Posted on 11/04/2005 1:33:17 AM PST by Jim Robinson
Edited on 11/04/2005 1:51:15 AM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]
"The scandal at CBS involved the use of phony documents to make charges against President Bush regarding his Air National Guard service that were not only unsubstantiated, but contradicted by evidence and information known to CBS at the time."
In memory of Reed Irvine, founder of Accuracy in Media, AIM is awarding its first annual Reed Irvine Investigative Journalism award to two of the bloggers responsible for exposing Rathergate—Dan Rather's use of forged documents to smear President Bush. This episode was a milestone in the history of journalism.
Former CBS and current CNN executive Jonathan Klein derided the bloggers as people "sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." No matter what they wore, however, they did the research that Rather didn't. They made Rather, the "veteran" journalist, look like a fool.
One is an Atlanta lawyer, Harry MacDougald, who writes under the name "Buckhead" on FreeRepublic.com. He was the first to raise questions about the authenticity of the documents that CBS posted on its website the night of Dan Rather's report on 60 Minutes Wednesday two months before the presidential election last year. From having read a manual explaining the computer program Microsoft Word shortly after it came out and was acquired by his law firm, he knew that the CBS documents couldn't have been typed back in 1972, the year they were purported to have been written, because typewriters from that time weren't capable of proportional spacing the way Microsoft Word does it automatically.
The other award winner is Paul Boley, an active Air Force officer from Montgomery, Alabama, who went by the handle "TankerKC." He had the very first web-post attacking the memos while the 60 Minutes II program was still going on.
bttt
Congratulations to all our guys.
I guess that Pajama crack was supposed to be an insult, but doesn't that make CBS look even worse? A bunch of no account bloggers in pajamas took down your story in a matter of hours. How long had your professionally dressed staffers been researching this story? How incompentent must they be that these inferior bloggers were able to knocked you off your pedastal with almost no effort and certainly no "formal journalism training"?
That's a beautiful badge...someone oughta make that badge...betcha Freepers would buy them by the thousands....LOL
Congrats, you guys!!
Yeah.....somebody otta!!! : )
It looks good on my freeper jacket but no one sells any more.
Congratulations, Buckhead and TankerKC! Great discoveries! Thank G-d for the internet and FR, getting the truth out to counter the mainstream propaganda machine.
What do you mean?
You still have the black jackets?
Ok...now I understand...no, the last jacket was sold at the Ball.
Actually, a lot of people questioned the authenticity before Buckhead. Buckhead was the first to recognize and specify the flaw in the cBS forgery, i.e., proportional fonts that were unavailable to typewriters circa 1970. Seemingly within the hour there were other Freepers who recreated the infamous documents on their PCs with Microsoft Word even with fancy overlays. Soon after, someone else recognized that the superscript was also flawed. My hat's off to Buckhead as "the man", but I wish to thank all the other Freepers who trashed the cBS garbage and left Dan Rather looking the fool he is.
Fighting against the McCain-Feingold bill needs to start now. I consider it a GRIEVIOUS assault on the First Amendment, and I will NEVER FORGIVE McCain and Feingold and President Bush for getting it on the books. I especially hold McCain accountable because by putting his name to it, he NULLIFIED his service in Vietnam. I dare him to say I owe him gratitude for his service there, because he went and p*ss*d on the very Constitution he swore to uphold. President Bush proved himself a Domestic Policy Coward by letting it pass under his pen, instead of vetoing it. McCain's veteran status means NOTHING to me...and I was born in 1967 and am old enough to remember show AWFUL the Vietnam vets were treated...I have since wanted to be the one to THANK THEM for what they did. But not McCain. He is a TRAITOR in my eyes.
Sorry for the rant, but I now expect the Blogger community, especially the conservatives to be LOUD and DEFIANT of this bill that just got knocked down. I hope they pay attention now, because by this time next year, it will be too late.
Woo-hoo!
BTTT
I know. I bought it.
YEA, FREEREPUBLIC'S RIGHT!!! CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL :^)...rto
You guys ROCL!! Wooohooooo!!!!
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