1

I really don't care if Bush tried to get our of Vietnam. In fact, given the choice between flying super cool high performance jets, and slogging it through a jungle guerilla war, I'd choose the jets in a heart beat. Who wouldn't? It was never an issue for me, it was never in my mind a mark against Bush's character, it's ancient history. I never cared about Kerry's record or Bush's record, I mean I'm glasd they both got through that period in our history ok and all, but it never played a part in any political views I had about them. The children of mega powerful generational millionaire families got special treatment during the draft in the 60s? Well no kidding!

And if it wasn't for the Niger Doc, you guys would have a nice propaganda weapon here and a clear field of fire to use it in. Hell I'd be cheering you on. The viewing public is ill-served by sloppy reporting standards and absolutely abominable research. Canning Mapes was a good start, but even though Heywood had his butt covered with e-mails, I think he should have gone also. The authentication process they're supposed to use, which is a core technique in any journalistic org, was apparently not even in existence on this story.
Thing is though, when you start griping about it, there is a Niger doc, it does have stunning paralells to the Rather Docs, and when it comes to the consequences of one vs the other, there's no comparison. The most obvious shortcoming being that one fanned the fires of war, the other a trvial news story, and there have been some heads roll at CBS over that news story, and not one head has rolled at the WH for dragging us into this Godawful mess. I'm sure the WH would like everybody to just shut up about the Rather docs, it didn't affect them much at all, they skated right past it, and they'd probably prefer people just forget about it, lest it kick that controversy up again.

There's also the wider argument for morality among the evangelical community and in the electorate as a whole, and this dichotomy over one forged doc vs another is merely one small part. The values/morality angle worked well for the WH. In fact, it may have worked too well. Slowly yet perceptively, splits are appearing in GOP lines of support, because many of them really did take morality/values to heart. For many of them, it's not simply a political convenience. Torture speaks strongly to many Christians, because Christ was tortured. Death squads speak forcefully to Christians, because they were once systematically persecuted in the same way. Mercy to the poor, the unemployed, and care for the sick, are core evangelical values. Hypocrisy is reviled among all. So you start torturing poeple, whacking families like Saddam did, cuting off care for the sick and poor here at home, and doing what you're telling others is evil, it's not going to be sustainable with that base for long.

What's beginning to emerge is a mutally exclusive set of principles; you can either make a partisan argument supporting the WH, or you can make a moral argument against them upholding traditional Christian principles. It's becomming more difficult to ignore that reality and straddle that fence, and it shows no signs of simmering down. I think a tipping point is now visible, Iraq is the fulcrum, and while success has many fathers, failure is an orphan. The WH is raidly looking more and more like an unwanted child.

That doc was important enough to be used in a Presidential State of the Union Speech. "Mushroom cloud' was the phrase used over and over by the WH very effectively. So, it played a significant role in making the case for war many, perhaps even the critical role. Had I known it was a fake, and had I known the tubes were useless for GDCE, that right there would have eliminated my concern that Iraq posed a significant and unique terrorist threat worthy of going to war over. And I'm no where near alone in that view.
CBS's news department deserves getting dragged through the coals over this. And they have been and they continue to be. But what they did was basically just fail to check something out. It was inexcusably bad journalism, but it was simple laziness. They bought it without checking, and that was their sole screw-up.
The WH suspected from the get go that that Niger doc was a phony, so they sent a guy over their to make sure, and he came back and said it was not only a phony, it was a terribly poor one. You can download a pdf version and see for yourself. They mispelled words in it; E.G. they spelled Iraq using the english version, instead of the way it's spelled in legit Niger docs, it had signatures of Niger officials who had been dead for years on it, it did not follow standard Nigerian phrasology or legalese...it goes on and on. There's no controversy about it. It's an obvious fake, and none other than one Achmed Chalabi just happens to be in the document forging business, in that very part of the world, along with many of his other wonderful enterprises.

But folks, the WH chose not to disclose that, and worse, they even went on to present it as credible after being told otherwise. That's called lying and there's no morality, or values, or anythng even remotely 'good' or what you might think of as Christian, in what they did. And when the WH got called on it, they burned the callers family in revenge, rather than level with you and I. That's like if CBS knew those docs were fake, and used them and ran the story anyway, while firing the guy who gave them the proof the docs were fake, and blacklisted him to scare anyone else from speaking up. And if anyone questioned them, they replied "Oh don't worry, we're investigating that ourselves'. That's not incompetence, that's culpability.
What the WH did was significantly worse than what CBS did, and it handily surpasses any complicity that CBS has over their own foul-up. It may yet still bring them down. It hasn't even begun to run it's course. You cannot make a moral case against CBS, without hitting the WH with the same cannon.

If the GOP didn't control Congress right now, Bush's cabinet would be sitting on a witness stand over this and pleading the fifth. If the GOP loses control in 2006, there's a good chance that's exactly what will happen. I think Bush himself is probably insulated enough to stay out of the fire, but there will resignations and Presidential pardon's flying. It will not be pretty. There is some scuttlebutt that the reason the left is making such a big deal out of this, and making sure CBS pays, and keeping this issue on the front burner, is because of that dichotomy; because other journalists are working on that very angle.
So, you can count on this; the WH wants Rush and Buchanon and Co., and all of the bloggers, to just shut the hell up about anything that brings that Niger ghost back to life.

2

DS,

So, you can count on this; the WH wants Rush and Buchanon and Co., and all of the bloggers, to just shut the hell up about anything that brings that Niger ghost back to life.

Um, yeah. I'm sure that's a real big concern. The American people are going to be so upset that we freed 45+ million people from tyranny based on faulty intel.

What world are you living in?

3

Note to everyone: Let's not turn this into another rehash about Bush or the Iraq war. I realize that some people are simply following Herr Schoepenhaur's advice (3. Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing. Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than what was asserted.) but I am really, really, really, bored with these Iraq war arguments. That was so 2004. Let's move on. And try to stay on topic. That would be a refreshing change of pace.

