Posted on 09/11/2004 7:26:18 PM PDT by Pukin Dog
Edited on 09/11/2004 9:23:55 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Open Letter to the Main Stream Media: We are not amateurs and we are going to kick your butts.
We have watched you for years try to tell us how to think, what to think, who to vote for and what to believe based solely on your own agenda. In past years, you have come to think of yourselves as the fourth branch of government, the movers and shapers of opinion and the arbiters of truth.
In case you have not been watching, America is sick and tired of you. We are turning away from you in record numbers. Your audience and readership is declining faster than you can say the word 'bias', and instead of recognizing the trend, you have only become further entrenched and determined to force society to play by your rules.
Technology has allowed us to ignore you, and in many cases, replace you altogether. I grew up watching Walter Cronkite every night, not yet aware of his agenda, his bias and his overwhelming desire to turn the nation against its leaders unless they agreed with him. I saw him replaced by the most dishonest, agenda-driven anchorman this nation has ever produced. That Dan Rather is one of you should be enough to make you feel dirty.
You believe yourselves to be solely qualified to pontificate on the day-to-day events going on around the world as if journalism school gives you a special insight into the truth. When I was in college, people went to J-school only if they flunked out of business school and did not want to become teachers.
Well guess what?
The world is on to you.
Persons with knowledge and experience are not only ignoring you, but replacing you as sources of information. These sources, which don't need anything but their personal experiences and skills when sharing information with the public; persons who have spent more time learning and doing than you ever will, are generally more accurate and informative than you know how to be.
The Internet and Blogosphere would scare you, if you were smart enough or honest enough to know better.
People with practical knowledge and experience discussing current and historical events with more ability than you, are sharing more factual and in-depth information, and at a rate which you could never compete. We are relegating many of you to overpaid gossip mongers, while you don't want to acknowledge that we are eating your lunch.
You take polls, trying to convince us of what people are thinking as you have always done, but now, knowledgeable people are analyzing your methodology, your weighing and sampling and pointing out if your polls are to be believed. You can no longer expect what you say to be taken for gospel, because we are no longer amateurs about information. Someone, somewhere on a little web site is going to smoke you out, report your biases, and make you less believable than you once were. Count on it.
You can tell us that Swift Boat Veterans for truth are liars, and NOBODY is going to believe you just because you say it. Have you checked the Non Fiction Best Sellers lists lately? But even then, we know enough now to notice when book sales are based on giveaways, fund-raisers, pre-orders and the like, to notice when you want to push sales of your favorite liberal author when their book sheds no light, tells no truth, shares no facts, but only advances what you want us all to think about you and yours. We are not buying it anymore.
I'm writing this, because I know you are watching. Just as you watched last week when one of us 'amateurs' beat you at your own game. It happens here all the time. Free Republic is not a group of 'amateurs' or nutcases, as you like to think of us. This board is a slice of America, filled with people from all walks of life, whose cumulative knowledge dwarfs that of you and your 'hired experts'. I was offended to read your reaction to people here and at the Blogs who shared what started here regarding your fraudulent flunky Dan Rather, and his attempt to pass off what was clearly a forged document as legitimate news.
You attempted to deride us, not take us seriously, dismiss us as partisans (which is apparently only a bad thing if one is conservative) and generally ignore the wealth of information we passed along to the public about one of yours trying to pull the wool over our eyes. We nailed Dan Rather, not you, and you can't stand it.
Last week, you tried to suggest that Republicans booed Bill Clinton after Bush wished him well. We caught you. We got in your face and made you take it back, because you lied. Don't you hate that? We Internet-based losers made you back down, when you felt totally free to mislead the nation about the behavior of some you don't agree with.
It is only going to get worse for you.
You can no longer tell us anything, and expect to be believed without question. You can no longer mix your agendas into your 'news' and expect to get away with it. We may not catch you every time, but eventually we will, and then many of you are going to have to get real jobs. And when you do, you are going to need more than the ability to mislead, lie, slander and ignore people who don't agree with you. In the future, expect for Blogs like Instapundit and others to be on you like a fly on stink when you attempt to mislead us.
Yesterday, you attempted to paint the young LT. Bush as a poor pilot, because he attempted multiple landings a few times while flying a training jet. Stories like this are the reason why Network News has lost half of its audience over the last 10 years. Could not one of you pampered info-princes figure out that a military pilot WANTS to practice landings as much has he/she possibly can? I guess not, when you are blinded by ideology to the degree that any information you receive can only be interpreted in the negative.
