Free Republic

Paris To understand the al-Dura affair, it helps to keep one thing in mind: In France, you can't own up to a mistake. This is a country where the law of the Circus Maximus still applies: Vae victis, Woe to the vanquished. Slip, and it's thumbs-down. Not for nothing was Brennus a Gaul. His modern French heirs don't do apologies well, or at all if they can possibly help it. Why should they? That would be an admission of weakness. Blink, and you become the fall guy. So, in the case of Muhammad al-Dura-a 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by...

On 4/11/08, The Newseum opened its new quarters in Washington, DC. I was specifically interested in an exhibit in the Internet, TV and Radio Gallery. The exhibit was "Bias at CBS" and it featured the September 2004 "60 Minutes II" Dan Rather report aimed at discrediting President Bush's service in the Air National Guard. This 9/04 report was meant to hurt Bush's re-election chances in November, 2004. Comments among FReepers quickly exposed inconsistencies in the documents and led to bloggers on the internet exposing the report as deeply flawed, as well as using forged documents. These inconsistencies ultimately forced CBS...

excerpt - NEW YORK - A judge said Wednesday that he was leaning toward allowing Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit over his being fired by CBS to proceed. "I concluded there was enough in the complaint (by Rather) to continue with discovery (pretrial research)," state Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman said at a hearing on CBS' motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge did not issue a final ruling on CBS's motion, but he suggested the parties try to agree on the scope of pretrial discovery _ just in case _ and told them to return to court Jan. 23...

ATLANTA -- Rescuers pulled a driver from inside a car as it dangled Wednesday night seven stories above the streets of Buckhead. Thin cables held the car off the side of a parking deck after it smashed through the fencing at the edge of the facility at the Realm condominiums in the 3300 block of Peachtree Road. Firefighters reached the car by rapelling down from the deck's top floor, one story above the dangling vehicle. Held in place upside down, a rescuer reached into an open window of the car and slipped a safety harness on the driver. Then they...

If any definitive evidence to the contrary of our story is found, we will report it. So far, there is none. — CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never! — Former Iraqi Minister of Information Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, better known as “Baghdad Bob” A coordinated effort Outflanked by the new media tactics of the anti-Kerry veterans groups, much of the establishment media now prepared to focus with laser-like intensity on the military service, not of John Kerry, but of George W. Bush. That decision would lead to the sharpest single confrontation between the...

In 2004, at the height of the Dan Rather Memogate story, I wrote in National Review: “Across the media universe the questions pour out: Why is Dan Rather doing this to himself? Why does he drag this out? Why won’t he just come clean? Why would he let this happen in the first place? Why is CBS standing by him? Why ... why ... why? “There is only one plausible answer: Ours is a just and decent God.” Well, God has not forsaken us. Dan Rather seems divinely inspired to crash more times than a Kennedy driving home from an...

I have obtained new documentary evidence regarding Dan Rather's relationship with his former bosses at CBS News. Obviously, I cannot identify my source. But he told me during a collect call from Sofia, Bulgaria, that he has access to Rather's "personal files" and that his typewriter was built after 1966. To authenticate the document, I showed it to some of my kids' friends, and they said it was awesome. Here, then, the letter -- written by Dan Rather and dated Nov. 31, 2006: "Dear CBS News: "My new career at HDNet is keeping me busier than a bordello at Mardis...

How can I put this nicely? Mary Mapes [file photo] has reality "issues." Three years after she was exposed for having perpetrated one of the worst frauds in the history of presidential-campaign journalism, she continues to paint herself as the victim of a right-wing conspiracy. And incredibly, despite a mountain of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, she clings to the notion that the blatantly forged documents at the heart of the Memogate story were authentic. Mapes's meltdown-in-the-guise-of-a-column appeared in yesterday's Huffington Post. Excerpts from the metaphor-gone-wild "Courage for Dan Rather" [emphasis added]: [We] reaped a whirlwind of right-wing outrage and...

