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Powerline takes apart the Columbia Journalism Review's Rathergate piece with vigor and precision:

I could go on, but there is little point in doing so. CBS ostensibly "worked" on the National Guard story for years. They took fake documents from a notoriously unstable source who had no first-hand knowledge of President Bush's National Guard career, and who could not account for where he got them. On their face, the documents looked nothing like authentic National Guard memos of the 1970s that were in CBS's possession, but CBS asked no questions. CBS carried out no investigation to determine whether the memos were genuine, and made a point of not talking to people who were ostensibly quoted in the memos to determine whether the documents were accurate. They put the documents before the American public in the heat of an election campaign, and closely coordinated their story with a Democratic National Committee advertising campaign which dovetailed perfectly with the fake documents, and which began the morning after their broadcast. When questioned about the documents' apparent fraudulence, they stonewalled, and Dan Rather guaranteed the American people that the documents were authentic, because they came from an unimpeachable source.

The bloggers, on the other hand, began questioning the documents within hours after they appeared; raised many logical questions about their authenticity, the vast majority of which turned out to be valid; pointed out anachronisms within the documents that proved that their contents were false; and were ultimately proved correct in their suspicion that the documents were fakes. Nearly all of which occurred, not over a period of years, which CBS had to pursue its "story," but over the space of twelve hours.

And the Columbia Journalism Review thinks it is the bloggers who are blameworthy in this story. Sad. Very sad. But I guess we know whose side the "journalists" are on.

Read the whole thing, it's devastating. When one stops and thinks about it, it's kind of disturbing that notable quarters of the MSM and punditocracy still rise to even halfheartedly defend CBS or the possibility that the documents were not fake, in the face of such overwhelming evidence. Even viewed through the powerful prism of wishful ideology and contrariness that stamps the work of so many journalists, it's bizarre. Really, really bizarre.

Posted by Bill at January 5, 2005 09:42 AM | TrackBack (2)

Comments

Posted by: Eric Akawie at January 5, 2005 10:47 AM

Posted by: seybernetx at January 5, 2005 01:31 PM

Posted by: Big Mac w/ an Egg at January 5, 2005 03:44 PM

Posted by: BoghRD at January 5, 2005 10:28 PM