Yes, it looks bad. Do you have a link. It would look bad if Spot On was making up Dan Rather quotes too.

While I am right wing (and my eyebrows went up slightly to see you describe yourself since I thought you were more a libertarian), I'm not exactly a partisan so here goes.

Yes, it is a damaging story to CBS. If someone from the Kerry campaign gets linked to it, it could hurt them badly.

But I think most the overwhelming majority of voters know who they are voting for anyways and the people who actually have lives outside of politics are living thier lives and following other stories: Iraq, hurricanes, Martha Stewart, NFL week 2, stupid hockey lockout and so on.

I suspect this is is inside baseball. It will reinforce convictions; oh isnt that media so awful, yay we bloggers are really relevant, oh Bush's people control the media. But most people will ignore it and carry on with their own lives. I mean, how many votes did the Howell Raines fiasco influence ?

I'm so glad you hold us to the same standard, Paul. Read Instapundit or Lileks and no, the quote isn't exact, I was being sarcastic.

From the Washington Post. Karol paraphrased a bit, but...

"I take very seriously [former secretary, Marian Carr Knox's] belief that the documents are not authentic." If Knox is right, Rather said, the public "won't hear about it from a spokesman. They'll learn it from me."

"Instead of asking President Bush and his staff questions about what is true and not true about the president's military service, [competing media] ask me questions: 'How do you know this and that about the documents?' "

No.

A major journalistic scandal at Edward R. Murrow's vaunted CBS News, that originated on a broadcast of that organization's premiere program?

I'd say that's a major scandal no matter what your political stripes.

CBS and Dan Rather have violated the most sacred journalistic rule -- Verify your sources and information.

The fact that this story concerned the Presidential election makes it even more disgusting.

Rather is going to have to resign. I can't think of any way he maintains credibility after this.

Sorry, the saracasm didn't stand out for me. Of course I hold you to high standards, that's the best compliment you can get!

They've been working on this story for fours years with the overt mission of sandbagging our most superior president. When, after all that time, they couldn't come up with shit, they cynically contrived this shit expecting no plebians would catch on and would mindlessly vote for their handmaiden Kerry.

Their bias and arrogance are almost as exposed as thier incompetance. They are fucked! They are fucked with Ron Jeremy's huge syphilitic cock!

I saw the Robert Novak (I outed the CIA Operative but won't give up my sources) guy on TV the other night having the balls to comment about the CBS Memo story. Novak, demanded Dan Rather "give up" his sources. Oh the Irony.
Novak is pathetic.

Well, I am a Republican who believes George Bush probably did get special treatment in the National Guard. Furthermore, I believe he probably did not fulfill what he said he would do in his last two years of service. But two things are in play here: For one, if CBS is unbiased, why would Dan Rather be demanding Bush answer the questions about his Guard service when Dan Rather has not made a similar demand of John Kerry in respect to his Vietnam service in spite of arguably more compelling evidence? And secondly, even if we assume the content of the Guard story is true,we cannot, in a free society, insist that people answer charges that are based on forged documents.

Yes, it does. Especially when it's coupled with the fact the memos were cited in a recent anti-Bush attack ad.

Yes, it looks bad; but I am not sure how focused "moderates" are on it. I read (via Drudge) that ratings for CBS news have taken a hit (even in NYC), but I've also had conversations with non-loony lefties in which I've been asked "Do you REALLY think the documents are fake?" in a very incredulous tone. Who knows? I think it's going to take maintained pressure from both the mainstream media (ABC News, Washington Post, even USA Today which is a strange thing to write) as well as the "right-wing partisans" to get CBS to accept responsibility for what is at best shoddy reporting.

Forged but accurate is the latest excuse from the CBS crowd. Something is not true just because they think it is true.

Well I consider myself to be moderate and not a fan of Bush.

And, yes, this is a big deal, with two caveats:

* I see it as more of an expose' on big-media arrogance and the power of distributed knowledge (e.g. blogging) than a political story, per se.

