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Posted on 09/27/2004 7:55:08 AM PDT by FlyLow
CBS News Scandal Update.
Better late than never, two-and- a-half weeks after running its hit job on Bush using forged documents, CBS News has decided, the AP reported Saturday, that it would be "inappropriate" to air so close to the presidential election a 60 Minutes story about how the Bush administration used forged documents to justify the Iraq war. That and viewers would laugh at CBS's chutzpah. And despite his role in trying to undermine the Bush candidacy, Rather will anchor CBS's debate coverage. Plus, Walter Cronkite called the scandal an "embarrassment" to CBS News and CBS's own David Letterman featured a fake book with a picture of Dan Rather on the cover: "The Complete Collection of Stories, Tales, and Fables from CBS News."
-- Story on Bush mis-use of forged documents dropped and Rather to anchor debate coverage: As recounted in the September 23 CyberAlert, ironically, to air its story which employed forged documents to take down President Bush, CBS's 60 Minutes bumped a piece "about how the U.S. government was snookered by forged documents purporting to show Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium from Niger," Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball revealed in a late Wednesday afternoon posting on the magazine's Web page buried inside MSNBC.com. The reporting duo regretted that the story choice "wipe[d] out a chance -- at least for the moment -- for greater public scrutiny of a more consequential forgery that played a role in building the Bush administration's case to invade Iraq."
Isikoff and Hosenball acknowledged: "Some CBS reporters, as well as one of the network's key sources, fear that the Niger uranium story may never run, at least not any time soon, on the grounds that the network can now not credibly air a report questioning how the Bush administration could have gotten taken in by phony documents. The network would 'be a laughingstock,' said one source intimately familiar with the story."
For the rest of the CyberAlert item and a link to the Newsweek posting: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2004/cyb20040923.asp#5
Indeed, CBS has decided to drop the story. An un-bylined Saturday, September 25 AP dispatch began: "CBS News has shelved a 60 Minutes report on the rationale for war in Iraq because it would be 'inappropriate' to air it so close to the presidential election, the network said on Saturday. The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on President Bush's National Guard service. The Guard story was discredited because it relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were apparently fake."
The AP story added: "Meanwhile, the network announced that Rather would anchor the network's coverage of all three presidential debates, starting Sept. 30."
For the AP article: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=494&e=1&u=/ap/20040925/ap_en_tv/cbs_bush
-- Scandal an "Embarrassment" to CBS News, Walter Cronkite asserted. An excerpt from a September 24 Boston Herald news story by Jennifer Rosinski:
Famed anchorman Walter Cronkite, once widely considered the most trusted figure in news, called the journalistic mistake that has marred CBS' credibility "embarrassing," but stopped short of placing blame or predicting the network's future.
"We must wait while CBS management conduct the investigation they have promised. We can then decide what our reaction to it should be," said Cronkite, 87, whose CBS newscasts reached millions of Americans for more than three decades.
"The reaction at the moment of course is embarrassment for everyone who is connected to CBS, and that embarrassment I hope will be squashed in time as we know what happened."
Anchor Dan Rather has apologized for using bogus documents to raise questions about President Bush's military service, but media watchers have signaled it won't be enough to pull the legendary anchorman and CBS out of a downward spiral. Rather used the documents provided by retired Texas National Guard official Bill Burkett on the Sept. 8 60 Minutes broadcast....
Cronkite was at the Boston Harbor Hotel last night to receive the Samuel Eliot Morison Award from the board of trustees of the USS Constitution Museum. Cronkite, one of the few private citizens to take the helm of the 200-year-old ship, is one of 25 people honored with the award since 1977....
END of Excerpt
For the Boston Herald story in full: http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=45793
-- Letterman mocks Rather. In the "Mailbag" segment of Thursday's Late Show, David Letterman showcased a fake book about "fables from CBS News." As recounted by Late Show staffer Michael McIntee in the Wahoo Gazette on the Late Show Web site: "LETTER #1: From Donna Kaye of Johnson City, New York. 'Hi, Dave! What's you son's favorite bedtime story?' "Dave says he loves to read to little Harry at night. He's really taken a liking to this new book. Dave holds up a large children's book entitled, 'The Complete Collection of Stories, Tales, and Fables from CBS News.' The yellow book has pictures of bunnies, ducks, farm animals, and Dan Rather right in the middle."
On Friday night, FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume, though anchored by Jm Angle, ended by playing a clip of Letterman presenting the book.
Check the posted version of this CyberAlert for a shot of the book cover.
For the daily Wahoo Gazette rundown of the Late Show: http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/exclusives/wahoo/
Was the document that "snookered" Bush of better quality than the one from CBS?
What they're really doing is keeping the story from the American people that the French government was behind the forged uranium yellow-cake documents, all in an attempt to discredit the U.S. once we relied on such forged documents, and further, that it worked.
Anyone that would watch that crappy commie network is insane.
A page out of Clinton's Book promising the Lewinsky Matter be cleared up "soon rather than later."
Yeah, right Walter...
Take another pill and go back to dreaming about Marx' America on your rocking chair at your Martha's Vineyard porch.
CBS News says it's wrong to influence elections?! Just what in God's name were they trying to do with the Bush "memos" Trying to do fair and balanced reporting?
Could it also be that SeeBS knows that the cyber truth patrol, being on to their game, would immediately throw the concocted myth of forged French documents in the Niger/yellowcake affair back in their discredited faces?
What is this "snookered" thing?
Are we all wearing our straw hats, and striped vests while we puff on a 5cent cigar and shoot billards?
Why do they keep using a slang term from 1850?
Yes. IT contained handwriting. The forged receipt, BTW, is of FRENCH origin, as revealed by DevillePinhead in the Security Council and other elements of the French government later during their attempts to propagandize putting one over on the US.
bump
I have posted this several times since the CBS stonewalling began: someday (soon) journalism and business school textbooks will use the Rathergate fiasco and subsequent corporate irresponsibility at CBS as a classic example of irretrievable brand and credibility destruction.
Anyone who thinks CBS is coming back from this is sooooooo pre-internet.
This scumbag Cronkite uses the words "we" and "our" here. Who is the "we" he is referring to?
I think I'm going to be sick!
It's difficult to believe there are STILL folks that respect the lying old fool Cronkite.
Semper Fi
Donate to Swift Boat Vets for the Truth HERE.
Sign Petition against CBS & Dan Rather HERE.
My Campaign Button Page
and My Toons Page [Updated 9-22 / 11:00PM CST]
Hey Wally, we already know what happened, and CBS and Dan Rather could not possibly HOPE to show enough embarassment to make up for what they have attempted to do (influence a presidential election by pushing a bogus story using fake government documents). The only way they're going to make amends is by cleaning house, and admitting their overwhelming bias.
Of course, when that happens, we'll all be able to go skiing in h*ll!
It's inappropriate to influence the election?? So what will CBS do? Fire Dan Rather? Or just go off the air from now until Nov 3rd?
CBS is just not worth watching.
As most people now know, the US government wasn't snookered by them. They were suspicious of them, and didn't base anything on them.
The contacts between Iraq and Niger were not secret, and didn't require forged backup. The documents were created for the purpose of discrediting a story that was true. The French commissioned the documents, Nigerien embassy people forged them, the French handed them to us, and then denounced them publicly. But none of that changes the fact of Iraqi contacts in 1999 with the government of Niger.
And since Libya's about-face, we find that they have tons of Nigerien uranium, that the French and the IAEA forgot to tell us about .
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