It absolutely amazes me how veteran journalists, and especially top network producers, get caught up in the most simplest of mistakes - verifying your sources. My only inclination, of which I can't believe I'm about to say this, is in agreeance with Bill O'Reilly's, is that they WANTED it to be true. Well, as one AM radio host put it this morning, this is similar to a dirty cop setting up a bad guy. The bad guy may have actually broken the law, but you can't set them up by falsifying evidence against them.

Similarly, there is no evidence so far that demonstrates Bush's whereabouts for 5 months when he claims he was in the Alabama, finishing his Guard duty. It's highly likely that he didn't fulfill his service. Furthermore, as U.S. News and World Report, as well as the Boston Globe have recently pointed out, Bush had also failed to fulfill further obligations to the Guard. Combined with the fact that no credible witness has come forward to substantiate Bush's whereabouts during that questionable period in Alabama, as well as the preferential treatment of his entry (25% on his entrance exam, jumping 150 places in front somehow). Putting this all together, and you have quite a fishy circumstance.

But the bottom line is, you can't MAKE that circumstance happen, esp. with a source that is questionable. It's likely that this story could have hurt Bush a great deal more, even without the CBS story possibly being true about Killian's memos. I think the networks, and esp. Mary Mapes of CBS realized that they overplayed the Swift Boaters against Kerry, and they were seriously attempting a balance on criticism of past personal history. That's all well and good perhaps, and it may have been justifiable. I personally wish neither history would have been brought to the table so much, however.

Regardless, it was CBS' critical error in failing to verify their source. This is just my own speculation, but the producer who's been working on this story for years, Mary Mapes, should take the fall completely. She is the one that vouched for the authenticity of both the source and the memos to Rather. I can see Rather possibly getting the ax, but I doubt it will happen immediately. He'll likely carry this stain on his record, which will eventually force him into a much needed retirement.

Merry Christmas, Faux News:

quote:

September 20, 2004 THE NEWS MEDIA CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos, Network Officials Say By JIM RUTENBERG fter days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a "60 Minutes'' report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night. The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air. But they cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement. Officials met last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it had collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision. Mr. Rather was not available for comment late last night. The report relied in large part on four memorandums purported to be from the personal file of Mr. Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died 20 years ago. The memos, dated from the early 1970's, said that Colonel Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat'' the record of the young Lieutenant Bush and that the officer had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical. Mr. Rather and others at the network are said to still believe that the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian's feelings but that the documents' authenticity was now in grave doubt. The developments last night marked a dramatic turn for CBS News, which for a week stood steadfastly by its Sept. 8 report as various document experts asserted that the typeface of the memos could have been produced only by a modern-day word processor, not Vietnam War-era typewriters. The seemingly unflappable confidence of Mr. Rather and top news division officials in the documents allayed fears within the network and created doubt among some in the news media at large that those specialists were correct. CBS News officials had said they had reason to be certain that the documents indeed had come from the personal file of Colonel Killian. Sandy Genelius, a network spokeswoman, said last week, "We are confident about the chain of custody; we're confident in how we secured the documents.'' But officials decided yesterday that they would most likely have to declare that they had been misled about the records' origin after Mr. Rather and a top network executive, Betsy West, met in Texas with a man who was said to have helped the news division obtain the memos, a former Guard officer named Bill Burkett. Mr. Rather interviewed Mr. Burkett on camera this weekend, and several people close to the reporting process said his answers to Mr. Rather's questions led officials to conclude that their initial confidence that the memos had come from Mr. Killian's own files was not warranted. These people indicated that Mr. Burkett had previously led the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, to have the utmost confidence in the material. It was unclear last night if Mr. Burkett had told Mr. Rather that he had been misled about the documents' provenance or that he had been the one who did the misleading. In an e-mail message yesterday, Mr. Burkett declined to answer any questions about the documents. Yesterday, Emily J. Will, a document specialist who inspected the records for CBS News and said last week that she had raised concerns about their authenticity with CBS News producers, confirmed a report in Newsweek that a producer had told her that the source of the documents said they had been obtained anonymously and through the mail. In an interview last night she declined to name the producer who told her this but said the producer was in a position to know. CBS News officials have disputed her contention that she warned the network the night before the initial "60 Minutes'' report that it would face questions from documents experts. In the coming days CBS News officials plan to focus on how the network moved ahead with the report when there were warning signs that the memorandums were not genuine. Ms. Will is one of two documents experts consulted by the network who said they raised doubts about the material before the segment was broadcast. Another expert, Marcel B. Matley, said in interviews that he had vouched only for Colonel Killian's signatures on the records and not the authenticity of the records themselves. Mr. Matley said he could not rule out that the signatures had been cut and pasted from official records pertaining to Colonel Killian. In examining where the network had gone wrong, officials at CBS News turning their attention to Ms. Mapes, one of their most respected producers, who was riding particularly high this year after breaking news about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal for the network. In a telephone interview this weekend, Josh Howard, the executive producer of the "60 Minutes'' Wednesday edition, said that he did not initially know who was Ms. Mapes' primary source for the documents but that he did not see any reason to doubt them. He said he believed Ms. Mapes and her team had appropriately answered all questions about the documents' authenticity and, he noted, no one seemed to be casting doubt upon the essential thrust of the report. "The editorial story line was still intact, and still is, to this day,'' he said, "and the reporting that was done in it was by a person who has turned in decades of flawless reporting with no challenge to her credibility.'' He added, "We in management had no sense that the producing team wasn't completely comfortable with the results of the document analysis.'' Ms. Mapes has not responded to requests for comment. Mr. Howard also said in the interview that the White House did not dispute the veracity of the documents when it was presented to them on the morning of the report. That reaction, he said, was "the icing on the cake'' of the other reporting the network was conducting on the documents. White House officials have said they saw no reason to challenge documents being presented by a credible news organization. Several people familiar with the situation said they were girding for a particularly tough week for Mr. Rather and the news division should the network announce its new doubts. One person close to the situation said the critical question would be, "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?'' http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/p...d=all&position=