4

Yes I'm sure you would like to focus exclusively on one aspect of forgery and ignore that which threatens your ethical position. I don't blame you.

Look, I won't hold it against anyone if they place politics above equanimity, or objectivity, or religion, or religious values, or ethics, or morals, or however you wish to couch it. I don't have any religion, so obviously I don't have any values associated with that. But if you do that, if you opt for politics over ethics on this, then rest assured it's going to come up down the road every time you claim to have some kind of absolute moral principle guiding your views. You will have weakened that claim, forever. Sometimes choices are brutal, sometimes it's one or the other, this is one of those situations. It's human nature to want to play up one and suppress the other, and we're all human here. But ethics, or principles are all about over riding that bias with some kind of objective framework.

I think Kevin at Lean Left said it best in his article The Good Guys when he stated in part "Good people, do good things"; well worth the read. Of course we could divert and talk about what it means to be 'good'. And we could have all kinds of fun discussing different definitions of that, and nibbling around the borders and in between the fuzzy lines. But in the case of torture, terrorizing a civilian population with strong arm tactics, massive lying, and cold blooded murder in the form of hit squads running free through villages, all done while claiming that the hitman/liar/torturer is a 'good guy', well, I think we'd all agree we can dispense with the border line cases and the fuzzy lines, and state that those activities are 'not good' and thus the people that do them are 'not good people'. And sadly, the people doing those things now include the US, or more accurately, BushCo.

Point being, if what CBS did was wrong and 'not good' thus deserving consequences, and imo it was and it does, then from a purely objective viewpoint, what the WH did was worse many times over, much more 'not good' and deserves far more serious consequences.
So you have to choose between principles and human nature. Between ethics and politics. Condemn CBS, note that they've taken steps to avoid it in the future, apologized, owned up to it, canned some people, and are forcing their star lead man into semiretirement, and it probably won't stop there. Then, principle forces you to condemn the WH, demand an independent investigation of the Niger documents, complete with testimony from all parties under oath and on the public record. Or you can ignore both incidents, and say that inaccuracy is acceptable, human error unavoidable, and political bias a legitimate impetus. Your only other choice is human nature, which leads you straight into hypocrisy. And don't get frustrated with me for pointing it out, I didn't have anything to do with either one of these screws-ups. And frankly, I couldn't care less about Bush's Guard service or Dan Rather's career.

But don't kid yourself Joe, this is going to come up each and everytime the topic of forged documents is raised.

5

His blog.

Don't you have your own to grandstand on?

Derail conversations by posting something, and trackbacking - that invites cross-blog discussions.

He said that wasn't the point of the post - did he not?

This is about Rathergate.

Not Iraq.

6

I won't bring it up again on this thread. I've said my piece. But it is going to come up and there's no stopping it. I think you should consider having a response ready, one better than 'please don't bring up that embaressing parallel that threatens my ethical position', (My words, not yours), if you're going to be bringing up document forgery of any kind as a discussion topic, especially under the context of ethics. Surely you know as soon as you ask people not to bring up something relevant to your own post which threatens your ethical position, it's going to be brought up by everyone gunning for you. And part of the success of having a high traffic Blog means that a lot of people are gunning for you because you're like the head guy. At least I took the time to put some thought into a half-decent response, and didn't just go off on an incoherent rant, which is exactly what's happening on this issue in much of the blogosphere this evening.

And RazorKiss, if Joe tells me to leave, or to lay off as he did, I will. But if he wanted an echo chamber, I doubt he'd have a comment section at all.

7

Echo chambers are one thing - deliberate off-topic dodges are another. It's one thing to debate the topic at hand. It's quite another to deliberately, after saying you _don't_ care abotu the topic at hand - to launch off into your own, and derail the topic. It's not polite, and it's not on-topic.

8

Well it was dead on topic imo Razor, now if you want something even more on topic, there have been many reporters who have made stuff up, or not authenticated their sources, some have been nailed to the wall, and some have not. Lisa Meyers, Vlasto, Stephen Glass at the New Republic, etc. Some got fired, like Jack Kelley after it was found out that he just made stuff up out of thin air, some got flippin promoted, like Lisa Meyers. As far as I'm concerned they should all be nailed, and Mapes is no exception. She clearly had it in for Bush, she was clearly unconcerned with confirmation, but she also clearly got nailed for it. Maybe some folks would like to see more than just the four who got canned held accountable, but they got the ones that were the most culpable, CBS got smeared, Rather is definitely not going out the way he would like to, and the truth came out. All in all I'd say it was a pretty fair outcome. Better than most in fact.
I don't like being lied to, by anyone, anytime. And I don't give a hoot the political motivations of the liar in question. And I frankly think that seperates me from some of the commentators on this Blog who don't seem to mind liars when it serves their agenda.

9

~DS~
Read Joe's post. He doesn't mention anything about forged documents. You are off topic.

10

I think, for balance, you've got to see what Atrios posted on this topic.

He's right, there's certainly no "liberal" media.

In fact, his argument could go further:

1. Remember, the documents in question, were only one aspect of the story on Bush's failure to complete his TANG requirements and his special treatment. The conservative media got the last part of this to be dropped, focusing on the non-authenticated documents.

2. Conservative outlets that regularly report utter nonsense - Fox (the company that sued to get a ruling that it's OK to lie to viewers about what's in your kid's milk AND stealing other news outlets footage) nobody on the right complains about. Scaife outlets? C'mon. Swift Boat Liars? They're golden. Focus on the Family? They say they're Christian and conservative , so they get 2 free passes.

Sorry, but the day I see some balance and fairness - not to mention honesty- coming out of right wing I'll bring some burning embers to the Rather witch burning.

11

Let's stop with this silly nonsense of the right wing should be fair. The left wing should be balanced. No they shouldn't. They should represent their view points to the best of their ability. Let's stop with this silly self-righteous notion of everyone else is biased but I am different and special with no bias and no desire to push my bias.