Partners in deception, partners in denial . . . Earlier today I noted that in her HuffPo column, ex-CBS producer Mary Mapes continues to cling to the delusion that the Memogate documents were authentic. In an inteview on "Morning Joe," Dan Rather has now made a similar reality-denying claim. Mika Brzezinski, who, as was repeatedly pointed out, used to work at CBS and has friends on both sides of the issue, conducted the interview. Bubbles didn't have the gumption to confront Rather with the crux of the issue: the forged documents at the heart of the story. Interestingly, Rather chose...

Dan Rather, whose career at CBS News ground to an inglorious end 15 months ago over his role in an unsubstantiated report questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service, filed a $70 million lawsuit this afternoon against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors. Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005. He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed...

Buckhead-area businesses and community leaders are offering a $15,000 reward to help stop a crew of armed robbers from taking expensive wedding rings from women. The bandits netted rings valued from $10,000 to $60,000 in seven robberies — some in broad daylight with the victims' children present — since early January. The most recent one was Sunday.

The Web is a great way to deliver information, but it's also a great way to expose, spread, or jump-start a scandal. SNIP The Net's biggest scandals are nothing if not democratic, touching everyone from the most ordinary individuals to the highest office in the land. Not everyone deserved the notoriety. Some were hapless victims of privacy breaches; others were exposed by hackers or misguided crusaders. But in almost every case, somebody ended up getting fired, sued, or mortally embarrassed. SNIP 3. Dan Rather Bids a Font Farewell They were supposed to be the smoking gun the Bush Administration was...

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Wednesday he would wait until September before deciding whether to run for the Republican party's presidential nomination and described that race as "wide open." Gingrich, who came to national prominence when Republicans won control of Congress in 1994 and promptly passed their program called the Contract with America under his leadership, said the situation in Iraq did not improve it would dominate the election. Between now and September he will work toward pooling ideas and resources with a view to figuring out solutions to tackling long term problems facing...

CBS News has scheduled a prime-time salute to Dan Rather, with the newsman talking about what it was like to leave as "CBS Evening News" anchor after a quarter-century and his plans for the future. The special, "Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers," didn't exactly get a plum time slot: CBS will air it at 9 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day weekend. CBS said it wanted to get the special on the air before Katie Couric's debut as evening-news anchor on Sept. 5. CBS promised the special as a good-faith gesture to Rather when it announced in June that...

The audio is about a minute in... Liddy (broadcasting from Sturgis) corrects Malkin on her misidentification of C. Johnson and Little Green Footballs as the source of the Texas National Guard CBS hoax. Liddy names "Free Republic" and Buckhead specifically. Cool!

Declaring he “absolutely” believes “the truth” of his discredited story based on forged memos, about President Bush's National Guard record, on Wednesday's Larry King Live on CNN Dan Rather contended that “we had a lot, a lot of corroboration, of what we broadcast about President Bush's military record. It wasn't just the documents.” Rather then attacked those who dared to expose his misdeeds: “It's a very old technique used, that when those who don't like what you're reporting believe it can be hurtful, then they look for the weakest spot and attack it, which is fair enough. It's a diversionary...

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather says he has considered filing a lawsuit against the network where he had worked for 44 years. Appearing Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live," Rather paused after a question from King and then said he wouldn't talk about whether he would file a lawsuit against CBS. But he acknowledged, "I can't say that I've never thought about it." It wasn't clear from the interview what Rather considered to be possible grounds for a lawsuit. A CBS spokesman commented late Wednesday after the interview, saying, "CBS believes that it...

This morning at 730am EST, 55,000 runners will begin the annual race down Peachtree St.

Dan Rather, one of the giants of American broadcast journalism, is to leave the channel he has worked at for 44 years, for a position at a little watched cable channel. CBS announced yesterday that Rather, 74, would be leaving the channel where he hosted the evening news for 24 years until he stood down last year. --Snip-- Rather has said in recent days that he was unhappy with the new role being offered him at the channel, where he has covered most of the big stories of the past 40 years, from the Kennedy assassination to the invasion of...

See for example this thread first. The end of the road for Dan Rather? His downfall began (as I gather) when a FReeper (no hype) spied proportional type-- Sauron (Dan) worked himself in a lather!

