Challenging the powerful is always fraught with danger.  Anyone who does it needs to have their shit together.  I give Dan high marks for having his heart in the right place, but frankly he blew it by not having corroborating evidence and high-level protection.  Eventually the skeletons will drift out of the closet, but by then it won’t really matter.

ptah13 wrote:

tojo2000 wrote:

That whole thing was fucked up.  First of all, they never proved that the document in question was false, but even if it was, it was corroborated by eyewitness testimony of all of the people involved, so basically even if the document turned out to be a forgery, everything it said was true.

Is there really anybody at this point that believes that George Bush didn't abandon his cushy post given to him so he wouldn't have to actually fight because of the drug tests he was required to submit to?

I dunno what happened to Bush, but Rather more than fucked himself.

It is sad for all of us, because I really looked forward to elections night with Rather doing the reporting. I always liked the guy.

With that being said, he more than screwed himself. When he first aired the report, he reported the documents as having been authenticated. By the next day, there were many legit issues with the documents (fonts, spacing, the "th" issue). Rather spent 2 weeks defending the documents while even the most lib news organizations (CNN, NY Times, etc) were admitting they were fake.

The worst part was Dan standing there, saying, "we had so-and-so authenticate this" and then seeing the folks he'd mention on the news saying, "umm, no, we told him there were problems with the documents".

It was downright embarrassing because he talked about it every night for two weeks, defending himself, CBS and the documents, only to later admit that "CBS screwed up".

The entire original 60 minutes piece was solely based around these documents. As a journalist, you can't stand there and say, "we authenticated these documents" when you know that you rushed the piece together, before you got a response back from those you sent the documents to. "Authenticating" doesn't mean, "we sent them out, didn't hear back yet so they must be true".

When the folks that were to authenticate the documents all declined to authenticate (one guy authenticated the sig, but admitted the document was probably altered, others said the sig didn't match), Rather should have retracted. Instead he kept defending his piece... I know CBS is known for a liberal bias but, come on.... that is just simple propaganda.

Let us not forget this all came out less than 2 months before the election. Did Rather think he could keep saying, "oh no, they are true" till Kerry got in office?

Wow, thanks Tojo for giving me more political stuff to rant about. I'm like a post-hibernation vampire who just sucked down a couple of strippers!!!!!!

Well, I sort of agree with you, in that he shouldn't have let people hang the report on the document.  You are wrong, however, in that there really were no problems with the document per se.  The biggest issue was the superscript, and there had been typewriters that could and did do that for years.  The problem was that once the authenticators started backing out, there was no "proof" that this was an authentic document.  Really, rather than try to verify an unverifiable document, they should have focused on all of the background work that they did.  The problem there wasn't Dan Rather's at that point (and if you'd actually read the article that started the thread, you'd know that), the problem was that CBS didn't really give him a chance to show that even without the document, the story was 100% true and verified by eyewitness accounts.  CBS was so afraid that they would be portrayed as a left-wing news outlet that they decided to build up a Republican team to roast Dan Rather's balls on the sacrificial fire.  Statements by the officer in question's secretary saying, "I can't be sure that I typed that exact letter, but I typed many letters very much like that"( I can't remember the exact words), for example, made whether or not the document in question was legitimate somewhat of a side note in many people's eyes, but those interviews never made the light of day in the mad panic to try to make CBS "fair and balanced".

ptah13 wrote:

The "up" side is tremendous and if he does have Hillary as his Sec of State, I'll have a decent level of respect for the guy.

Yeah, that's the face that I want America to present to the rest of the world.