CBS and the Case of the Phony Memos

For all the loud obnoxious claims of the media to be the heralds of the truth and the news we need to know, it has become increasingly apparant to me that things are not always as they seem.

Case in point. CBS's news show "60 Minutes 2" recently had an expose' reported by Dan Rather in which he revealed memos supposedly written in 1972 by the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who was the commander of George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard fighter squadron. The memos say Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's record, and that Mr. Bush refused a direct order to take the required medical examination.

Lo and behold, a great number of online bloggers (spearheaded by www.powerlineblog.com), after looking at the online copies on CBS's website, have concluded that there is something rotten in the State of Rather. The rotton has to do with everything from the lack of letterheads in the memos, the porportional spacing, to the use of a superscript TH that was supposedly physically impossible to do on 1972 typewriters.
To make things worse, as the bloggers spun their conspiracy theories, legitimate experts began to take a closer look at the memos as well.

Their discoveries prove that Rather and CBS are careless and "Rather" biased. Ok, actually, it's not the discoveries that do it, it's CBS's reaction to them. Even a week after the memos were called into question, and even after some of the "experts" that CBS claimed verified the memos were real, backed out, CBS and Rather are both STILL standing behind their report.

Why they're doing this likely has to do with the wild hope that the fracus will go away, and the other news agencies won't dig any deeper. If CBS and Rather admit the mistake, they look careless and irresponsible, and CBS's news reputation is more or less toast. Of course, if they don't it's likely the same might happen.

Personally, I have no sympathy for Rather. If he didn' t fact check, as it appears he didn't, he deserves to hang out to dry. It's about time that one of those high horse prancing reporters in the national media gets called on the carpet for biased and irresponsible reporting.

Will it happen?

If this memo thing keeps going on, it just might.

I wouldn't hold my breath though.