It is laughable to quote Atrios in a argument that there is no liberal media or to quote Left Lean when arguing that you don't care about political motivation behind lies. They have a bias and they filters information accordingly. Just as Joe (and everyone else here) has a bias and filters information differently.

What seperates the big three from people like Joe, Left Lean and Atrios, is that CBS, NBC and ABC all claim that they have no bias. They let (make) everyone think they are impartial and non-partisan. That is the key issue for me with this whole document scandal.

I really wouldn't have any problem with the 60 minutes forged document story, if CBS would just tell their viewers, "Yeah, were all pretty much liberal here so respond accordingly." But you have millions of people who still only get their news from the big three nightly news cast and they get a very limited intentionally focused view of world events.

Liberals have been and are in control of the big three tv news divisions, virtually every major newspaper (NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, etc.), NPR, most cable news outlets (CNN, CNBC, MSNBC). Conservatives have Fox, most of talk radio and maybe an advantage in the blogs. Wow, we have to stop the rampant right wing news!

And mumon, just for fun sake, how about you prove or give some evidence that Bush did not complete his TANG requirements (since his superiors have said that he did and he was able to get all the certification that said he had finished his requirements) and that he got special treatment (since he flew fighter jets and some people dued doing the same job in training, he volunteered for service in Vietnam, nothing he did was out of the ordinary or unethical according to his superiors).

Of course, I am sure you can say that the superiors are lying or being forced to lie and that Bush volunteered for Vietnam because he knew he would be rejected. But then you will start to sound like someone he is not interested in "balance and fairness," and someone that proves my point.

If people are up front with their bias, I will basically give them a pass because they let people know where they are coming from. But when they try to hide it (and it happens on the right too, more so on the left, but both sides do it), they lose my attention and respect, as the networks have.

12

Mumon: You simply do not know what you are talking about, period. Look at the FACTS:

Quoted from the CBS report (and borrowed from Ratherbiased.com):

"CBS Ignored: Bush Volunteered for Vietnam
January 11, 2005 | 4:22:35 EST

The panel looking into Memogate was troubled by the cutting and pasting Rather and his producers did to an interview Rather conducted with former Lieutenant Robert Strong of the Air National Guard. The splicing created the impression that Strong was referring to Bush when speaking of those who avoid military service.

CBS also ignored information that Bush actually volunteered to serve in Vietnam, an uncomfortable fact that never made its way into CBS's defacto political ad.

Narration by Rather: Robert Strong says he saw many well-connected young men pull strings and avoid service in Vietnam.

Rather: Why would these men do this? Didn't conscience come into play somewhere here?

Strong: What you saw here is the way power works. Power begets power. Power goes to power to get more power. And if you have a little bit of power and someone offers you an opportunity to gain more power by doing power a favor, this is what power does. It trades on itself. It feeds on itself. This is the way the system worked. This is the way state government worked, this is the way the Guard worked.

The clear inference from this excerpt is that President Bush was in the TexANG to avoid service in Vietnam. Bush did state in his 1968 TexANG application that he did not volunteer to go overseas. However, Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG, did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush "did want to go to Vietnam but others went first." Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify. The Panel is troubled that this excerpt was used when there was information that contradicted, or at least weakened, the implication of the exchange between Rather and Lieutenant Strong.

The Panel finds that virtually every excerpt used from the Lieutenant Strong interview was either inaccurate or misleading. Indeed, the Panel questions whether any Lieutenant Strong excerpts should have been used at all, given his total lack of personal knowledge. "

13

Emmaus:

I am wondering what that information Mapes had (which instructor?); I have, of course seen the released TANG application.

We can't know, though, how serious Bush actually was about this; we know that the plane he was qualified to fly was not one used in Vietnam.

But, if your point is they should have aired all the info, I won't disagree.

I just wish there wasn't a double standard.

14

Aaron:

CBS, NBC and ABC all claim that they have no bias. They let (make) everyone think they are impartial and non-partisan. That is the key issue for me with this whole document scandal.

You know, I'm reminded of this rant from Alton Brown (scroll down) after he saw "Supersize Me."

Here’s what it comes down to kids. Ronald McDonald doesn’t give a damn about you. Neither does that little minx Wendy or any of the other icons of drivethroughdom. And you know what, they’re not supposed to. They’re businesses doing what businesses do. They don’t love you. They are not going to laugh with you on your birthdays, or hold you when you’re sick and sad. They won’t be with you when you graduate, when your children are born or when you die. You will be with you and your family and friends will be with you. And, if you’re any kind of human being, you will be there for them. And you know what, you and your family and friends are supposed to provide you with nourishment too. That’s right folks, feeding someone is an act of caring. We will always be fed best by those that care, be it ourselves or the aforementioned friends and family.

We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

Feed yourselves.
Feed your loved ones.
And for God’s sake feed your children.

Don’t trust anyone else to do it…not anyone. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go out to dinner every now and then…that is after all one of the great joys of life…but it isn’t life itself and that’s what I’m talking about.

I quote this at length because the SAME argument can be made for the media:

Educate yourselves, your friends and your families. Be skeptical of information you can't immediately verify. The NBC peacock, the CBS Eye, and Peter Jennings don't give a damn about you, and don't give a damn about informing you. And they're not supposed to. They’re businesses doing what businesses do. They don’t love you.

Remember, the News Media is the McDonald's of information. Get a nutritious balanced diet of information, and always read the labels (or in the case of the media, the subtext.)

15

mumon wrote:
"Sorry, but the day I see some balance and fairness - not to mention honesty- coming out of right wing I'll bring some burning embers to the Rather witch burning."

Okay, how about the controversy over Armstrong Williams being paid to promote "No Child Left Behind"?
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2005/01/08/armstrong/
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/003499.php
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001187.htm
http://www.flynnfiles.com/archives/politics2005/this_explains_a_lot.html
http://wizbangblog.com/archives/004749.php
http://instapundit.com/archives/020327.php
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_01_02_corner-archive.asp#049714
http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_01_08.html#008833

My apologies if this causes any cognitive dissonance for you, but many conservatives are actually honest and ethical, even when it hurts "our side". So, can we count on you to bring some marshmallows to the CBS bonfire?