NEW YORK (AP) -- Dan Rather, who has been working at "60 Minutes" since leaving as "CBS Evening News" anchor last year, apparently is in his final days at CBS News. CBS executives and Rather's representatives appear close to a deal that will end Rather's association with CBS News after more than 40 years, according to an executive knowledgeable about the situation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Thursday. Rather, 74, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that he has had no conversations about continuing at "60 Minutes" beyond the television season that ended last month. Another...

by Mark Finkelstein June 7, 2006 There comes a point at which denial drifts into delusion, and Mary Mapes has crossed it. Incredibly, she is out with a Huffington Post piece calling the assertion of the irrefutable fact that the Rathergate documents were blatant forgeries a 'lie.' Excerpts: "[Critics] claimed that CBS used forged documents and they repeated that lie so often that it stuck. The mainstream media picked it up, repeating bloggers' criticisms without making any serious effort to investigate the story." "As for document analysis, it is a mind-numbing and arcane discipline, an imperfect undertaking reserved for courtroom...

This just in from source at Black Rock: He/She is at pre-season party in The Hamptons. Other CBSers (The Suits) are there as well. The Suits confirmed: Ran Rather's contract at CBS expires in August. He has not been offered ANY type of renewal. There may be some tiny dollar (the exact fee never to be disclosed) face-saving deal but that's it, Dan is out. This comes after he "resigned" from CBS Evening News position last year in an attempt to stop the bloodletting of advertisers at CBS. As we all know, the primary cause was not so much Rather's...

Kudos again to FR, Buckhead, Howlin, Texasforever, NYCVirago, and of course Jim for having this site to begin with. "Chapter 9 "We're Toast" pg 143 - 145 directly credits Freepers above with uncovering the "missing Documents" out of President Bush's National Guard Service that were distinctly unflattering to the President, and also flat forgeries. I am reading the book at the moment, and I wanted to pause and give credit where credit is due. I thank all those who helped bring to light these roaches that considered themselves so important as to try to influence a Presidential Election. I thank...

Just a note to let you know Bill Sammons new book "Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media" makes mention of a certain evil/wicked/extremist rightwing site. Dealing with how these terrible people exposed Dan Rather (Remember him? He used to be somebody.) use of fraudulent memos.

Fired CBS "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes is still blaming the internet for ending her media career prematurely - or more precisely; the "vicious" bloggers who discovered that documents she unearthed in a bid to trash President Bush's National Guard service were forgeries. "The criticism that was launched at us initially really came from the very conservative blogosphere, folks who are on these very conservative web sites," Mapes complained Friday on WVMT Vermont's "Charlie & Ernie" radio show. "This was really a terribly vicious attack they launched on CBS," she insisted, before lamenting: "Politics is not necessarily the way it...

For many in the "mainstream media", as bloggers call us, weblogs are at best a nuisance and at worst dangerous. They are seen as the rantings and ravings either of the unbalanced or the tedious. My experience over the past few months has led me to an opposite conclusion. I regard the blogosphere as a source of criticism that must be listened to and as a source of information that can be used. The mainstream media (MSM in the jargon) has to sit up and take notice and develop some policies to meet this challenge. Most big organisations, whether in...

One characteristic of a good executive is that he keeps his door and mind open to new ideas. Occasionally, I test that thesis by dropping a line to a bigwig to see first whether my missive gets through the several layers of filters that all executives have. If so, then the test is not whether the accept/respect my particular idea, but whether they demonstrate an openness to new ideas. I ran this test with Jonathan Klein, President of CNN/US. He and it failed both tests. Here's the test letter, which received not even a pro forma "thank you for your...

Web journalism now eligible for Pulitzer Prize Wed, 07 Dec 2005 Internet journalism received a leap in recognition Wednesday as the Pulitzer Prize Board widened its submission guidelines to include online material for all of its journalism categories. "The board believes it has taken a significant step in recognition of the widening role of online journalism at newspapers," prize administrator Sig Gissler said in a statement. Online material will be considered beginning with the 2006 competition (which honours work done in 2005). The eligibility guidelines "will continue to be restricted to newspapers published daily, Sunday or at least once a...