P.S. Some people have asked, does this hurt Kerry? It certainly doesn't help him. Again, his numbers were hurt badly by the Smear Boaters, and the bigger issue was completely missed about Bush's AWOL record in comparison. With this scandal jumping ahead of the REAL scandal of Bush's missing record, it's likely that Bush won't receive near as much point slippage as Kerry did. So in that sense, yes, it hurts Kerry.

But in the long run I believe it probably won't effect him much. We haven't even had the debates yet, the Iraq situation is going to shit, there's still a questionable economy and job outlook with a fucking huge deficit to deal with, the environmental record favors Kerry, etc. etc. ALL favor Kerry right now. But the bottom line is this - the Republicans are successfully framing the issues. They are defining the issues, and they are defining Kerry. Unless Kerry can turn the tables and reframe the questions, reframe Bush and Cheney, it doesn't matter what the reality of the situation is, Kerry and Edwards are gonners.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Don't worry....Kerry's campaign has been fighting an uphill battle in recent weeks and they have made progress.

This week is Kerry's week in the fact that he will hit the IRAQ issue like never before. Things have been falling apart on the Bush side recently with Republicans flaming Bush's handling on the Iraq situation. This story will hurt KERRY...but it will be overshadowed by the gloomy Iraq turmoil....especially with the "beheading" of two Americans coming at any moment/day now

Im just giving my honest opinion.

quote:

Originally posted by speedracer_mec Don't worry....Kerry's campaign has been fighting an uphill battle in recent weeks and they have made progress. This week is Kerry's week in the fact that he will hit the IRAQ issue like never before. Things have been falling apart on the Bush side recently with Republicans flaming Bush's handling on the Iraq situation. This story will hurt KERRY...but it will be overshadowed by the gloomy Iraq turmoil....especially with the "beheading" of two Americans coming at any moment/day now Im just giving my honest opinion.

That may all be true, but truly here, and I'm not trying to kiss the Repubs. back side too much, the Repubs. continue to have the advantage on framing the issues and Kerry. They continue to do this with a much greater success than the Dems.

Rove and the lot have figured out a long time ago - the best defense is a good offense. Wonder what it would take to buy Rove?

