Free Republic

If you believe CBS’ report it was all producer Mary Mapes fault – Dan Rather was not much more than an innocent bystander in the scandal that now bears his name: "Rathergate." CBS would also have you believe there was no evidence that politics played a role in CBS airing of a story based on forged documents. CBS, for that matter, still won’t say the documents were forged. This last conclusion is convenient for CBS and the “independent” panel they appointed to investigate Rathergate. If the documents are forgeries -- which almost everyone agrees is the case -- there are...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An independent report on Monday found a CBS News story about U.S. President Bush's National Guard service record was deeply flawed and came from the network's "myopic zeal" to be first with the news. CBS said it would fire four employees for their roles in the erroneous story, broadcast on Sept. 8, 2004, and would take steps to bolster its credibility. Following are some celebrated media scandals over inaccurate or fabricated stories. April 1981 -- The Washington Post relinquishes a Pulitzer Prize for a story written by Janet Cooke about "Jimmy," an 8-year-old heroin addict who...

In response to the release today of a report on CBS News' bogus story about President Bush's National Guard service, an organization that has pushed Americans to boycott the network urges executives there to shun New York and broadcast the evening news "from the heartland" of America. The panel probing the story found CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; "60 Minutes Wednesday" Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard's deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The...

Let the fence-mending begin. According to a Broadcasting & Cable source in Washington, D.C., CBS News president Andrew Heyward, along with Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, recently met with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration.CBS News’ popularity at the White House—never high to begin with—plunged further in the wake of Dan Rather’s discredited 60 Minutes story on George Bush’s National Guard service.An incentive for making nice is the impending report from the two-member panel investigating CBS's use of now-infamous documents for the 60 Minutes piece.Heyward was “working overtime to convince Bartlett that neither...

Experts advised world museums to re-examine their Bible-era relics after Israel indicted four collectors and dealers on charges of forging items thought to be some of the most important artifacts discovered in recent decades. The indictments issued Wednesday labeled many such "finds" as fakes, including two that had been presented as the biggest biblical discoveries in the Holy Land - the purported burial box of Jesus' brother James and a stone tablet with written instructions by King Yoash on maintenance work at the ancient Jewish Temple. Shuka Dorfman, the head of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said that the scope of...

A little biride familiar with discussions at CBS News tells me that the network suits will announced Dan Rather's replacement the day they release the report about the faked memos. I guess the aim is to distract from the bad news by creating two headlines instead og just one.

....Rather’s abrupt departure is the latest in a long line of actions taken by media conglomerates in recent years bowing to objections from the government or from corporate, military or intelligence interests to any serious investigation of the practices of the American ruling elite....

Wired News comes out clearly in favor of Utah state professor David Hailey in an article portraying him as a victim of a “mob:” Wired News: Prof Pursued by Mob of Bloggers. Hailey is the professor of creative writing who created an “analysis” of the fraudulent CBS Killian memos, arguing against all evidence that a typewriter could have produced them even though Hailey’s own examples are not typewritten. Now Dr. Joseph M. Newcomer, a typography expert who holds several patents on desktop publishing technology, has drafted an absolutely crushing review of David Hailey’s work: The Hailey Connection. Dr. Newcomer emailed...

One of the pages on Kerry's site is called "John Kerry's Official Naval Records" (www.johnkerry.com/about/john_kerry/military_records.html). As of 10/5/04, three sections of this page, "Military Service Awards," "Bronze Star," and "Silver Star" contained fake, forged documents.Why are these documents on this site, who put them there, what does Kerry know about them and why has no one vigorously pursued this obvious dishonesty and misrepresentation? Kerry is lying on his "Offical" site and, since it reflects on everything he says, must be explained.There are actually, THREE forged documents on this "Official" mendacious site. All purport to be signed by Secretary of the...

Media Pushes Fictions over Facts By Robin Boyd Posted On September 27, 2004 @ 09:58 PM EST [Post Comment] The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were the focus for crucial weeks of the 2004 Presidential Campaign. Day after day, Democrats decried the use of “partisan money” to fund the Swifties’ ads, calling on President Bush to denounce the partisan attack against John Kerry. John Edwards called on the President to stop hiding behind what he called a “front group.” The media’s search for Bush/Cheney connections to the Swift Boat vets was also relentless, and it is a study in media...

Forgeries More Interesting Than Facts By Robin Mullins Boyd September 29, 2004 The appearance of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the 2004 Presidential Campaign has caused quite an uproar. The Democrats decried the use of partisan money to fund the Swift Boat ads. They have called on President Bush to denounce the partisan attack against John Kerry. John Edwards called on the President to "stop hiding behind a front group". The media's search for Bush/Cheney connections to the Swift Boat vets has been relentless. The media has been so focused on uncovering anything that could possibly damage the...