You want to call Bush AWOL, but you don't want to talk about his hundreds of flying hours in a jet that has killed lesser aviators, you only want to discuss what furthers your agenda, because you know that when Democrats win, YOU are in charge. You don't want to talk about our President's Master's Degree from Harvard while at the same time Al Gore could not hack Divinity school.
Don't you wish you could regulate us? We know you spend your nights praying to the gods of the Fairness Doctrine, hoping to silence us. Sorry, but we are here, and we are not going anywhere. Too bad we can't say the same for you. It is you who is being silenced as your audience is paying more attention to us, and tuning you OUT. Fox News is in 50 million fewer homes, but they managed to beat you silly during the Republican Convention. How did that happen? US; that's how. Because of us, the Internet, the Blogosphere, Talk Radio and others, the nation no longer see you as the gatekeepers of information.
Take a lesson MSM, though it hurts, try a little fairness. Give balance a shot, and stop being a mouthpiece for the liberal agenda. Pretend if you must, that Conservatives are not Neanderthals long enough to get through a news segment. I know it must hurt to not be able to prove your superiority to us in all that you do and say, but try it.
Finally, just embrace the horror, folks. You might actually learn something from us merry bands of 'amateur' journalists. You see, we don't have an audience to please. We don't have to sell ad-space, or get face-lifts to keep our jobs. That leaves us free to share information on the subjects we might know a little something about without angering our liberal masters. On Free Republic, you can at times find as many threads angry at Republicans as you can Democrats. We don't have to hire experts, if we don't know something, we can ask a fellow FReeper or use Google, much faster than you can pay someone to tell you what you want to hear.
On Free Republic alone, there are experts in many fields. We have writers, poets, engineers, aviators, artists, journalists, (they keep that on the down-low), lawyers, historians, teachers, politicians, current and former members of all branches of the military; all who actually know what they are talking about without having a script (or DNC talking points) shoved in their face.
The choice is yours, MSM. You can join us in working to share information with a hungry audience, or you can be replaced. We don't need Nielson, just a web site and an idea. Instead of insulting the remainder of your dwindling viewers, readers and listeners, why don't you just agree to cut the crap, stop the parroting of the NY Times long enough to do your own work, and finally decide to become REAL journalists again.
I'm not saying we are journalists; we have jobs and careers beyond 'he-said-she-said'. We do like to share what we know, and we don't even get it right every time. However, the truth is in the numbers. We have them and they are growing, while yours are shrinking more rapidly every day. If you don't change your ways and soon, you are going to become irrelevant before this decade is over. Many of you already are. We only tune in to 'Petah' Jennings to watch him bravely strain to keep his composure whenever he has to report a Democrat election defeat. On a good night Chris Matthews total viewership barely equals the number of viewers on the Oxygen network.
The trends are in our favor. If you don't wise up, we will kick your agenda-driven ass.
I'm Pukin Dog.
woohoo Wish I'da said that!!!
You nailed it. I love the Free Republic because of the people who post here. I am amazed by the number of well-written and informed posts by people from all backgrounds and walks of life. This website is truly a town hall meeting that our Founding Fathers would endorse. And yes, the old media news organizations are going into the dustbin of history because of their dishonest agendas. I'd like to see the Dems and their party hacks in the old media explain honestly why being in the National Guard is more offensive than, say, some senators with notorious pasts like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd; why do the Dems support a New Jersey governor who hired a foreigner to a homeland security position when his only qualifications are X-rated; why they endorsed Bill Clinton over Bush senior and Bob Dole; why, if Kerry's Vietnam record made him a better leader than Bush does Kerry act like a wet noodle today; why they, the old media, are better judges of Bush as commander of chief than the soldiers in the military who are re-enlisting at a very high rate. There, I had my rant.
Journalists play Gil Grissom: the documents:
It's important to point out from the outset that not a single piece of hard evidence has been uncovered that categorically proves these documents were forgeries.
Still, ABC News consulted yesterday with more than a half dozen top forensic document experts, including William Flynn, considered one of the best in the world.
Flynn and another leading expert agreed on several points, namely that the proportional spaced Times Roman font does not appear to have been the result of available technology in 1972 and 1973. They questioned the superscripts, the spacing between lines (13 points separated each line, which, again, was not a technology that was available in typewriters back then.). Then there's the apostrophe, which is curled to the left in one of the documents — not something typewriters did with their apostrophes.