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

An interesting scenario to think about, though it's far from proven at this point, obviously. Boortz for the mind...

quote:

WAS SAD MAX THE PART OF THE PHONY DOCUMENTS SCAM? How long has it been now? Two weeks? Two weeks ---- and Dan Rather is still stonewalling. Even though CBS seems to be ready to admit that it was duped, Rather is holding fast. He still has not admitted that those documents he so proudly flourished on 60 Minutes II the week before last were fakes. Forgeries. Phonies. This past weekend CBS came up with a rather unusual twist. It was yet another glorious explanation of just why Dan Rather used those documents ... and how he was so terribly, absolutely, completely right to do so. See if you can follow this. Before the ill-fated 60 Minutes II show was aired some CBS reporters showed the documents to the White House and asked for comments. Since the White House didn't charge that the documents were forgeries at that time that must mean that they were real. So, you see, it was all the fault of the White House. This morning we have the New York Times saying that CBS is preparing an announcement .. possibly for today ... that they were duped; that they had been deceived as to the origin of the documents. Unidentified CBS officials told Times reporters that the report was too flawed to go on the air. This turn-around was apparently prompted by the results of a weekend interview of retired National Guard Lt. Col Bill Burkett by Dan Rather and a CBS executive. Burkett is the man identified as the possible source of the CBS documents. So .. now CBS is the victim? After two weeks of drinking their own Kool-Aid...insisting that the documents were accurate, and trotting out experts who supported their claims, suddenly CBS is the victim here? CBS wasn't duped - their viewers were. The documents were obvious forgeries, and CBS ignored the warnings from their own experts that they didn't look authentic. In other words, they're acting like they accepted a $100 bill drawn with a green crayon and were deceived. We're going to buy that, aren't we? The story out today says that Rather still believes that what is in the documents is accurate. Sorry, but there's no logical way to arrive at that conclusion. The man who didn't write the memos died 20 years ago. His surviving kin (son and wife) say there's no way he wrote them. Yet we're supposed to believe Dan Rather and CBS News that the memos might be fake, but hey the contents are accurate! So why would they think that? Because they want to believe it. Such is their pent-up Bush-bashing hatred that they are willing to broadcast a false story based on forged documents to advance a political cause. Dan Rather wanted revenge...and he smelled blood. This was going to be his big story to go out on....the news story that brought down a sitting president and led to his re-election defeat. Instead, their carefully constructed fantasy collapsed - and with it what was left of a major media institution's integrity. In the end, Rather didn't take down George W. Bush, he took down CBS News and his career. The mystery has been just why Rather has seemed almost afraid to step forward and admit that the documents are forgeries! At this point virtually everyone else in the media -- and that includes the DC and NYC press corps -- knows the documents are fakes, his CBS bosses are about to capitulate, yet Rather is still using his "the documents may be fake, but they're correct" escape valve? Dan Rather is perhaps the most partisan of the major broadcast network news anchors. His hatred of all things Bush approaches the pathological. I would submit to you that Dan Rather's burning desire to see John Kerry elected this fall has clouded his news judgment. He was all-too-eager to jump on a story that he thought could wound or possibly cripple Bush. I don't think for a moment that Rather would intentionally present documents he knew to be forged to his audience, even if he thought those documents would help his chosen candidate. Rather's eagerness to hurt George Bush caused him to stumble blindly into the forged documents scandal. Stand by, folks. This story just might get far more interesting. CBS can't be allowed to get by with a "we were duped" admission. If they admit that the documents were forged, then the documents, who forged them, and how they got to CBS become the story. There should be no pretense at protecting sources. You don't protect sources who feed you bogus documents. To maintain even a sliver of