Free Republic

Some people just can’t let go and Dan Rather is a case in point. Almost six years after he questioned George Bush’s National Guard service Rather is still defending the report that led to his eventual departure from the network. Give it a rest Dan. From TVNewser Rather, of course, famously parted ways with CBS after a story about Former President George W. Bush’s service in the National Guard was found to be based on faulty documents. Rather sued CBS over his ouster, and most of the charges have since been dismissed. Still, Rather continues to defend the report to...

Unbelievable ... his lawsuit is in appeal, and "he's a long way from being done yet." He's discounting any partisanship regarding this. Claimsng Viacom/CBS shut down the whole thing, and powerful political and corporate forces are controlling the news.

Bad news for Dan Rather: His $70 million lawsuit against CBS is no more. In a 19-page decision made public Tuesday, a state appeals court dismissed the legendary newsman's suit against CBS. Rather, 77, sued the Tiffany network in 2007 after his career at CBS collapsed in the wake of a "60 Minutes II" report about former President George W.Bush's Vietnam-era military service. The folksy newsman accused CBS executives of caving to Republican interests, coercing him into a public apology after the controversial report aired in September 2004. The report claimed "high-level political influence" kept Bush out of combat by...

The year 2005 is ending as it began, with another successful election in Iraq and a liberal media still flapping around trying to find other controversies to submerge it. It does not matter to them that a Gallup poll found that 74 percent of Americans express confidence in their military, but only 28 percent express confidence in their newspapers or TV news outlets. The "mainstream" media excels in excoriating the performance of nearly everyone else, but acts as if nothing they do should be held up as ineffective, inaccurate or just plain absurd. That's why the Media Research Center 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...

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...

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

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...

Mary Mapes is in gloat over-drive. Dan Rather's erstwhile producer, the woman behind Memogate, is beside herself with joy at what she sees as the impending death of the conservative blogosphere. It's her expectation that Barack Obama will win the presidency that has Mapes so hopeful. Annotated excerpts from her HuffPo column, The Monster is Dying [emphasis added]: * This whole thing is starting to feel a lot like the climactic death scene at the end of a 1950s monster movie. * Palin actually resembles that old monster movie staple -- the beautiful-but-bookish brunette working as a lab assistant for...

Mary Mapes, the former CBS News Sixty Minutes producer who lost her job in the wake of the Rathergate scandal has published an essay entitled The Monster is Dying at the Huffington Post celebrating the pending victory of Barack Obama and the demise of her conservative internet tormenters, including Free Republic.Mapes likens the domination of conservatives and the McCain-Palin campaign to Fifties sci-fi flicks where the mad scientist gets it in the end but the pretty female assistant survives.Mapes, who was fired after forged documents were used in a Sixty Minutes hit piece on President George W. Bush in September...

The Media Mob has learned that a team of Hollywood insiders is currently working on a screen adaptation of Truth And Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power—the 2005 book by former CBS News producer Mary Mapes, in which she defends the 60 Minutes II story by Dan Rather about President George W. Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, which ran on CBS in September 2004 and eventually led to her ouster from the network. Who would want to turn "Rathergate" into a feature-length film? According to sources familiar with the situation, Producer Mikkel Bondesen,...

I'm dancing on the top deck with a 71-year-old feminist and psychotherapist whom I've come to think of as the Twirler. We've spent two days attending seminars on The Nation magazine's Alaska cruise; we've talked about the Bush presidency and prison reform and single-payer health care. Now, at almost midnight, my fiercely intelligent and opinionated new friend is putting all the heady political talk behind her by bodily twirling. "If I start to get dizzy, then I twirl in the opposite direction," Charlotte tells me as the live band revs up its throbbing Motown beat. "I won't fall." "Good, please...

Dan RatherÂ’s Last Big Story Is Himself By Joe Hagan Published Nov 25, 2007 If he werenÂ’t famous, heÂ’d be mistaken for a veteran of a long-ago war: khaki safari shirt on his back, scuffed combat boots on his feet, that wiry crest of a brow, rheumy eyes under heavy lids, lower lip jutting out like an ornery fish resisting a hook. When Dan Rather sits on a bench in Central Park to tell how his 44-year career at CBS News ended in ignominy and humiliation, he is in fact still waging a war, a bitter and personal one. And...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Dan Rather has had three years to mull over his options after his disastrous participation in Memogate, and he has reached the conclusion that the most wronged person in the debacle was ... Dan Rather. After spending the last three years insisting that the obviously fraudulent memos he broadcast as senior editor of CBS Nightly News have not been proven fakes, he now will sue CBS for $70 million for not participating in his fantasies: 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...

Remember those photos that have been running in the media showing a rescue worker holding a dead child following the Israeli air strike in Qana? The message of those pictures has been powerful: look at what those evil Israelis did to that poor, innocent child. Well, now we learn that all may not be what it seems. Many of those pictures were taken by the photographers for wire services like the Associated Press, Reuters and the always pro-terrorist Agence France-Presse, also known as AFP. But an enterprising British blogger decided to dig a bit deeper. He looked at the time...

Title Can the internet ever produce a purity of consent? A case study of Rathergate. Introduction On September 8th 2004, memos by the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian purporting to show that a subordinate of his, one George W. Bush, had a less than perfect war record during the Vietnam conflict, were aired by CBS show 60 Minutes II. I believe no academic study on this topic exists. A search of the Proquest dissertations database reveals no existing work. There are several books extant which subjectively cover the episode from various points of view. I will utilise these as...