16

Isn't it interesting that this "topic" is about finding truth and CBS's failure to do so. It really doesn't sound complicated to me.
For years I was raised to believe the media was unbiased. I no longer believe that and am forced to seek out competing sources to find "both sides of the story". Most of my liberal friends have no idea about this "Bias". So those left leaning folks here are several steps ahead of most of the others I know. None the less logic dictates an attempt to answer a question.

17

RobSF:

Does it really hurt the conservative side to throw Armstrong Williams overboard?

Your point is taken though, there was ample criticism of Williams from those folks, and I actually knew that. On the other hand, I've yet to see a conservative rake the Times over the coals over for their coverage on Whitewater, the Wen Ho Lee Affair, or Judith Miller.

Now how's about Fox News? Focus on the Family?

OTOH, Josh Marshall's pretty straight up about these things, and was one of the first to conclude the docs CBS showed might have been bogus.

But this all goes back to the comment I wrote above.

Caveat Emptor. You are - even on the "free" media, buying what they have to sell, with trading your time and attention for their "news," so that they can show the wonderful things and services for which you can exchange your hard earned money.

18

Calling the Swift Boat Veterans "Liars" doesn't make them liars. Show some evidence.

Their claims are either controversial (the medals) or they are substantiated (Christmas in Cambodia).

Dan Rather initially refused to cover them, because they were Republicans, despite a nearly 10:1 ratio of opposition to support for Kerry among his Vietnam peers. Isn't that an interesting story for a reporter? Weren't the questions they raised INTERESTING, for many reasons? Doesn't it remain interesting that Kerry has never released his military record, just selected parts of it? Yet Rather was willing to go with the TANG story supposedly sight unseen?

I never saw a well-researched piece that actually discredited the Swifties. I did see some "journalists" yell and scream at John O'Neill. Yelling and screaming are what desparate people generally do when they're losing, not winning, a debate. All I heard were offhand references to the SBVFT group's claims as "discredited," despite Kerry's campaign's quietly removing references to Cambodia from his web site, without ever mentioning or confronting the Swift Vets.

The bottom line: no matter how many times the NYT, WP, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, Fox or anyone repeats a statement, I don't believe it until I see the facts to back it up.

That goes for this report, too. It claims "no bias," but the facts in the report do not support this statement.

19

mumon:
"Does it really hurt the conservative side to throw Armstrong Williams overboard?"

Actually, if you read a few of the links that I posted, you'll see that conservatives are not planning to let Williams take all of the blame. Captain's Quarters and Dan Flynn are particularly critical of the Bush Administration and the Dep't of Ed for their parts in the whole mess:

"Like any instance of prostitution, of course, the action involves more than one wrongdoer. If Williams is a whore, the Education Department is his john. Who got the bright idea to spend a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer money to bribe one journalist?"
from http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/003499.php

"But what about the Department of Education? They spent the taxpayers' money on propaganda. This is about as clear a misuse of government dollars as it gets. Williams deserves our scorn, but not as much as the people who paid him deserve it."
from http://www.flynnfiles.com/archives/politics2005/this_explains_a_lot.html

Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis @ BuzzMachine is busily filing FOIA requests to see if there are any other snakes in this particular swamp.
from http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_01_08.html#008833

Yes, I do expect this scandal to hurt the Bush Administration specifically and conservative punditry in general. It's dirty all around, and it's wrong. Just because "our side" did it, that doesn't give them a free pass.

---

mumon:
"Educate yourselves, your friends and your families. Be skeptical of information you can't immediately verify. The NBC peacock, the CBS Eye, and Peter Jennings don't give a damn about you, and don't give a damn about informing you. And they're not supposed to. They’re businesses doing what businesses do. They don’t love you."

Finally, I agree with your rant above, with only one quibble. Conservatives' beef with the MSM is that they claim to be more than just businesses. They claim to be unbiased, and they claim to be acting in the public interest. If CBS (or any other MSM network) would just add a little disclaimer to every news broadcast that confessed their bias openly, I'd be content.

20

RobSF:

I remember George Will's involvement in the purloined Carter-Reagan debate notes- that guy did another 20 years or so at ABC; and then there's Novak, so please excuse my knee-jerk skepticism.

I am glad that there's criticism afoot on this.

If CBS (or any other MSM network) would just add a little disclaimer to every news broadcast that confessed their bias openly, I'd be content.

Look at your local media; do they really "look" like your experience of your locality?

If you look closely, you'll find that whatever the media, the "real story" is usually untold- perhaps untellable. And that the "disclaimer" is right there- at commercial time.

21

"My apologies if this causes any cognitive dissonance for you, but many conservatives are actually honest and ethical, even when it hurts "our side". So, can we count on you to bring some marshmallows to the CBS bonfire?"

Noticeably absent from your list however is Hugh Hewitt and the Powerline blog, both of which blogged Rathergate non-stop for weeks, and indeed are continuing to do so.

Not to mention that the reactions in those conservative blogs often were "so what?" and "How can I get someone to pay me?".

Comparing conservative bloggers reactions between Rathergate and the Armstrong Williams issue is like comparing a tsunami to ripples in your bubble bath.

22

I don't think anyone seriously believes that Fox News is a straight up the middle unbiased company. However, Fox typically keeps the opinion on the opinion shows, which is more than you can say for ABCCBSMSNBCCNN. Fox doesn't claim to be "Moderate and Unbiased", they claim to be "Fair and Balanced". You get Colmbs with your Hannity, Sustren with your O'Reilly, etc.

Also, Fox shows news stories that the Mainstream Media doesn't care for. All those stories about the good things happening in Iraq, the good things about Israel, or the bad things about the Palestinians are so terribly inconvenient for the MSM. So, the MSM focuses solely on trying to prove via news items and news phrasing that Iraq was a mistake, that Israel is a terror state, etc. With Fox, you typically get bad stories and good stories.