Longtime CBS newsman and "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer said Monday that the Rathergate forged document scandal has been "a terrible blow" to the network's credibility. "I love CBS. I love the people who work here. This is a terrible blow to all of us," Schieffer told the ABC Radio network's Sean Hannity. "It's hurt us in two ways," Schieffer said. "Clearly, it's hurt our credibility. But it's also like somebody just came up and kicked us in the stomach. It's hurt us emotionally." The top CBS newsman made his comments as the latest ratings for the CBS "Evening...

Where's the outrage -- at CBS? Pat Buchanan September 26, 2004 Something remains puzzling about the Rathergate scandal. Where is the outrage? Where is the righteous rage of Dan Rather at the forgers of faked military records of George W. Bush, who played him for a fool? Something is fishy here. And, indeed, the inexplicable absence of outrage suggests that there is more, much more, to this story To understand, imagine this situation. Detectives come to the home of John Q. Citizen to inform him he has been the victim of a fraud. The hundred-dollar bills he used as a...

Unit 127 of the Pajamahadeen reporting for duty. On August 13, Bill Burkett posted approving comments on democrats.com ( http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=23055 ) about a rabid website that claims President Bush went AWOL while in the National Guard. These remarks were highlighted in an article by Steve Gilbert on the American Thinker website that I want to acknowledge first. ( www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=719 ) The AT piece points out a stark contradiction between Burkett's August comments and his claim to have received the Killian forgeries in March (the cattle show story). Near the end of his August comments, Burkett says "I have found no...

Buckhead vs. Dan Rather Internet David Slays Media Goliath September 26, 2004 by Nicholas Stix Say good night, Dan. Dan Rathers journalism career is surely over. When he got snookered by the forged memos peddled by longtime Bush enemy Bill Burkett, a retired Texas Army National Guard lieutenant colonel, and the fraud was exposed by a lousy Internet site, instead of Rather re-investigating the story, he stonewalled, took the offensive, engaged in a “modified, limited hangout (the September 21 New York Post) and attacked his critics. Once he admitted that something wasnt quite right about the documents, he even tried...

If George Orwell could have teamed up with Lewis Carroll, maybe, just maybe, they could have concocted something as down-the-rabbit-hole outlandish as the current CBS wisdom on those four almost universally discredited memos trashing George W. Bush's Air National Guard service. After a week in the media pillory, beginning in the blogosphere and spreading even to the mainstream media bastions of The Washington Post and ABC News, Dan Rather and CBS have suggested, barely, that their documents may be fake. They insist, though, that the content is accurate. "Those who have criticized aspects of our story have never criticized the...

TIME TO JUST SAY IT, by JB WILLIAMS September 22, 2004 - Politicians have successfully divided 290 million individuals into a handful of nice neat little voting blocks easy to pander to. The liberal media (who is rarely fair or balanced about anything), has brain soaked the country into thinking “fair & balanced” reporting is of more value than just plain “truthful” reporting. In the real world, truth is often unbalanced and rarely fair, especially to those who find themselves standing on the wrong side of truth. Occasionally, circumstances demand that we set aside congeniality and get right down to...

Something to Yak About - Gillespie on Phony Docs: 'Was a Crime Committed? I Think So' Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie laid it on the line Wednesday, telling reporters he thinks criminal activity is behind the bogus documents used as the peg for a Sept. 8 CBS News report smearing the president. "Was a crime committed? I believe so," said Gillespie. "Obviously, forgery is involved. But the Texas Legal Code also says it is a third degree felony if one 'makes, presents, or uses any record, document, or thing with knowledge of its falsity and with intent that...

When "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes set up contacts between the source who gave her forged documents on President Bush's military record and top Kerry campaign strategist Joe Lockhart, it wasn't the first time she had violated the most basic journalistic rules. Just four years ago, Mapes was accused of concocting a scheme to help secretly pass information between convicted white supremacist Peter Langan and another federal prisoner at a Colorado penitentiary, a violation of federal regulations. In a Nov. 20, 2001, letter to Mapes and her boss, Jeff Fager, J.E. Gunja, warden at the federal penitentiary at Florence, Colorado,...

The jig is up. The game is over. CBS tried to energize the country into voting against President Bush by highlighting forged documents it said would prove Bush's failure to serve honorably in the Texas Air National Guard. The smoking gun went up in smoke. Once caught, CBS and Dan Rather could have responded with a simple apology. Instead, they went ballistic -- and now must pay the price for their defiance. For more than a week, Dan Rather responded like a cornered politician, blaming a vast right-wing conspiracy of "partisan political activists" for unfairly trying to change the subject...