sugar coat" Mr. Bush's evaluations rings false. He said Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt did not interfere in Guard affairs after his retirement, 18 months before the date on the disputed memo. [...SeeB.S. spokesman says they still stand behind the...

September 12, 2004, 03:49:00 EDT With everyone who cares about the Memogate controversy mostly having formed an opinion about it already, both new and traditional media have focused their attention on the next question: who gave the documents to CBS? In a memo to CBS affiliates last week which RatherBiased.com has obtained, the network said the disputed documents "were provided by unimpeachable sources." Over at the liberal grassroots site IndyMedia, Pablo Kristophoros says that the disputed memos cited by CBS are in author Kitty Kelley's upcoming book The Family : The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. "The full details...

I'm just going to post the last 2 paragraphs. Read the whole thing:If it's shown that Democrats or the Kerry campaign are the source — as suggested by comments to the American Spectator by an unnamed Kerry staffer — CBS better say so. If the documents prove to be forgeries, resignations from Rather and CBS News President Andrew Heyward would be in order — along with a sweeping review of ethical practices at a once-proud news organization.

The CBS FraudGate episode once again has proven how important FR is to the conservative cause. Although blogs are taking credit for it, all here know the investigation was started on the Forum before the CBS program had ended, most of the blogs were merely picking up on the information posted here. Free Republic has always been supported by it's fans and readers. It takes no advertising, has no sugar daddies and is beholden to no one. Jim has always stated he will keep this thing going as long as the participants believe it is worthwhile. To pay the bills,...