Free Republic

As democracy remains under siege, it has been frustrating to watch how the press covers politics these days. I am reminded by lessons that came to me during the Nixon years as a CBS News correspondent, which I’ll add here: 1. Enough with Both-sides-ism When one side lies intentionally and repeatedly, they are no longer entitled to the benefit of the doubt. They should be held to account, right away. Do not simply repeat the narratives they spew.

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....

Twitter users swarmed disgraced former CBS anchor Dan Rather's tweet which expressed confusion at the recent tonal shift in CNN’s reporting. The newsman and liberal commentator tweeted that something is "going on" at the network on Friday and generated a wave of concern from liberals (and mockery from conservatives) that the network is abandoning the partisan political bent in its reporting. Rather may have noticed, as did many other liberals on Twitter, the two CNN reporters who rebuked Biden’s political "MAGA Republican" speech for employing the U.S. Marines in its presentation. For many liberals this was another concrete sign that...

CBS NEWS — Only 30 percent of U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine reach destination……

Maybe a new slogan for Fox News should be: “For those who can’t handle the truth.” -Dan Rather, today on Twitter

Former President Donald Trump has reportedly been bashing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in private as a potential 2024 primary opponent, calling him a “dull personality” with no chance of winning. As polls continue to put Ron DeSantis in the top spot for the 2024 nomination without Donald Trump on the ballot, sources confirmed to Axios that the former president has been privately trashing the popular Florida governor.

In a televised interview with former CBSer Marvin Kalb, retired CBS anchor Dan Rather stated that his network will not allow him to continue to pursue the story of President Bush's Air Guard service. "Straight-up, no chaser, no," the exiled anchor said when asked if he would consider filing a story about it on the "60 Minutes" news magazine since he continues to believe in it. "CBS News doesn't want me to do that story. They wouldn't let me do that story," Rather said, declining to elaborate further. (See it in WMV or RealMedia video.) Rather also expressed suspicion about...

NEW YORK In the upcoming December issue of Vanity Fair, Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer who lost her job after the disputed "60 Minutes II" Bush/National Guard report, writes, "I must answer the bloggers, the babblers and blabbers, and the true believers who have called me everything from 'feminazi' to an 'elitist liberal' to an 'idiot.' "If I was an idiot, it was for believing in a free press that is able to do its job without fear or favor. ...I didn't know that the attack on our story was going to be as effective as a brilliantly run...

In her first interview since being fired, former CBS News producer Mary Mapes maintains that her controversial "60 Minutes II" story on President Bush's National Guard service was "true" and that "no one has proved that the documents were not authentic."... In her interview with ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross, to be broadcast Wednesday morning on "Good Morning America," Mapes says she is unrepentant about her role. "I don't think I committed bad journalism. I really don't," she says.... Mapes says Rather did not have "any obligation to resign" from his position, as CBS correspondent Mike Wallace recently...

Dan Rather, who famously lost his job after he was caught spreading a made-up story about former President George W. Bush, is making the rounds again to discuss accuracy in media and the proper role of the press in our republic. Because this is real life and the producers of NBC's "Today" show lack any sense of self-awareness. "[A] recent poll that said nearly half of people think the media make up stories!" co-host Savannah Guthrie said as she kicked off the morning segment. Referring to a Politico survey released in October, she then turned to Rather and said,...

ABC legal analyst Sunny Hostin said Monday on ABC’s “The View” that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s incorrect number on pediatric COVID cases in hospitals was “not accurate.” However, Hostin said she was “correct” that there are more children in hospitals with COVID. Co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, “Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor got a couple of her statistics wrong.”

The House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol acknowledged on Wednesday that it doctored a text message between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), excluding content about how they wanted former Vice President Mike Pence to handle electoral votes during the Joint Session of Congress earlier this year. On Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the head of the House Intelligence Committee, showed a graphic during a hearing on newly obtained communications between Meadows and others, including Jordan. The graphic was displayed as the Jan. 6 panel was...

CNN confirmed on Saturday that it had terminated network anchor Chris Cuomo following documents newly revealed earlier this week that indicated that he had played a larger role than previously known in assisting his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), during his sexual harassment scandal.

Without warning, Facebook crashed on Monday morning.It’s unclear what caused today’s global outage which saw Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram all crash.The shutdown comes after a former Facebook product manager turned “whistleblower” leaked tens of thousands of internal documents published in a blockbuster series of reports published by The Wall Street Journal.Facebook executives admit in the internal memos that Zuckerberg “hobbled” America to get vaccinated, facilitates human trafficking and that the company’s subsidiary, Instagram, is harmful to teenagers among the trove of damning information leaked.However, the whistleblower, 37-year old data scientist Frances Haugen who led Facebook’s Civic Integrity and Misinformation Group...

Another day, another hate hoax. Douglas County, Atlanta – A 30-year-old woman this week was charged with 8 counts of making terroristic threats in the Brookmont subdivision of Douglasville. For nearly a year, Terresha Lucas left threatening, racially charged notes in black people’s mailboxes on Manning Drive. Lucas, a black woman, pretended to be a white male member of the Ku Klux Klan and described herself as 6 feet tall with a long red beard. “Residents on Manning Drive began receiving the notes last December from a person who claimed to be a white male member of the Ku Klux...

President Joe Biden will ban officials from using horses while securing the border, days after controversial photographs emerged of agents on horses confronting Haitian migrants the White House confirmed Thursday. “[W]e will no longer be using horses in Del Rio,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during the daily press briefing with reporters.

Racist graffiti found in a Missouri high school's bathrooms was the product of a "hate hoax," the school district announced Tuesday. When faculty at Parkway Central High School in St. Louis County announced that racist graffiti had been uncovered earlier in September, students and community members across the district staged a walkout in condemnation of the incident. However, the culprit behind the graffiti was a nonwhite student, according to a letter sent to parents, Supt. Keith Marty announced Tuesday. "The student responsible is not white," Marty wrote. "This does not diminish the hurt it caused or the negative impact it...

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 and eventually forced CBS into personnel changes and investigations. Dan Rather...

Rolling Stone magazine has been called out for publishing an inaccurate story Saturday about hospitals in Oklahoma being overrun by Ivermectin overdoses. The Rolling Stone story reported that the number of Ivermectin drug overdoses have so overwhelmed hospitals that gunshot victims have been unable to get medical treatment. Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug that has a human version but is more commonly used for deworming livestock. In an interview with local Southeastern Oklahoma station KFOR, a rural Oklahoma physician Dr. Jason McElyea spread many of the same falsehoods. “The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard...

This is an abbreviated version of the excellent Epix Documentary. The linked page has links to Part 1 and Part 2 of this program. Highly recommended as an introduction or a refresher to the TWA 800 disaster. (Spoiler alert: It was a Navy missile.) ML/NJ