journalistic integrity CBS will have to divulge just where those documents came from. Divulging the source of those documents would be no problem to Dan Rather if that source was operating independently of the Democratic Party or of the Kerry Campaign. That appeared to be the case last week when Burkett was identified as a probable source. Burkett was known to hold a grudge against George Bush for some perceived wrongs during Burkett's service in the Guard. In some of his writings Burkett had compared Bush to Hitler. So, if Burkett supplied the documents, then we can expect to see CBS finger him sooner rather than later. But what if CBS didn't get those documents from Burkett? What if there was an intermediary? What if there was a intermediary who commanded enough respect in the CBS newsroom that the authenticity of the documents was merely assumed? After all, if Burkett had been the source of those documents, don't you suppose that the CBS producers might do just a bit of research on Burkett before they used them? Wouldn't that research reveal the "Hitler" remark and other troubling aspects of Burkett's past? Would Rather use documents provided by a relative unknown with a demonstrable grudge without some fairly heavy duty vetting? So ... again; maybe the documents didn't come from Burkett, at least not directly. Enter the man not named in this morning's New York Times story. Enter Max Cleland. This weekend we learned that Bill Burkett developed an itchy keyboard finger a few weeks ago and decided to do a bit of bragging to his Texas Democrat friends. On August 21st Burkett wrote an email to a group of Texas Democrats saying that he had passed some information to a former senator who was out there working for John Kerry. Burkett said that he initiated a contact with the Kerry campaign that resulted in him getting a phone call from Max Cleland. Cleland, as you probably know, is the obsessively bitter Vietnam War veteran who lost his first race for reelection to the U.S. Senate representing Georgia. The Georgia voters resented the manner in which Cleland became a lap dog to Tom Daschle and his choice to work to strengthen government employee unions at the expense of a strong Department of Homeland Security. In his email message Burkett said that he gave Max Cleland information that could be used to mount a counterattack against the critics of Kerry's service in Vietnam. Information? What information? Isn't it perfectly logical to believe that the information that Burkett is talking about is, in fact, the forged documents used by Dan Rather? Here is where we see a possible reason for Rather's stonewalling. Is it possible that Max Cleland is actually the source of those documents? Possible, yes. Proven, no. Could Burkett have passed the documents to Cleland who then made them available to CBS News? I'm just saying it's possible, folks. But this scenario would explain why Rather had circled the wagons. Max Cleland is part of the Kerry campaign team. It was Max Cleland that John Kerry sent to the gates of the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas for a publicity stunt. Kerry is Cleland's instrument of revenge against the Republican Party that deprived him of his seat in the U.S. Senate, and the Kerry Campaign knows all-to-well how to take advantage of an eager dupe. If ... and I'm saying IF ... the source of the documents was Cleland, then the Kerry Campaign is directly implemented in the scandal. Turn out the lights. Let me add that I hope that the scenario I put forward here is completely false. I've known Max Cleland for years. I love the man, truly .. though I doubt that he would throw a glass of water on me if I caught fire. I and many other Georgians watched in total despair as he sold his very soul to Tom Daschle and the Democratic Party. Cleland would have been Georgia's Senator for Life if he had simply put the interests of the country and his state above the interests of his party and government employee unions. Some of us hope that one day the kind, gregarious and gentle man that was Max Cleland will come home. If CBS does, in fact, admit that the documents were fakes, and that the vaunted CBS news team was tricked, we can't let the story end there. It can't end with an apology for airing the memos, a statement that the content of the memos are still believed to be accurate, and a producer thrown to the wolves. If CBS continues to cover up where the documents came from ... the entire chain of possession ... then we'll know that the bigger story hasn't yet seen the light of day.

