American Thinker:
By David Lanza
An important anniversary passed last month and predictably received no attention. 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. 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 was forced into retirement a few months later. But CBS did not give up before a lengthy battle in which bloggers demonstrated that the font and other features in the forged documents did not exist in 1972 (the date placed on the forgeries).
The battle over the truth became a story in itself. The truth about the font spread like wildfire through the blogosphere and the internet, quickly picking up steam. CBS, Rather and the left clung to their story as long as they could. They even invented the “fake but accurate” standard to defend the forged documents. CBS and its surrogates belittled the bloggers but ended up making them famous. Conservative bloggers would embrace the “pajamas” epithet thrown at them during the battle – some of whom still use it today. With persistence, they established that CBS was wrong. The documents were forgeries, and CBS personnel committed misconduct in airing the story. Investigations and lawsuits and an independent panel followed. Read more
What’s the FREQUENCY, Kenneth? 🙄
IS IT OK TO SAY THAT DAN BLATHER HAS THE MOST PUNCHABLE WHATEVER???
ARROGANCE + STUPID = DAN BLATHER
OH, AND MY EX TOO!!!
I would like to see Dan Rather and George Bush fight to the death.
Both of them… at the same time.
Jackboot, I bet W and Rather are best buddies now. W has probably apologized to Dan for causing him so much trouble.
Dan Rather was so determined to take down George W. Bush, that he bought into an obviously fraudulent story supported by easily discredited documents. The Deceiver deceived. Rathergate. What a well deserved comeuppance.
And now the biggest gig that Dan Blather can get is The Big Interview with Dan Blather on Access TV, interviewing aging and decrepit rock stars etc. Oh how the once mighty have fallen.
Why isn’t Dan rather dead yet?
Seriously, what an insufferable, arrogant prick.
Dan, you’re taking up space. You are a NET NEGATIVE at a time when non-contributors need to be considered for immediate removal, maybe exiled to Mars, just for fun.
Any time this man’s last name appears in print, the “th” should be coded in superscript.
Often forgotten in all of the brew-ha-ha in the history of Rathergate is one Charles Johnson of LittleGreenFootBalls.com. He was very instrumental in exposing that fraud. IIRC, he was the first to publish the fact that the document was written in Word, having noticed the letter f being over the letter i; not possible using typewriters of the era.
Up until then, and for a while after, he’d been a bright star on the budding Conservative blogscape. Unfortunately, something triggered Mr. Johnson and he went over to the dark side and came out as a raging anti-conservative. I cynically attributed it to SmallDeadAnimals.com, instead of LGFBs being name conservative blog of the year that year.
I used to enjoy his blog a lot and was surprised by how quickly he turned on the conservative movement. None the less, he was very instrumental in exposing that fraud and probably did more than anyone else to tamp down its impact. And I’m always one to give credit where it’s due.