* I'm sick and tired of reading 1000 updates a day on it, and hope that I can soon get back to reading right-wing bloggers' commentary on other issues. Yeah, Dan Rather's a smug, ass-covering liar. But can we please move on to more important topics, like the fact that Iran could develop nukes any day now?

Well, Karol, I don't know how "moderate" I am, but I have consistently thought that the authenticity of the memos HAD to be addressed immediately, and completely, once they were questioned. It was dishonest to do anything less.

CBS, unfortunately, has been dishonest, refusing to recognize that even a purported journalistic lapse on their part was a far bigger story than whatever the President did or didn't do thirty years ago.

I suppose the best test of my "moderateness" is the fact that I really don't care that much about the President's character thirty years ago. By all reports, I wouldn't have wanted him for a roommate. But I assume he's grown up some since, and what I care very greatly about his 21st century performance in office.

This is whole business is a shame, but it is certainly not the crisis I've been seeing paraded about on the more conservative blogs under titles like The End of Network News and claims that "freedom itself" is in question here.

No. The only thing that's in question here are a bunch of hocussed documents and a news operation's credibility, no more.

And I think its time for my friends over on this side of the fence to stop acting as if Dan Rather were part of the Kerry/Edwards ticket, and start paying more attention to the guys who are really running for election.

Looks Bad?

It IS bad! But Rather and CBS have been getting away with this type of on-air conduct since the 60s. Remember 'Dug Out Dan from Vietnam; and Gunga Dan from Afghanistan-I?

I spent considerable time in Vietnam during the war and was able to judge Rather's (mis)conduct and his output against reality long ago. Nothing that has occurred in the interim changed my opinion of the man or his misinformation, disinformation and outright propagandandizing.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that Rather and CBS have gone way beyond the pall this time, got caught publicly and are VERY vulnerable.

Vulnerable to what?
First: Legal action with the FCC.
Second: Economically, where it will really hurt.

The Republican National Committe can take care of the first vulnerability.

Bloggers can take care of the second. What about a cyber-campaign to boycott CBS News; then CBS in general; then notify companies advertising on CBS that that they, too, will be boycotted?

Commercial interests might be sensitive to the notion that they advertise their goods and services over a network that (with very good reason) appears to not only condone - but also participates in - broadcast fraud, misinformation, disinformation and partisan political activities.

The process seems to work well enough for Jesse Jackson. In this case, the beauty of the boycott would be that (unlike in Jesse's case) there would not be the odium of either financial or political tribute. However, like Jesse's case, the mere mention (not even actual threat) of a major boycott would likely produce some really fun-to-witness reactions.

It is time for Rather and his nest of Network vipers to realize that there are indeed, sometimes consequences affixed to egregious conduct. Even for newsmen.

Using the public airways to foist propaganda upon a trusting (and gullible) public is a particularly odious form of betrayal. I don't know about any of you, but I believe that if Rather and CBS get away with this bit of horrendous conduct, we will see an altogether new and dismal standard established for every other American news medium.

Like Chairman Mao offering the evening news.

where is the bonfire for rather's corpse?

I will bring they hotdogs if you bring the mashmellows.

I think this will blow over in a few years kinda like that thing Dateline did with the trucks blowing up, and catching fire, and it turned out that they staged the whole thing.

No one brings that up, but this is during a presidential election. Politicans are like women they don't forget nothing.

So i don't know.

I think the real damage that this will do has yet to be foreseen. While I (definitely a lefty) am fully congnizant of Rather's leanings, I am withholding judgment until the source of the documents actually comes to light.

Of course Rather and CBS aren't blame-free; in what was probably a combination of bias and the 24-hour news cycle, they didn't check their sources worth a damn. And that's wretched reporting.

But where did the docs come from? Who made them and with what intent? If it was CBS all the way from start to finish, then everyone involved should be fired. But if someone else out there (whether left or right) set this up, then CBS is guilty only of being incredibly stupid, not malicious or exceptionally biased.

All this talk of boycotting and such is rather (haha) silly, though. The market will shut them down; though CBS News has been dying for quite awhile without this scandal.