Does Fox do everything right? No. But stories like Rathergate show us that the MSM is a decayed and irrelevant dinosaur with no place in the future. Fox is growing and can fit in in the future. Rather/Jennings/Wallace/Etc have no place in the days to come.

And I still have yet to see anyone give evidence that Fox is as right-biased as the MSM is left-biased. I bet I can name 5 liberals on Fox before you can name 1 from CBS...

23

Everyone was expecting way too much out of this internal CBS investigation. Hugh Hewitt and others are peering at this as if it's a Grand Jury Indictment. If it was that, it would be severely weak and incomplete. It was an internal corporate assessment of a project that went waaaayyy south, such that the corporation won't lose its shirt on a similar venture next time. That's all it is.

No one should be surprised they didn't find evidence of liberal bias in the process, since a majority of journalists classify themselves as "moderates," "liberals" being communist purists, I suppose. Journalists are a different specie than the rest of us, which would explain why Danno's evening news market share has maintained a steady march to the toilet. He, and the others (Jennings, Brokaw, et. al.), are the ones that are out of touch with America.

You want the truth to come out? Wait for the next shoe in the form of a wrongful termination suit by Mary Mapes, or a suit brought by an affiliate station against the CBS parent for ruining their local market share through incompetence and negligence. Then the depositions, etc. will come out in court unless CBS settles out of court. That they will probably do so we'll probably never know who was talking to whom over these forgeries. We all got snookered good. Remeber that next time you turn on the proverbial Boob Tube.

24

1. The speed with which the story was produced. 2. The deference given to an experienced producer. 3. The producer’s association with Dan Rather. 4. A belief in the truth of the subject matter.

Is the Panel claiming that this “confluence of factors” is a rare event? Are we expected to believe that most stories are produced at a leisurely pace with an inexperienced producer that has no association with Rather and who doesn’t believe in the veracity of the material? Do they think we are that gullible?

Obviously the gold nugget in news is to break a highly topical story. This would certainly be accurate in a campaign season where such a story would become old news if broken after the election.

This certainly wouldn't be the first time in history that procedures are overlooked in deference to the supposed skill of a vetern. It happens all the time, the person whose been around the office forever is rarely questioned because everyone assumes s/he knows what they are doing.

The true element of bias that is missed here is not bias against Republicans but bias for pre-established narratives. What I mean by this is a 'story' becomes 'common knowledge' and the news media becomes biased towards stories that reinforce this preconception.

In the 2000 election the narratives were that Bush is dumb and Gore is a liar. The media was jumping on every 'Gore lied' story they could find even when the facts turned out to be on Gore's side (love story, the internet, the overcrowded school etc.). Likewise very obvious Bush lies were ignored, if they got reported at all it was as 'Bush is dumb, he got that fact wrong'.

One 'narrative' that got started about Bush was the he ducked the Guard & partied a lot as a young man. No surprise that a story that confirms that narrative got less scrutiny than one that didn't.

Are we truly to believe that the only time this “perfect storm” occurred just happened to coincide with the blogosphere catching the flaws in the story? If so then that speaks volumes – more so than the 234 page report – about what went wrong at CBS News.

Why the need to sell the blogsphere short? Before the blogsphere where else would you get a few hundred people putting in dozens of manhours each trying to verify type fonts from a quarter century ago? If the blogsphere is what it is made out to be it should be catching errors that a news staff of what? 20, 30 people miss....yet the blogsphere seems to think they did nothing special & CBS should have done this all along.

What seperates the big three from people like Joe, Left Lean and Atrios, is that CBS, NBC and ABC all claim that they have no bias. They let (make) everyone think they are impartial and non-partisan. That is the key issue for me with this whole document scandal.

How many Clinton 'scandals' ended up being nothing yet were pounded endlessly by such 'liberal biased outlets' like the NYT, CBS, NBC and so on?

Liberals have been and are in control of the big three tv news divisions, virtually every major newspaper (NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, etc.), NPR, most cable news outlets (CNN, CNBC, MSNBC). Conservatives have Fox, most of talk radio and maybe an advantage in the blogs. Wow, we have to stop the rampant right wing news!

Pat Buchannen, Alan Keyes, Mike Savage, Robert Novak, Carl Tuckerson, Chuck Scarbouragh. Which of these people got TV breaks on Fox News? Which of these got their big TV gigs on CNN, MSNBC and so on.

For years I was raised to believe the media was unbiased. I no longer believe that and am forced to seek out competing sources to find "both sides of the story". Most of my liberal friends have no idea about this "Bias".

Sadly I find that many conservatives don't 'seek out' unbiased truth. They dismiss facts they don't like by shrugging and saying 'well that's from the NYT/CNN/MSNBC etc'.

25

Boonton,
How many Clinton scandals did get "pounded endlessly"? I only remember one (Monica) that was a truly big deal. And that one was covered in the totally wrong way. (It is all about sex vs. lying under oath) And if you don't mind please name for me those highly covered scandals that didn't have truth behind them.

I agree that the media will chase first and foremost a good story that will bring ratings/readership/listeners, but wtih all things being equal they will virtually always go for the story that hurts conservatives. Why don't we compare the numbers of stories on US prisoner abuse with the number of stories combined on the Oil-for-Food scandal, the sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in Rwanda and the French UN peacekeepers firing for no reason on crowds? Why don't we compare Bush's National Guard stories with Kerry's "seared into his memory" trip to Cambodia?

You listed some conservative commentators who did not start at Fox, do you really want me to start listing liberal commentators that got started at the MSM (sans Fox)? We would be here all day if we started listing those. Sure some of the networks have their token conservative they trot out for balance during 3 against 1 discussions. That doesn't mean the whole of the MSM is liberal. Have you seen the actual research by Pew? Journalist are far more liberal and democrat leaning than the average American. They are far more likely to be irreligious. From the actual research it is clear that most journalist, most in the media, are liberal and you fool yourself if you don't think that influences their reporting and selecting of stories.

