Nice, Jay but the tombstone is way too small. CBS would try to have the man in state for three days, then move him to Central Park (renamed Rather Park by then), and burry him under a towering statue of him shaking hands with Killian after getting the TANG documents.

Fake, but accurate.

Sure it all seemed like a dream, but the ghosts that haunt the halls of CBS News are quite real, as proved by this vetted evidence from incontrovertible sources:

Proof that Ghosts Exist

For the life of me, after reading the full report I can't see how Thornburgh could say there was no political bias at all even if there was some sort of a mechanical breakdown in attempting to get the news out fast....if CBS was as "quick" and therefore suffered a similar "breakdown" in attempting to discover why Kerry refused to have his military records out in public I guess I would be able to stomach that finding a bit better....

Yeah, I agree with bsp, it is entirely preposterous that CBS insists that there was "no political bias" involved. They must take everyone else for complete fools. Actually, I think they do.

If Moonves wants to implement a new network personality, he should start with this decision and tell Rather to hit the road. Not retirement but obscurity. Allowing him to continue to affiliate with a network, any network, is incredible. As in, lacking credibility.

I was listening to people say how over the years, Rather's remained while others who have been associated with him have been canned over similiar issues of credibilty, lack thereof. Rather, at this point, sure seems parasitic.

And if Moonves doesn't make further corrections, he's going to look parasitic, too.

Thornburg is also a member of the rapidly waning Generation of Vipers [Philip Wylie had a least a few things right in 1942]. Which might explain his inability to "see" what Whizbang and others bloggers, at least, find quite obvious.

Hopefully the efforts of Jay, Kevin and Paul (as well as the myriad of literate regular commentors) continue to make will wake up at least a portion of our current Generation of Slugs before we all irreversibly consumerize ourselves to a living Hell.

As long as the spin doctors control the perception of debacles such as this, we all remain at risk. Keep plugging.

From a post on Rathergate.com:

On the September 14 CBS Evening News, the transcript [PDF] contains the following:

John Roberts: The President has yet to weigh in on new documents about his National Guard record made public last week by 60 Minutes. But in a radio interview, First Lady Laura Bush became the first White House insider to publicly doubt their authenticity.

Laura Bush: You know they probably are altered and they probably are forgeries.

John Roberts: However, Laura Bush offered no evidence to back up her claim and CBS News continues to stand by its reporting.

Although the reporting is factual, it did tend to make the First Lady’s claims seem unsupported, when it was in fact CBS News’ claims that didn’t have sufficient support. I think a short, simple apology is in order.

It's about time Roberts gets a spanking as well.......

Prevaricates, falsifies, fabricates, deceives, hoaxes, fakes, libels, calumnifies, fools, fibs, fudges, quibbles, dissembles, slanders, smears, defames, mudslings, misrepresents, or obloquies...

... but lies?

Too easy to misinterpret.

I'm sure CBS would rather be covering the southeast asian tsunami rather than being covered by the blogger tsunami at this point.

While the fourth appendix does a lot, it *STILL* misses two more glaring points abotu the fake memos.

Point 1. ALL military files are stored in the same type of folders, used since before WWI. These type folders use 2 holes at the *TOP* of the page. Where are the photocopied holes in the memos?

Point 2. The computer in question that was used to create these memos was of a quite new vintage. Only Microsoft Word versions XP and 2003 match up in breakpoints. Prior versions do not. You can track back to the release dates on those versions, but I can tell you that it weren't 1999, when Mapes started this research. Those documents are of comparitivly recent vintage.

Just 2 more points to show that the author of these forgeries just didn't know enough to be convincing.

Mason has been with CBS how long? Jeeze. It just amazes me that CBS's "new" image is going to be determined in part by someone that is so old her crabs have to carry canteens.

Just 2 more points to show that the author of these forgeries just didn't know enough to be convincing.

And yet, sadly, there are people out there (including a commenter calling himself "BC" on an earlier thread) who are convinced and will never let evidence get in the way of their erroneous certainty.

- A couple of points....

- I don't think Burkette is the source of the documents. There are several reasons for thinking he was just a "bag" man, most notibly the tone of his chat room posts all during the pertinent 4 or 5 months that Mapes was in "action"....

- The "package" she aquired had some obvious flaws, and her and her cohorts set about regurgitating new fakes of the original fakes. Thats the probable reason that the word version used is current. Unfortunately for her the "advice" she got from Burkette reflects his knowledge of Army documents and not TANG. Those flaws are clearly discernible. There are a number of possibilities for the original fake memo source... Sort of the equivalent of "Deep filing cabinet" so to speak....