Link

C-BS, as ann coulter put it

she has one sharp tounge

quote:

Originally posted by policerobots C-BS, as ann coulter put it she has one sharp tounge

So does Michael Moore, and they equally share the same amount of credibility when giving facts.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

kaboom.

quote:

CBS Regrets Bush Memos Story NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 2004 CBS News on Monday said it regretted broadcasting a story about President Bush's military service based on documents whose authenticity is in doubt, saying the source of the material had misled the network. CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, apologized. In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source." The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush's National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them. "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret. "Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting," Heyward continued. "We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust." Additional reporting on the documents will air on Monday's CBS Evening News, including the interview of Burkett by Rather. CBS News pledged "an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken." In a separate statement, Rather said that "after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically." "I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers," he said. "We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," Rather added. The authenticity of the documents — four memoranda attributed to Guard commander Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — has been under fire since they were described in a Sept. 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes. CBS had not previously revealed who provided the documents or how they were obtained. Burkett has previously alleged that in 1997 he witnessed allies of then-Gov. Bush discussing the destruction of Guard files that might embarrass Mr. Bush, who was considering a run for the presidency. Bush aides have denied the charge. In the statement, CBS said: "Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point." Questions about the president's National Guard service have lingered for years. Some critics question how Mr. Bush got into the Guard when there were waiting lists of young men hoping to join it to escape the draft and possible service in Vietnam. In the Sept. 8 60 Minutes report, former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes — a Democrat — claimed that, at the behest of a friend of the Bush family, he pulled strings to get young George W. Bush into the Guard. Other questions concern why Mr. Bush missed a physical in 1972, and why there are scant records of any service by Mr. Bush during the latter part of 1972, a period during which he transferred to an Alabama guard unit so he could work on a campaign there. The CBS documents suggested that Mr. Bush had disobeyed a direct order to attend the physical, and that there were other lapses in his performance. One memo also indicated that powerful allies of the Bush family were pressuring the guard to "sugar coat" any investigation of Lt. Bush's service. Skeptics immediately seized on the typing in the memos, which included a superscripted "th" not found on all 1970s-era typewriters. As the controversy raged, CBS broadcast interviews with experts who said that some typewriters from that period could have produced the markings in question. Other critics saw factual errors in the documents, stylistic differences with other writing by Killian and incorrect military lingo. Some relatives of Col. Killian disputed that the memos were real. His former secretary said the sentiments regarding Mr. Bush's failures as an officer were genuine, but the documents were not. Some document experts whom CBS consulted for the story told newspapers they had raised doubts before the broadcast and were ignored. CBS disputed their accounts, pointing to the main document expert the network consulted, Marcel Matley. Matley insisted he had vouched for the authenticity of the signatures on the memos, but had not determined whether the documents themselves were genuine. Last week, CBS News stood by its reporting while vowing to continue working the story. The network acknowledged there were questions about the documents and pledged to try to answer them. Mr. Bush maintains that he did not get special treatment in getting into the Guard, and that he fulfilled all duties. He was honorably discharged. On Saturday, a White House official said Mr. Bush has reviewed the disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972, and did not recall having seen them previously. In his first public comment on the documents controversy, the president told The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., "There are a lot of questions about the documents, and they need to be answered." The Bush campaign has alleged that their Democratic rivals were somehow involved in the story. John Kerry's campaign denies it. In an email revealed last week, Burkett said he had contacted the Kerry campaign but received no response. Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to find and make public by next week any unreleased files about Mr. Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard service to resolve a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Associated Press. The White House and Defense Department have on several occasions claimed that they had released all the documents only to make additional records available later on. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004...ain641481.shtml

Emphasis mine.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

And that, my friends, is a prime example of how NOT to run a network. I wonder how much damage this will do to CBS's credibility.

I will have to turn to more credible news broadcasting like Al Jazeera now.

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka And that, my friends, is a prime example of how NOT to run a network. I wonder how much damage this will do to CBS's credibility.

What I fear is that it will shake up the journalists even more than post 9/11. They were so damn scared to ask critical questions, esp. in the run up to Iraqi War. Only recently have they started to gain a backbone with this Administration, only to have this shit blow up in their faces. Like I said before, I think they were trying too desperately hard to balance out the smear, and it just blew up in CBS' faces. Nevermind the validity to the charges against Bush, which as I mentioned are still quite uncontested. This issue now has taken front and center stage.

