INDCJournal: "RATHER AND HEYWARD MUST GO" <b><i>(UPDATED)</i></b>

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September 16, 2004

"RATHER AND HEYWARD MUST GO" (UPDATED)

Posted by Bill

I haven't been very kind to Andrew Sullivan in the past few months, but all due credit for this post that succinctly cuts to the heart of the issue with CBS News:

I'm not backing this president for re-election. But all that is completely beside the frigging point. Journalists are supposed to provide accurate evidence for their claims. CBS didn't. And its response to the critics is to stonewall and try and change the subject. The correct response - the one they'd teach you in kindergarten journalism class - is immediately to check the authenticity of the documents as best you can, and if the doubts persist, to apologize immediately and yank the story. Can you imagine what CBS News would do if a government official found to be peddling fake documents refused to acknowledge it? And kept repeating his story nonetheless? They'd be all over it. But, you see, they are above politicians. They are above criticism. And they are stratospheres above bloggers who caught them red-handed.

Considering Sullivan's track record with scalping Lott and Raines, the ferocity of his sentiment almost makes me believe that CBS will soon taste a heaping helping of red hot justice.

Now certainly isn't the time to go wobbly, people. Now is just the time to get really fired up.

Courage.

(Via Vodka Pundit)

UPDATE: Though I did catch this howler in a lower graph:

Which brings us to the real, juicy question: who did this? I don't know. Michael Dobbs' story in today's Washington Post obviously points toward Bill Burkett. Was he sophisticated enough to create fakes? Did anyone help him?

Default settings in Microsoft Word. Photocopier. Faxed from Kinkos. The anemic skeptical intelligence skills of Dan Rather. Using Army terminology instead of language consistent with the Air Force. I'd hardly describe that package as requiring any degree of "sophistication."

UPDATE: And let me generously excerpt Michele (welcome back) here:

And it's become even more than that over the past few days. What is it with the current trend of people not taking responsibility for their actions? Is this the new way to deal with people when confronted with the possibility that you did something wrong? Evade, be ambiguous, blame someone else, engage in moral equivalency, pout, stamp your feet and act outraged and defiant that someone is actually calling you out on your bullshit. From two year old toy thiefs to middle aged middle managers, from drunk-driving movie stars to drunk-with-power news anchors, that seems to be the modus operand when the headlights are turned on.

There was a point in all this when I would have still been able to maintain some respect for Rather. Maybe a few days back, if he had addressed the issue immediatley, called for an investigation and confessed that maybe, just maybe, he had inadvertantly used false documents in his story, he could have saved some face. Even if he was bullshitting us and we knew it, it would have done far less damage than his ridiculous posturing is doing now.

The problem is, CBS is digging a deeper and deeper hole and if they aren't careful (oops, too late), they are going to take the media in general into that hole with them. It's time for the other networks and affilliates to start shoveling the dirt on Rather and CBS, instead of being buried with them.

Read it all.

UPDATE: Roger Simon is on a roll, just scroll around:

The transcripts currently out on Drudge from tonight's "Sixty Minutes II" read like outtakes from Jarry's Ubu Roi - a television network in the midst of a nervous breakdown. The whiff of desperation comes from every line as if the entire enterprise is about to implode - and it is.

Posted by Bill at September 16, 2004 08:51 AM | TrackBack (4)

Comments

- Bill - Think collaboration - B was a prolific writer, albeit a nutcase, H has a history of fraudulent documents...

Posted by: Hunter at September 16, 2004 09:05 AM

The real story is the perfectly coincidental storm of:
- the counterfeit TANG documents from Bill Burkett
- Kitty Kelly's smash job on the Bush family
- Ben Barnes' "confession"
- Maestro Rathers' orchestration and adaptation
- timed and triggered by Kerry's operatives, with or whithout the candidate's knowledge or approval.

Kerry's agents have fabricated all these wedge issues in order for him to become "Kerrymander in Chief".

Posted by: heptacableguy at September 16, 2004 09:26 AM

That picture of David Van Os with Clinton is great... man, I hope they didn't lose that Swiftvet Flow Chart with all the arrows on it... they'll need it soon enough, this time with Clinton, Van Os, Burkett, Rather and KERRY KERRY KERRY.

And you KNOW if no one in the media does it, the Bloggers will make their own shadowy charts.

Posted by: Iraqi Intelligence at September 16, 2004 09:29 AM

Question: Who directed Burkett to Van Os? CBS? Bill Clinton? It's not like Van Os is likely to keep an office in a small Central/West Texas town.

Posted by: Crush T. Velour at September 16, 2004 09:49 AM

II:
Please don't confuse the issue. Or, as Star Wars quotes have proliferated: "Stay on target. Stay on target." Don't make this a Red v. Blue scandal. Dan Rather and CBS News MUST stay in the crosshairs. I'm actually afraid that they'll get away if this becomes a VLWC meme.

Posted by: Brett at September 16, 2004 09:50 AM

Brett -

I generally agree, but in this case the neutrality of the source has direct bearing on CBS's reporting skill. They've discounted everyone taht doesn't agree with them as a right wing operative, yet take the word of a Dem activist with a personal ax to grind against Bush?

That's egregiously incompetent journalism, so unfortunately, the two worlds will mix.

But I know what you are saying ...

Posted by: Bill from INDC Journal at September 16, 2004 09:53 AM

Crush:

Burkett and Van Os know each other from Dem. party activity apparently. But being a Republican, if I was going to retain a lawyer, it sure might be one I met doing campaign work. I don't place too much faith in that kind of stuff being 'conspiracy'. You want a lawyer you know. If you do campaign work you get one you worked with on a campaign. If church is your big thing you get one you know from church, etc.

Posted by: Brett at September 16, 2004 09:53 AM

Bill:

I agree that this is about partisianship, but if too much is written about wild DNC/Kerry Campaign conspiracy, we lose the fight. Yes, Rather didn't vet this stuff because it was passed on by Dems. In my mind the fight is with 'Rather didn't vet this stuff' not 'it was passed on by Dems'.

Posted by: Brett at September 16, 2004 09:56 AM

Bill, have you not seen the wide variety of paper available in Kinko's? Why, it could take hours to choose whether your forged memos should be on "Gray Mist" or "Butterscotch Sunrise!"

All of that, of course, was resolved when someone from the Kerry staff called and said:

"Wait a minute, you know black and white would just capture the moment so nicely..." *

* A valuable prize to the person identifying from where that line is lifted.

Posted by: andy at September 16, 2004 10:01 AM

Sixteen Candles

Posted by: syber at September 16, 2004 10:06 AM

There's a little bell going off in the back of my mind. The obvious forgery, so bad it's not even really a hoax of the memos ... were they really faxed from Kinko's, or is _that_ the subtle forgery?

Posted by: htom at September 16, 2004 10:12 AM

OK, Bill, tell Syber what he/she/it wins!

Posted by: andy at September 16, 2004 10:29 AM

Its the left-wing propeganda team of dan blather and BAD KITTY kelly we are just looking at the tip of the iceburg and what the left-wing news media are doing

Posted by: Phoenix at September 16, 2004 04:23 PM

I wonder if, once this is all over, there'll be occasion to refer to Dan Rather as a "mythic figure" who was still "wielding influence" in CBS following his retirement? Just a thought.

Posted by: Mike Sierra at September 16, 2004 04:44 PM

Courage.

Or, as one man put it:

Courage! Bush is a noodle!

Posted by: Angie Schultz at September 16, 2004 08:56 PM