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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....

I was asked by our local chapter of the Cardozo Society — an affinity group of Jewish lawyers of which I am a member — to speak over lunch as a counterpart to ABA Foundation Fellow and historian Victoria Saker Woeste on the subject of fake news at the society’s October 8 continuing legal education program. Ms. Woeste was the featured speaker. Her theme was that the term “fake news” is anti-Semitic in origin and that President Trump’s use of it, knowingly or not, is wrongful. Her talk expanded on her Washington Post column (accessible via Outline here) making this...

Domestic Total as of Oct. 18, 2015: $76,646

CBS has refused to run advertising for Truth, the film starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford that revisits a painful episode in the network's past involving a discredited 2004 news story on former President George W. Bush's military service record. CBS has denounced the movie, which opens Friday, as a disservice to the public and journalists. Redford plays Dan Rather in Truth, with Blanchett as producer Mary Mapes. Together, they were behind a 60 Minutes II story that questioned Bush's Vietnam War-era commitment to service in the Texas Air National Guard. But CBS apologized for the story after documents used...

The film “Truth” will be released commercially later this month to retell the Rathergate scandal from the perspective of Mary Mapes. The film is based on Mapes’s almost laughable 2005 Rathergate memoir. The left routinely seeks to rewrite even yesterday’s news; events eleven years ago, when Mapes committed her misconduct, have now attained the status of ancient history. John and I therefore sought to reiterate the basic facts of the Rathergate scandal in the Weekly Standard article “Rather shameful.” Our article is intended to constitute Rathergate 101. Now comes Atlanta attorney Harry MacDougald — the pseudonymous “Buckhead” — to give...

When CBS’s 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast its lead story—reported by Dan Rather and produced by Mary Mapes—on the evening of September 8, 2004, it was given the anodyne title “For the Record,” as though it constituted little more than a disinterested historical footnote. In reality, the story was a bold fabrication about President George W. Bush’s long-ago service in the Texas National Guard, intended to damage him in his campaign for reelection against John Kerry. Within hours of the broadcast, after CBS News posted online PDF copies of four memos highlighted in the segment, the story began to fall apart...

Matt Lauer pushes a rewrite of history with the movie "Truth".  On the Today Show, at about 08:44 central time, Lauer gave discredited Dan Rather the opportunity to rewrite history.   Lauer shamelessly promots the movie based on the book written by Mary Mapes, who uncritically accepted the fraud that advanced the narrative she was promoting. Rather made the outrageous claim that the story that he promoted to stop President George Bush's re-election bid was "true".   It echoes his response at the time that the fraudulent documents that he used in his attempt to discredit President "Dubya" Bush were...

"You Can't Handle the Truth!!!" ---A Few Good Men.Apparently former CBS producer Mary Mapes can't handle the truth at least according to her portrayal by actress Cate Blanchett in the newly released movie trailer for the upcoming fictional movie "Truth." I say fictional because Mapes in the film somehow maintains the truth of her story about George W. Bush getting favorable treatment in the Texas Air National Guard based on documents that were proven to be forgeries.

"A film called 'Truth' should be accurate," the iconic CBS news anchor said of director James Vanderbilt’s movie about his 2006 exit and the events leading to it. Iconic CBS news anchor Dan Rather on Saturday praised the Robert Redford-starring Rathergate movie Truth for its accuracy and performances ahead of its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. "Naturally I was pleased, and pleasantly surprised. This film is very accurate. A film called Truth should be accurate," Rather told the Hollywood Reporter during a pre-screening party. James Vanderbilt's movie centers on Rather's 2006 exit from CBS after a 60 Minutes...

Robert Redford has signed on to play Dan Rather in Truth, a film based on the 2005 memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. The book, written by Rather's producer Mary Mapes, centers on the firestorm that erupted in September of 2004 after Rather reported that George W. Bush had received special treatment while serving in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, a report that was based on documents that turned out to be forgeries. - See more at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/robert-redford-play-dan-rather-717476#sthash.Y0QB620e.dpuf

Reporting from New York - Dan Rather's protracted legal fight with CBS ended Tuesday when New York state's highest court declined to hear the anchor's motion to reinstate his $70-million lawsuit against his longtime employer. Rather was hoping the court would breathe new life into his suit alleging breach of contract and fraud against CBS that a state appellate court had dismissed in September. But the Court of Appeals denied Rather's motion without comment

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Bush administration says it's treating CBS New as a political opponent, and executives at the top-rated news network are responding that the White House can't tell straight reporting from opinion. White House communications director Karen Hughes recently told Time magazine that she thinks CBS offers "opinion journalism masquerading as news," and kept up the criticism on CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday and in The New York Times Monday. CBS News president Sean McManus issued a statement Monday, saying: "It's astounding the White House can't distinguish between news and opinion programming. It seems self-serving on their part." And...

Media Bias: Veteran reporter, author and commentator Bernard Goldberg reports that when CBS News did its fake National Guard story on George W. Bush avoiding service in Vietnam, it knew it was a lie.It's a liberal urban legend that Bush used the influence of his father and his father's friends to land a cushy position in the Texas National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. The Democrats would run John Kerry as a hero in the war, and CBS News was all too eager to help with Mary Mapes producing a "60 Minutes II" segment in September 2004 charging exactly...

This story by Bernard Goldberg certainly takes me back to the early days of my blogging career. Shortly after the 2004 Republican convention, Mary Mapes produced a segment for 60 Minutes II that alleged that George W. Bush had manipulated his enlistment in the Texas Air National Guard to avoid serving in combat in Vietnam. The documents used by CBS, Mapes, and Dan Rather turned out to be clumsy hoaxes, which the blogosphere exposed through careful review of their substance and their form (the latter of which I played a small part in refuting, with my expertise in printing and...

Bernard Goldberg is getting a good bit of attention for something he said on O'Reilly tonight -- that documents show the CBS investigation in 2004 revealed that George Bush volunteered to fly combat missions in Vietnam. The following is from his website, Bernard Goldberg.com (via Newsbusters):

On Tuesday, FNC's The O'Reilly Factor hosted FNC analyst Bernard Goldberg as the former CBS News correspondent highlighted a story recently posted on his Web site, BernardGoldberg.com, in which he complains of how little mainstream media attention was given to the fact that former President George W. Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam as part of his service in the Texas Air National Guard, but that he was turned down because other pilots were more experienced, and that CBS News producer Mary Mapes, even though she knew this part of the story before the report aired, did not include...

We all know what happened in Rather Gate. Dan Rather went on 60 minutes with documents that were fake. These documents were obviously not properly vetted prior to them being aired because they were fake and they wound up on the air. These documents purported to show that Bush used political influence to get into the guard to avoid serving in the Vietnam War. They also showed him to be lazy. Of course, none of it was true. Dan Rather wound up losing his job and so did Mary Mapes.

In 2007, Rather filed his $70 million lawsuit against his old company saying he wasn’t allowed to defend his story because the top management of CBS’ parent company, Viacom, wanted to appease the Bush Administration and protect its business interests. Until now, the controversy over the Rather/Mapes story has centered almost entirely on one issue: the legitimacy of the documents – a very important issue, indeed. But it turns out that there was another very important issue, one that goes to the very heart of what the story was about – and one that has gone virtually unnoticed. This is...

Live on O'Reilly Factor

Bernard Goldberg says CBS investigation on page 130 - Mary Mapes knew in advance that George Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam and so did Dan Rather! Bernie was just on Bill O'Reilly