Posted on 09/08/2022 5:56:17 AM PDT by T Ruth
An important anniversary [is today]. This anniversary carries implications for how we receive news, how political campaigns are conducted, and the credibility of almost everything we see or hear from the media.
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 …
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. ...
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Why is a 2004 scandal at CBS still relevant 16 years later? Even without Dan Rather, the network has not truly changed. The other networks are just as bad – if not worse. 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. ... Celebrating the anniversary has a cleansing effect that leaves us stronger. We develop herd immunity to future lies because we commemorate this one prominent lie.
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[bolding added]
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Oh yes indeed. By Freeper 'Buckhead'.
Way to go Buck!
As I recall, it was a FReeper who proved the document was generated by a modern word processor.
Not only did they fabricate the lie to help Kerry, they coordinated with the Kerry Campaign to time the release with Kerry’s new ad.
This is no different than the FBI saying nothing about the Hunter Biden laptop and giving the media cover by insinuating that it was “Russian disinformation”.
You beat me to it, and I didn’t know the FReeper’s Screenname!
I remember reading the now famous post here and thinking it had the Ring Of Truth to it. We already knew they were lying long before that.
We also shouldn’t ever forget Mary Mapes, the producer who willingly helped Rather concoct their ‘story.’
Only goes to show that the truth of my Tagline goes back a long way.
Bttt.
5.56mm
I recall reading in an issue of National Review (back when I subscribed, lol) an article that discussed Rathergate and a person in Texas who worked a great deal on exposing this scandal. He was a US Army officer who first became aware of media bias and the Vietnam war when back in about 1975, a local news media outlet reported how a Vietnam veteran allegedly committed an armed robbery.
When he further investigated the story, he discovered the perpetrator took Army basic training about two or three years earlier and that was basically it for his days in the military and certainly did not see any action in Southeast Asia. This officer had the local media outlet issue a correction and he continued to track and expose and neutralize such media lies about the Vietnam war from then on and the Rather story was the crowning achievement on his part.
We can say it out loud, the legacy media is nothing more than Leftist activists, been this way for decades.
The asshat never recanted and infact, doubled down on it.
Thanks to the creation and growth of the internet, the news media is being exposed and caught in their lies literally on a daily basis, and within hours, minutes after their lying broadcasts.
Imagine, if Rather and CBS had tried pulling this stunt only about ten or less years earlier, they would have completely gotten away with it. God only knows what lies and how often they got away with years before Rathergate.
That was great detective work as I recall. What’s Buck’s take on the 2020 election....?
“DO YOU HAVE... ANY.... PEOPLE.... PAID BY THE CIA... IN THE BROADCAST MEDIA”
“That is something that I think we will have to talk about in executive session.”
Yeah. And thus, “Fake but accurate” was born.
All hail, Buckhead!
I remember that.. that blog little green footballs broke the story..
Rathergate was an expose’, yet many Americans remain in denial, continuing to watch the networks, even non-Tucker Fox, social media or otherwise.
Pathetic, but a convenient litmus test:
One can glean from mere casual conversation those who are truly stupid and irreconcilably infected.
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