Your last statement can be reworded around for you:
"Sadly I find that many liberals don't 'seek out' unbiased truth. They dismiss facts they don't like by shrugging and saying 'well that's from the Fox/Limbaugh/Drudge etc'."

There are not many (if any) people who "seek out" unbiased news. We all flatter ourselves if we believe we are in that group. Everyone here, so far, has come at this from a bias and rightly so. It is just some are more willingly than others to admit that.

26

Aaron:

"Whitewater" was a nonevent cooked up by by admitted perjurers (David Hale), and fed by Ken Starr (who apparently attempted to suborn perjury in the case of Susan McDougal).

This was fed for years by the likes of Michael Isikoff (Newsweek) and Gersh of the ..."liberal" NY Times.

27

Aaron:

Remember: Fox went to court to justify lies about their news stories. AND they stole intellectual property.

AND, unlike Brent Bozell's Bozo group, David Brock frequently shows where Fox either shades the truth or outright lies.

"Ditto" for Limbaugh.

Drudge, btw, reports rumor and there's no pretense that what he does is "journalism."

So there's a reason moderates, liberals, and progressives are skeptical of conservative media.

28

Actually I think the media is pretty balanced in this country. As long as both sides are bitching that the media is skewed to the other side, they're doing something right in that regard. Are they perfect? Of course not, but you see a decent representation of both ides of an issue when it's being discussed. They usually have speakers for boths sides, or all sides, on a news program like ScarBorough Country or Hardball for example.

29

BTW Mumon I wrote this rant the other day about corporations you might like along those lines about McDonalds you might like:

"Let's just get real here for a minute about what the corporate elite think about YOU joe and Jane Punchclock; The good ole boys club. The WASP OverLords ... They HATE you, Joe and Jane, they hate your f**king guts, and your medical benefits, and your spouses and domestic partners you sign up at their expense, and your slobbering kids, and your slobbering kids over priced dentist on their health-plan. They hate your godamn 401-K and your pension bullsh*t, and they hate your confidential whistle blower hotline. They hate your social security taxes and your unemployment and workers comp payments.
They hate every department they have to budget and pay which doesn't pay them. They hate you geeks in IT because you're smarter than they are, and they hate you for paying attention in math class in High School and knowing about sh*t they can't understand and cheated their way through as a legacy in prep school and Ivy League.
They hate you nitpicking assholes in Q & A because you're always finding problems with the product and slowing down production. They hate you smooth talking 9 dollar an hour phone marms in customer service because you bitches are where 90 percent of the complaints come from.
But most of all, they absolutely f**king hate your whiny, flaming, Human Resources Manager, because they have pretend to like him and treat his effeminate butt-humping ass like he's one of them, and the only silver lining in that for the good ole boys is cracking gay jokes behind his back, like he's the token Negro at a white club in Huntsville, Alabama. They hate the whole HR department because it doesn't do a damn thing except generate costly headaches for them and suck down paychecks; not to mention it's stuffed full of the hottest bangin babes in the whole go**mn company wearing tight-ass leather skirts; but if they even think about hitting one of those hard body bi femi-nazis and her buff bodacious bitch lover up with what would have been considered a perfectly fair offer of promotion, for the occasional drug induced threesome in the corporate suite in Boca Raton ,'back in the good ole days', they're looking at an EOA lawsuit; and they f**king hate that.
They hate you Joe and Jane for every dime you scrape off their Quarterly Earnings Report they're forced to cough up every three months, audited externally much to their chagrin, and they hate every cent you and your blue-collar stiffs knock off the stock price and their fat profitability ISO exercise checks. Like you and want to give you a job? They f**king hate your entrails and they'd like to give you a lobotomy, if it would allow you to continue working."

30

As to "political bias," does anyone have the slightest doubt what would have happened to this story if it had worked against Kerry rather than Bush?

I think that "buried six feet under" would have been a good description of the inevitable result.

31

...what would have happened to this story if it had worked against Kerry rather than Bush?

Speaking of which Thomas Sowell had an amusing article recently on this topic.

It's amusing because of this bit:

Dan Rather's closest competition for the Joseph Goebbels award was Ted Koppel, whose "Nightline" broadcast went to a Communist country to get witnesses to speak on camera -- with a Communist official present -- to discredit what the Swift Boat Veterans had said about an incident involving John Kerry during the Vietnam war.

Not one of the American eyewitnesses, who could have spoken freely in a free country, was interviewed in this "Nightline" broadcast.

And it's amusing for the following reasons:

1. The Swift Boat Liars were not eyewitnesses.

2. Communists actually don't give a hoot about this.

I've had discussions with Communists (outside the US) and Republicans. Generally speaking, the Communists are better informed and more fair and balanced, I'm afraid to say.

~DS~

Tell us how you really feel.

32

However, Fox typically keeps the opinion on the opinion shows, which is more than you can say for ABCCBSMSNBCCNN.

You have got to be kidding me. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've never watched FOX; trust me, then, their straight news is anything but unbiased. It's really not uncommon for the newsreader to let out a hearty chuckle before anything the right considers screwy, just so the watcher knows who the 'good guys' are and who the 'bad guys' are. (ie: "The case claims that *chuckle* ho-mo-sexual rights are being infringed upon." See, the chuckle lets us know that gays don't have rights.)

33

Bob Somerby thoroughly destroyed the Swift Boat Liars on his blog, www.dailyhowler.com.

Go search his archives if you are still confused about anything.

34

Actually I think the media is pretty balanced in this country.

Agreed. Conservatives just like to feel victimized. My guess is that it derives from some weird kinky thing.

35

AND, unlike Brent Bozell's Bozo group, David Brock frequently shows where Fox either shades the truth or outright lies.

Agreed there, too. Bozell's allegations are either silly or nitpicky (a good example of both: complaining about when media refers to 'suicide bombers' rather than 'homicide bombers.'). There's actual substance to Brock's criticisms, on the other hand.

36

mumon,

Once more, what did Focus on the Family lie about? Also, since when did they become an 'unbiased' news outlet?