MARY MAPES IS BACK. With her memoir, Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power, the former CBS News producer is trying to write a second act for her career. Sadly, if her book is any indication, her second act is just a repeat of the first. Mapes was the producer of the CBS 60 Minutes II segment on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard that aired on September 8, 2004. According to the segment, President Bush had received preferential treatment in being admitted to the Guard, and once in, had served dishonorably....

Listen on streaming now: Mary Mapes trying to say that the documents were not fake...

Ever since the controversy over the CBS use of forged memos erupted, those disappointed by the exposure of the forgeries have wondered if the whole thing wasn't some sort of set up perpetrated by the Dark Lord, Karl Rove. Integral to this paranoid theorizing was their slack-jawed amazement that anyone could have observed and commented that the documents were fake based on typography as quickly as I did. How could anyone not on the inside have articulated a technical and convincing explanation that the documents were fake within a few hours of the broadcast? Well, here's your answer. It's probably...

Buckhead is the Atlanta attorney who originally questioned the authenticity of the documents used to attack President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service in the September 8, 2004 60 Minutes II broadcast. He preferred anonymity for professional reasons, but a diligent reporter for the Los Angeles Times tracked him down and identified him in the immediate aftermath of Rathergate. A reader forwarded Buckhead's comments on the documents to us on September 9, and I included them in our original "Sixty-first Minute" post that morning. For the most part he has kept his silence. Now Mary Mapes is out peddling the...

Welcome to the next installment of the continuing saga: Mary Mapes vs. the Blogs, in which, for good measure, she takes on reality, too. And at the same time, we can consider the rise, fall -- and possible comeback -- of Mapes as part of the ongoing power-struggle between the MSM (Main Stream Media) and the New Media (NM). If you don't know that Mapes is the former CBS News producer who was the driving force behind the September 8, 2004 broadcast on "60 Minutes II," attacking George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard -- which was...

November 09, 2005 Mary Mapes Names Names ("Anonymous" Ones) Posted by Bill An excerpt from page 201 of her new book: Within minutes of Buckhead's original posting, Freepers began to repeat and embellish Buckhead's thoughts. Not surprisingly, they all agreed with him, they all agreed with one another, and they all agreed this should be pursued aggressively. Freethinkers they are not. The Freepers and their lockstep like-minded fellow travelers moved as a group, like a school of sharks sweeping toward an unaware and unarmed victim. CBS was like some sunburned, overweight Florida tourist with a cut foot, floundering and flapping...

Anyone else happen to catch Mary Mapes on CNN's American Morning just now? It was much the same stuff we heard last night on Larry King; however she sounds a tad more bitter and combative today. She deeply resents being made the victim of a "drunken blogging brawl (because that's what it was)". Good people, this tippling-in-front-of-the-computer has to stop now. Just imagine how we could change America if we were all posting sober.

< MIDI - MORE THAN A FEELING She woke up one morning and her job was gone Suits in the boardroom said go away The docs were phony the FReepers showed For her and Dan it's a bad hair day (musical break) She was sent reeling...she tried to hurt Dubya Her dirty dealing...had been stopped, and she started to cry But watch Mary Mapes...still telling lies (musical break) So many people she had deceived Hatred of Bush made them blind with rage She's claiming that she...did nothing wrong And she is stuck on the same old page On the same...

<p>"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."</p> <p>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.</p>

I've just read the Vanity Fair article excerpting Mary Mapes's new book, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. Yes, that is the title. No, there are no reports of lightning striking anywhere near Ms. Mapes for writing a book that uses "truth" and "duty" in its title. First thought: Dear Lord, if I ever botch a story as badly as Mapes did, and, say, write a huge expose on Kim Jong-Il's inappropriate relationship with a goat, and it turns out that the memo describing said relationship was not actually written in North Korean...