I think Sam is wrong about CBS's culpability here. I would be very surprised if the documents originated within the CBS news organization, so they are not guilty in that sense, but they are guilty of more than shoddy reporting.

Like so many other things, the coverup is worse than the crime. It comes out that they look really fake and CBS says, "No they're not. We trust our experts." Then their experts are interviewed by competing news organizations and one by one, they say things from, "Well, I can't confirm their authenticity based on a copy," to "I told them they were probably fake but they didn't listen to me."

Protecting their sources? Since when do expert sources need protecting? The originator of the document can be ostensibly protected if they honestly believe they were not duped, but they have not brought forward a single expert that supports their case that the doucments are authentic. It doesn't seem like that would be a difficult thing to do, or something that would take all weekend.

Instead, they pull out their trump card, Ms. Knox, who also says the documents are fakes, but that they express the real sentiments of the supposed author. They had from Friday to Wednesday to come up with a response and convince us that the documents are real. Instead, they present more evidence that they are fake, but still stand by them.

This is not shoddy reporting. It is a cover up. Where are their experts? Can they name one expert that will vouch for the documents authenticity?

The problem seems to be that CBS, apparently, thinks that the critics of the story are defending Bush and their defense is, "No, Bush really was a jerk back then." But the story is forged documents presented by 60 Minutes. The forged documents could be telling us all that Iraq has no WMD or that the sky is blue or that the sun is expected to rise in the west tomorrow. If CBS presented them on their flagship news magazine, no one would argue with the content, but they would be very surprised to learn that CBS presented easily debunked fakes and stubbornly defends them to this day.

It's the forgery, stupid.

BTW, I consider myself a moderate Republican.

Those are good points. Not to hijack the comments or anything, but I would note that it's not terribly clear what's forged and what's not, at least not yet. CBS lists mulitple experts who each individually founds faults with specific pages, but not all pages, collectively. None of it should have made it on the air, but even the evidence of forgery is being disputed/authenticated by all sides.

That being said, it's no excuse for crappy reporting (as this has rapidly turned out to be). But in a hectic let's-get-this-on-the-air news room, I was merely noting that I could see how they'd rush to judgment with experts that only "sort of" disagree (i.e. the experts who now, when pressed, are saying more than they probably said when pressed privately). Bad experts, bad reporting, and someone forging documents.

And CBS makes it worse by trying to refocus on the story at hand without admitting to their huge journalistic mistakes. The story is forgery, now, and they'd be smart to diavow all the documents and go back to square one.

But it's not a cover-up, in the classic sense. What are they covering up? Unless they forged themselves, they're only covering up their own stupidity. I think people are a little too eager to point out CBS News' bad journalism as "part of a larger conspiracy" when in reality, they're just bad reporters.

For the record, the interview aired on Sixty Minutes II, did it not? Not quite the network’s “flagship” news program in my view, but that’s small potatoes. Let’s talk about the fact CBS currently has a teaser in which they claim the interviewee has “ been called a religious fanatic and a three-star bigot.” Is anyone besides me even slightly troubled by that phrasing? Just seems like a pretty extreme way to soundbite a program.

As for the memos themselves, it’s worth actually taking a personal gander at them. I saw the PDFs, and it’s absurd that anyone would ever pretend these documents were created in the 1970s. I mean, come on. I have worked in enough offices and with enough old documents (my grandfather’s typewriter-written poems, for one) to distinguish computer-gen. docs from typewriter-gen. docs. These are so clearly recent creations, it’s absurd. I’ve seen the glasses they issue soldiers in bootcamp. Anyone who believes the Guard could’ve had access to anything but a standard-issue typewriter is crazy, IMHO ... but I guess this horse has been dead a while now, eh?

Typography aside, I think a more interesting question is what Dead Serious (and undoubtedly others) have raised: the writing style of the purported memos. My younger sister is an officer in the Marines, and if she weren’t so busy, I’d ask her whether she thinks an officer would really write such documents in such a fashion. Some of the references to Bush, for example, seem a little odd ...

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