37

"Have you seen the actual research by Pew? Journalist are far more liberal... They are far more likely to be irreligious. From the actual research ... most journalist ... are liberal and ... that influences their reporting and selecting of stories."

Aaron, Excellent Point!

Wasn't it a ratio of about 9 liberals to every 1 conservative in the MSM?

38

Rathergate was an inevitablity. This whole thing does not have anything to do with left/right/of in the middle. Rather has shown that he does not care one iota about what his stories do or who they hurt.

Several years ago, PBS had a panel show that included lawyers, media types, etc. I remember watching one that dealt with a serial killer. The show lasted sever hours and many topics were discussed including ethics. I wish I could remember everything, but one item that stuck with me, and the main reason I never watched CBS evening news was when the moderator brought up a scenario about the suspect having a shrine in his room. The question was put that even knowing that putting that on the evening news would hamper and/or harm the investigation, would you as a newsman climb through the window and take pictures of the shrine and report it on the evening news.

One of the other news reporters hesitated. He said that he wasn't sure if it fit into the ethics that news reporters needed to properly do their job. The moderator even asked if "going to New York and be the anchor" would change his mind. Rather, who was one of the panel guests, broke in and said "I am in New York. I would certainly crawl through the window."

That one sentence has stayed with me ever since. The fact that Rather would break every ethics code just to "get the story" regardless of what harm it caused or who it hurt shows what type of reporter he is.

That is the real issue. Whether you are talking about the networks or cable news. Ethics has been lacking in their reporting for years. All any of them are interested in is getting a scoop, getting the story, and getting their name in front of millions every day.

No matter what the report says, this will happen again. Maybe not at CBS, but it will happen again. There are still too many Rathers out there.

39

MarkR, that's an interesting story. It makes me wonder how long before we have 'on-the-spot' reporting from virtually everywhere (pun intended). Will nosy neighbors be climbing over each other (in and out of windows) to be the first to get the first News-Blog and related pics and/or video from the latest traffic accident or domestic dispute, etc. in their neighborhood?

40

Once more, what did Focus on the Family lie about? Also, since when did they become an 'unbiased' news outlet?

You mean besides the fact that their very name is misleading?

41

How many Clinton scandals did get "pounded endlessly"? I only remember one (Monica) that was a truly big deal.

Whitewater, the billing files, China, the FBI records, and so on. The CBS story wasn't 'pounded endlessly' except by bloggers who were pounding CBS and not Bush.

Why don't we compare the numbers of stories on US prisoner abuse with the number of stories combined on the Oil-for-Food scandal, the sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in Rwanda and the French UN peacekeepers firing for no reason on crowds?

I went to the NY Times and did a search for the past 90 days.

"Prisoner abuse" 19 articles
UN "oil for food" 68 articles
French peacekeepers fired protesters 1701 articles

This isn't scientific, 'prisoner abuse' had at least one article on a jail in Nassau. But it would seem that anyone who relied on the NY Times would get plenty of information on all of the things you mentioned. How would you describe unbiased coverage? Should the ratio of prisoner abuse articles to UN oil-for-food be 1-1? 1-2? 1-3?

You listed some conservative commentators who did not start at Fox, do you really want me to start listing liberal commentators that got started at the MSM (sans Fox)? We would be here all day if we started listing those

Since I named about 5 you name 5. Then name me 3 notable liberals who are on Fox News without naming Sean Hannity's side kick.

Sure some of the networks have their token conservative they trot out for balance during 3 against 1 discussions.

I never got the impression that Robert Novak, Pat Buchannan etc were 'token conservatives'. Nor do I think "Scarbouragh Country", which has a prime time spot on MSNBC, is 3-1 in favor of liberals.

Journalist are far more liberal and democrat leaning than the average American. They are far more likely to be irreligious. From the actual research it is clear that most journalist, most in the media, are liberal and you fool yourself if you don't think that influences their reporting and selecting of stories.

And publishers tend to be more Republican than the average American. Are we to believe that does not influence the selection of stories? Getting stories requires access to politicians. Are we to believe reporters are not pushed to be more friendly in their coverage in order to maintain access?

42

There are not many (if any) people who "seek out" unbiased news. We all flatter ourselves if we believe we are in that group. Everyone here, so far, has come at this from a bias and rightly so. It is just some are more willingly than others to admit that.

The problem here is whether you have any concept of bias that is really useful. This is one of those arguments that I've listened to a lot and I've noticed several patterns in the accusation of bias. All of them present dubious problems. I'm going to list them by their underlying assumptions:

1. "Middle of the Road" - This assumption is that unbiased means equally conservative and liberal or Republican Democrat. If, for example, there are twenty stories on Bush not knowing his facts but only 5 stories on Gore not knowing important facts that's bias. In other words, the underlying assumption must be that left and right are always equal.

2. "The moving center" - Like #1, this assumption is that left and right are always split evenly. A typical accusation from this camp runs like this; "we found that terms like 'arch-conservative' were used 256 times in the last 6 months but 'arch-liberal' were only used 25 times". But who ever said that both left and right were equally newsworthy? If Jesse Helms sponsors ten major bills must an unbiased paper run ten articles on Ted Kennedy showing up to work five minutes late so it uses the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' equally?

3. "The Objective Center" - This is similar to Aaron's request that we compare things like stories on the prisoner abuse scandal and the UN oil-for-food. The difficulty here is making a convincing argument on how much coverage constitutes what is unbiased. For example, does the prisoner abuse story merit more copy than the French troops on the Ivory Coast? How about the fact that the abuse story is still happening? (Court martials are just beginning, Congress is still digging up memos and other evidence of just where the policy began).

IMO, these are nice definitions of bias if you want to produce studies 'proving bias'. They are not useful definitions if you really care about the subject. I think way to measure bias would be to ask yourself if, after reading an article, all the relevant facts were presented and someone who just read that article could be able to describe the major arguments used by both sides.