Free Republic is a longtime hangout for me and sometimes things get pretty interesting. The current big story has all the complexity and treachery of a Russian novel.In October of 2004, a Freeper who goes by the handle of MD4BUSH began making posts on Free Republic urging Republicans to "play dirty" in the 2004 election. MD4BUSH represented himself as a staunch Republican. He lured another poster named NCPAC into his confidence and then posted alleged private "freep-mails" between the two. MD4BUSH baited  NCPAC into discussing sexual rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. When MD4BUSH brought the exchanges to the attention of the...

October 5, 2005 -- THE producer at the center of last year's "Memogate" scandal at CBS News says she was derailed by a vast right-wing conspiracy. The producer, Mary Mapes, is one of four CBS staffers fired last January in the wake of the scandal. She is convinced she was the victim of a group of loosely associated Internet bloggers "with a harsh political bent" who pounced on CBS News minutes after the airing of the now-infamous Texas Air National Guard story on "60 Minutes 2" in September 2004... "Within a few minutes, I was online visiting Websites I had...

RUSH: I want to now go to these Dan Rather sound bites. Dan Rather was interviewed last night at the National Press Club in Washington by former CBS News employee-reporter Marvin Kalb. Marvin Kalb now runs the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Shorenstein Center at Harvard, and you know something? When you hear these bites you're going to understand what I'm saying here. This is one of the problems of the mainstream media today. When these reporters that get long in the tooth get laid off or retired, they farm them out to these think tanks and these journalism...

I was reading the text of the interview between Kalb and Rather and learned that the Rather story on Bush's aborted National Guard service was thwarted by "blogs" called "Free Republic" and "Buckhead." I did find a Buckhead.org, but it just seems to be a bland Atlanta area news source, so I don't know the story in that. So I came here. And guess what? Nothing. Your story page is nothing more than boilerplate site/conservative mission comments. I really don't know why this blog is meaningful at all. I would guess the main stream media has nothing to worry about.

Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer fired for her role in Memogate, has come out with her new book, Truth and Duty : The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. In it she mentions some encouraging words from Dan Rather, offering his support for her in her darkest hour. I knew I could count on Dan. In tough situations, he became “fightin’ Dan,” someone who told us all to “never back up, never back down, never give up, never give in.” I was glad to hear from him and reassured by his reaction to all of it. Dan...

Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used...

I hate vanities, but I thought that today and last night deserved recognition for being the one year anniversary of TankerKC and Buckhead blowing the CBS ANG document story out of the water. As we all know, this ultimately led to the disgracing of Dan Rather and rapidly advanced the already slow-moving demise of the MSM as a monopoly.

Today is September 9, the first anniversary of "Rathergate." It was at 7:51 on the morning of Sept. 9, 2004, that Scott hit the "save" button on the original version of "The Sixty-First Minute", which discussed the 60 Minutes program on President Bush's National Guard service that had aired the previous evening, along with the DNC's advertising campaign on the same subject that was beginning on the morning of Sept. 9. At the end of his post--now the most famous post in the young history of the blogosphere--Scott included a quote and a link to a Free Republic post by...

Anyone else see this on LGF? Apparently the left is so desperate to bring down rove they are linking Buckhead to the CBS memos to Karl Rove.

Hinderaker (and Buckhead) in the round CNN has just posted videos of the panel discussions on bloggers and blogging that our own John Hinderaker participated in during the CNN annual World Report International Conference in Atlanta on May 31. Also appearing on the panel with John is the man -- Harry MacDougald, a/k/a Buckhead -- whose Free Republic comment on the September 8 CBS 60 Minutes II report on President Bush's Air National Guard service was emailed to us on September 9. We posted his comment in our "Sixty-first Minute" post that morning and spent the rest of the rest...

May 15, 2005 Blogging, as in Slogging By DAVID GREENBERG "YOU should have a blog."Apparently I push my opinions on my friends rather aggressively, because I often hear this remark.Last week, I had my chance. My wife and I agreed to be "guest bloggers" - the online equivalent of what David Brenner used to do for Johnny Carson - for Dan Drezner, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, who runs a popular libertarian-conservative blog, DanielDrezner.com. How hard could blogging be? You roll out of bed, turn on your computer, scan the headlines, think up some clever analysis...