- Everything that comes out of CBS will be carefully tailored to avoid legal liability. In general to lead everything away from the two questions they don't want asked. What are they doing in possession of fake documents, and if the originals, unaltered with the added fake comments, are not faked what are they doing with "un-issued" government documents....

- Either way they're culpable, so they have to make every effort to avoid that situation. I think if they thought it would evade that possibility they'd fire everyone from Moonves on down. Thats the elephant in the room they're trying desperately to ignore......

- Thats the area that the Blogsphere can investigate and expose.... bon appitite'

McGehee (everyone else, too,[ d'oh ] ):

When this news first published, I was on Yahoo reading some other stuff and then linked on down to a Yahoo commenting section that accompanied the article about the report, to take a quick look-see as to JoePublic's comments...

And, comment after comment from numerous liberals all insisting that the "story is true" but that it was "just the presentation" that was dubious. That the information was correct, just that it wasn't presented well, that...that...and on it went, people unable to perceive the issues at hand here. They just cannot break through some mental block about this issue (among others), but mostly, because the issue began to smear Bush, that seems to have been incentive enough for some to find it, well, hey, just alright! It was sad to read the insistent comments and the sense written here and there among those comments being completely ignored.

Which I also think that Moonves and CBS are doing to a great degree.

At the very least, Moe, Larry and Shemp...err, sorry, wrong stooges.....that is, Rather, Roberts and Heyward have to go...CBS will not regain its credibility with anything less...or is that Groucho, Zeppo and Chico?.....I'm so confused....

After 110 minutes we suspected the memos were forged and CBS had an anti-Bush bias. After 110 days the lackies hired by CBS offered no opinion on the key issues.

Whitewash is too nice a term, this was a pig circus.

Heyward probably wrote it himself.

My analysis of the Rathergate investigation:

They really did a good job gathering the facts and presenting the case that the story was not credible, but we already knew that. Any reasonable person could see those documents were fake and most of the bloggers who exposed it could have told you that Bill Burkett had an ax to grind. The real unanswered questions still remain. Why did CBS news division spend 5 years trying to prove that George Bush may have missed a physical and received preferential treatment in the TaNG in 1973? They cite a competitive zeal as one of their faults but why wasn’t their any of that zeal directed at the Kerry camp? Maybe on a swift boat story? Analysis of Kerry’s anti-war activities? His book the New Soldier? Why he voted against the Gulf War 91? His senate record? Anything?
It all points to CBS’s political bias. But again we already know that. So I can only conclude CBS is a liberal news organization that is competing with the other liberal news organization for viewers and figured they could trump the competition by taking down the President and getting Kerry elected at any cost. With Dan Rather taking out his final Republican president and retiring to icon status inside the halls of the DNC. If only the documents were authentic, conservatives didn’t have any voice in media and the regular folks of America would have cared they might have gotten away with it

Drudge - Tue Jan 11 2004 14:56:11 ET- Dan Rather's response to the Thornburgh Report.

I'd call it Texas crocodile tears.

Well said, Wasp.

*****

Rather's response, first paragraph, to the Report:
"The panel report is part of a process -- a necessary process to deal with a difficult issue -- at the end of which four good people have lost their jobs. My strongest reaction is one of sadness and concern for those individuals whom I know and with whom I have worked. It would be a shame if we let this matter, troubling as it is, obscure their dedication and good work over the years."

So, he's just another onlooker standing a safe distance from the fire? The last sentence sounds like a plea for his own track record to be revered. Ha! What you resist, you get, Dan: It would be interesting to dissect his Watergate and Vietnam War coverage.

Shouldn't the word "LIES" be bigger?

CGHill: I think the author of the image considered making the word "LIES" bigger by comparison with the other words/type, but then opted for a more realistic rendition of an actual tombstone. Just saying, that's what I think the author of the image thought and why. Whoever it was.

Linda Mason has said in a Washington Post article "I firmly believe if they found something about Kerry and his past, they'd be rushing to get that on the air, too."??? Hooooooooooo boy....Now we know what Linda Mason's "Mission Statement" will be during her tenure at CBS: "CBS and Ethical Journalism-Turning an Oxymoron Into Reality"

JAY IN TEA, man you have not really changed have you??? the same boring man who ends up posting some boring articles that these thick heads give feedback to 'coz they are low lives like you Jay.
oh yeah, so haven't you converted yourself into a muslim yet? i thought i convinced ya.

from AMELIA MARTINEZ FROM LONDON