For example, if the article is about the abortion pill you should be able to learn from it that:
* Pro-lifers are against the bill because they oppose abortion in general and they allege the pill isn't safe for women.
* Pro-choicers are in favor of the pill because they believe in a right to choose abortion and because the pill removes the stigma of having to go to an 'abortion clinic'.
* Plus whatever the 'objective facts' are...like what the pill does, what policy is being debated, etc.

If you get this from the article then it is unbiased. If major elements are missing...for example if all you can get from it about the anti-pill side is that they oppose it for some inexplicable reason then it would be biased.

A newspaper that choose to run nothing but stories about scandals in the Bush administration, then, could be perfectly unbiased. So could such opinion magazines as the New Republic, National Review and so on.

43

You know, some people around here (Kevin W. leaps to mind) are eating some serious crow right now. I wish they'd tell me how it tastes.

How many pages and pages of text were spent telling me and others how our tune's would change once the WMD were discovered? A lot.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/12/wmd.search/index.html

U.S. inspectors have ended their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in recent weeks, a U.S. intelligence official told CNN.

The search ended almost two years after President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, citing concerns that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and may have hidden weapons stockpiles.

Members of the Iraq Survey Group were continuing to examine hundreds of documents and would investigate any new leads, the official said.

Charles A. Duelfer, who headed the Iraq Survey Group's search for WMD in Iraq, has returned to Iraq and is working on his final report, the official said.

In October, Duelfer released a preliminary report finding that in March 2003 -- the United States invaded Iraq on March 19 of that year -- Saddam did not have any WMD stockpiles and had not started any program to produce them.

The Iraq Survey Group report said that Iraq's WMD program was essentially destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended the country's nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War.

44

Boonton wrote, "...Then name me 3 notable liberals who are on Fox News without naming Sean Hannity's side kick..."

That's easy Fox frequently has three on at the same time: Mora Liason, Juan Williams, and Mort Kondracke.

Then, there's Geraldo Rivera, Greta van Susterin, Alan Combs, Micheal Barone, Jane Hall, Neal Gabler, Jeff Birnbaum, etc.

*as an aside - I would classify Pat Buchanan as a 'reactionary' or 'paleo-conservative' not a Conservative (at least in the way that George Will, Sean Hannity, and Robert Novak, etc. are Conservatives). He is a 'protectionist' and an 'isolationist', a throwback to the Wendell Wilkie wing.

45

Fair enough, by my own definition of bias Fox News usually passes the test. For practical purposes Buchanan was a conservative until sometime around the beginning of Clinton's first term (recall his famous 'culture war' speech at the GOP convention).

I don't think you can seriously argue that conservatives make 'token' appearences on MSNBC. If anything it is the liberals who make the token appearences on Fox..

46

Fair enough, by my own definition of bias Fox News usually passes the test. For practical purposes Buchanan was a conservative until sometime around the beginning of Clinton's first term (recall his famous 'culture war' speech at the GOP convention).

I don't think you can seriously argue that conservatives make 'token' appearences on MSNBC. If anything it is the liberals who make the token appearences on Fox..

47

My argument in short form: Most critics of 'media bias' have no useful definition of bias that is not self-serving.

48

mumon:

You mean besides the fact that their very name is misleading?

Can you be more specific?

49

You know, some people around here (Kevin W. leaps to mind) are eating some serious crow right now. I wish they'd tell me how it tastes.

C'mon, Larry. I just served you up a nice tasty bit of crow yesterday. Tell us how it was.

50

Most media critics have focused most of their attention on the 'Mainstream Media' or big, broadcast media (i.e. CBS, ABC, and NBC) and large newspapers (e.g. NY Times, Washington Post, etc.), because for 40+ years these were the institutions that shaped the news in this country. But with the growth of cable outlets (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc.) and the internet, the MSM isn't as dominate as it once was.

Boonton wrote, "...Most critics of 'media bias' have no useful definition of bias..."

Many of the media critics' definitions are quite useful. Here are a few from Media Research Center:

-Using 'erroneous assumptions' that favor the liberal perspective without any evidence.

-Selecting stories that favor a liberal perspective while ignoring storys or evidence to the contrary.

-Placing stories that favor conservatives or disfavor liberals where they are less likely to be heard or seen.

-Selecting liberal sources and either ignoring or mischaracterizing conservative sources.

-Selecting parts of an event, program, or piece of legislation that favors the liberal position while ignoring the conservative.

-Giving conservative individuals or groups extreme lables while either not identifying liberals or giving them an unbiased and/or 'expert' status.

51

TW,

Let's imagine a magazine called something like 'President Watch'. Its purpose is to uncover corruption in the Executive Branch. Imagine this magazine has been around for decades. During the 80's it runs articles attacking the Reagan/Bush admins. During the 90's the Clinton admin and now the Bush admin again.

Is this magazine biased? By your definition it would be because all of its stories would favor whatever party was not in the White House. Are the definitions you provided useful to an editor at the NY Times or CBS who wanted to maintain unbiased reporting or are they more useful to a professional critic so he can detect bias in any source he wants.

52

Long and short, if a story gives you both sides (or more) and the relevant facts then it is unbiased IMO....even if it appears in an opinion magazine...even if the newspaper choose to run ten stories about just the same thing.

What is a newspaper supposed to do if they got ten stories that embrass conservatives? Sit on them until ten stories equally embrassing to liberals pop up?

53

Boonton,
Both

54

BT,

The definitions could be useful to both an editor in the MSM and/or a professional critic.

If the MSM did give both sides then yes, but they don't.

The MSM does not persue stories that are detrimental to the liberal agenda, and they also ignore stories that are bad for the liberal agenda, sometimes while the 'new media' (internet, cable, small publications, etc.) are breaking the stories. This is a costly strategy. Everytime the MSM acts negligently like they did in the Rather Memo-gate fiasco, they loose credibility.

For quite a long time, the MSM could get away with biased and grossly negligent stories -not any more. The MSM will either learn that the 'new media' is wise to their old tricks or become more and more irrelevant.