Richard Polt, a philosophy professor in Ohio and an amateur typewriter enthusiast, said he was 99 percent certain that no typewriter he knew of could have made the typed impressions that cleanly.
And two members of Killian's family (who certainly could have agendas of their own) told ABC News that they had suspicions.
Marjorie Connell, Killian's wife at the time, said she "just can't believe these are his words." Mrs. Connell said her late husband would be "turning over in his grave to know that a document such as this would be used against a fellow guardsman." She used the words "appalling," "sick" and "angry" to describe her feelings about Killian's name was "being battled back and forth on television."
She made it clear that Lt Col Killian was a fan of Bush: "I know for a fact that this young man as a lt was an excellent aviator, an excellent person to be in the guard and was very happy to have him become a member of the 111th."
She also mentioned her late husband was no typist. "He would not have typed because he did not type." When Killian did take notes his wife said he usually wrote on whatever scrap of paper was handy but "he was a person who did not take copious notes he carried everything in his mind." For more, see: LINK
Deb Orin and Ian Bishop of the New York Post key off of the radio interview with Mrs. Connell and a document expert to point to potential forgery. LINK
The New York Daily News reports forensic scientist Sandra Ramsey Lines says the superscript in the Lt. Col. Jerry Killian's notes are evidence of forgery. LINK
CBS News sent reporters a previously validated document last night that does appear to contain a superscripted "th," which confounds some experts we spoke with, including Katherine Koppenhaver, who said she is 75 percent certain even still that the new documents are forgeries.
The New York Times ' Seeyle and Rutenberg were careful to ask the political affiliation of their experts, which we think is a good idea. LINK
"Philip Bouffard, a forensic document specialist from Ohio who created a commonly used database of at least 3,000 old type fonts, said he had suspicions as well. 'I found nothing like this in any of my typewriter specimens,' said Dr. Bouffard, a Democrat. He also said the fonts were "certainly consistent with what I see in Times Roman," the commonly used Microsoft Word font. However, Dr. Bouffard said, a colleague had called his attention to similarities between the font in the memos and that of the IBM Selectric Composer of the early 1970's. But he said it would be unusual for Mr. Bush's commanding officer to have had the IBM machine because of its large size."
The Los Angeles Times talked to Killian's daughter: "Nancy Killian Rodriguez said only that her father, who died in 1984, had 'admired George Bush and was proud of the fact that he pinned his [flying] wings on him.'"
Great Rant!! And soooo true! I think the MSM's heads are still ringing at how fast they got slapped on the false "Boo's" story the AP filed.
The speed with which these forged memos came to light with such detailed analysis has them dazed and in panic at the same time.
I'm loving it...
Decent read. Too long. bump anyway
We need a 'pukin dog' logo of a dog pukin on a TV set..
Home run!
As a former journalist who had to go into politics because I was blackballed by liberal puke editors, I appreciated your RANT!
Also... tonight on Fox Media Watch, Jim Pinkerton pointed out that bloggers and conservative internet junkies use "MTM" as a derisive term. (By the way, I'm in my pajamas too!)
To the liberal MSM:
Personally, I think I have THE best screen name at FR -- Need a New Press. I've waited 6 long years to see something like this happen to you. Your lies and liberal bias will no longer be tolerated by the masses. Your power to control public opinion is GONE. Over. Get used to it. It's only going to get worse for you.
And BTW, Dan Blather... Have I ever mentioned that I absolutely LOVE to see you squirm?
Great post, Pukin. Thank you for passionately speaking my mind. barset
I feel the white hot heat of your rant. I've been there. Well done!!!!
Ding dong the witch is dead the wicked old media is dead.
Yeah!!!
Long live FR!!!
Great job. Thanks.
Gotta Love it....Freepers have PASSION.....for the truth and for life........God Bless W!!!!!!!!!!
As a former journalist who had to go into politics because I was blackballed by liberal puke editors, I appreciated your RANT!
Also... tonight on Fox Media Watch, Jim Pinkerton pointed out that bloggers and conservative internet junkies use "MTM" as a derisive term. (By the way, I'm in my pajamas too!)
BRAVO !!!
They can't run and they can't hide !!!
Great post !
Wow, your rant is pretty much the same thing I wrote to Newswatch tonight, only I had to be brief. I hope you don't mind if I spread your rant around a bit.
That's a beautiful rant and better than anything running on the op/ed page of 90% of mainstream papers tomorrow morning.
Bite it, Danny!
What kind of films do you make?
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