Here's a pretty good article I read today:

quote:

The truth is out there In a superheated campaign season where charges are flying, getting to the truth means doing some old-fashioned digging. By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV/Media Critic Published September 19, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matt Lauer wasn't playing around. Sure, he was sitting down with celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley, a controversial figure whose assertions about President Bush's family in a new book already had some news organizations playing the squeamish card. Speaking with her on the Today show Monday, one day before publication of The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, Lauer was kicking off the first of three appearances by the author on the popular morning show. Thanks to complaints from the White House, which had asked NBC News to cancel her appearances on Today and cable channel MSNBC, criticism was already building over providing such a widely watched forum for a book filled with potentially damaging allegations weeks before a close election. So Lauer wasn't going to make it easy. "Do you think your standards for making accusations - for proof of sources - need to rise when you're dealing with a sitting president of the United States?" he asked, brushing aside a compliment. He called the book "99 percent negative," and even asked Kelley whom she planned to vote for in November. In part, it was Standard Operating Procedure for the Today show, which sometimes counters furor over controversial interview subjects by getting tough with them when they finally do appear. But Lauer's grilling of Kelley is also an example of the skepticism the media should apply to incendiary charges aired just before an election. Unfortunately, it may already be too late to help this campaign. Thanks to the explosion of information available on the Internet, cable TV, satellite and radio, today's national press operates in a high-velocity news cycle that never ends. In the case of Kobe Bryant and Scott Peterson, that means endless footage of their court appearances and speculation on legal strategies. But when talk turns to the race for the presidency, the impact of misleading or inaccurate assertions grows. From charges that Bush got preferential treatment in the National Guard, to assertions that John Kerry lied to receive his war medals, to allegations that CBS News was duped by faked documents on Bush's Guard service, the wrangling over complex, damaging charges in the media has grown more intense than ever. At the center of it all a simple question: Where's the truth? Experts predict it will get worse. "Put your seat belt on," said David Bohrman, White House bureau chief for CNN. "We've got another six weeks of this coming." A confused scramble for the truth Consider the allegations that Bush used family connections to get into the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, failed to meet training requirements, was grounded after missing a required physical and may have seen political pressure employed to "sugarcoat" his performance review. Sparked in part by documents unearthed by CBS News on Sept. 8 for its 60 Minutes show, the charges drew immediate denials from GOP and White House spokesmen. The day after CBS's story aired, several Internet Web logs and talk radio outlets also began suggesting that the documents used by CBS News could be fakes. By the end of that week, mainstream media from the Associated Press to the Dallas Morning News, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and CNN were quoting document experts who agreed the memos might be fakes. But as news organizations last week struggled over the accuracy of CBS's facts, a central truth remained in the background. According to documents released by the Defense Department in response to a lawsuit by the Associated Press, Bush did fail to meet some requirements of his National Guard service and was grounded as a pilot after missing a required physical. On Wednesday, CBS tried salvaging its story by airing another 60 Minutes episode in which a secretary of the man who purportedly created the documents at the heart of the initial story said the papers were probably fakes - but the content was true. Huh? The quick challenge of the Bush/National Guard stories was a marked departure from the reaction just about a month ago, when some major news outlets took weeks to thoroughly analyze allegations by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that Democratic candidate John Kerry lied to get his war medals. Back then, the charges simmered in the news cycle - helped by Kerry's own reticence to directly address the allegations - feeding a controversy that eventually hurt him in the polls. For Wayne Slater, Austin bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, the Swift Boat controversy brought uncomfortable questions. "As journalists . . . is it our obligation to (validate) every single piece of information, and then decide to print?" he asked. "On the other hand, if we don't write about an episode and it becomes a huge topic on talk radio and cable news, do we look like we're favoring one side?" Slater added. "The very process of raising an issue and introducing it into debate can spoil the process." Certainly, efforts by the Bush campaign and the nation's extensive network of conservative-leaning media - ranging from the Drudge Report Web site to RatherBiased.com and a host of radio talk shows - helped raise questions about the National Guard stories. But during the final weeks of a close presidential election with an evenly divided electorate, there's also more pressure to test incendiary charges before they grow to dominate the news cycle. "The media is doing the fact-checking it can . . . (but) there is a real big-league mudslinging contest going on, and it would be foolish for us to close our eyes to this," said CNN's Bohrman. "More (sources) seem to be stepping up to speak who haven't spoken in the past, and the (news) cycle on cable news is so fast, it's immediate." Give me that old-time reporting He calls it the "new journalism of assertion," in which some media outlets simply report charges and let the audience sort it all out. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says such journalism emerges thanks to today's fast-paced news cycles - increasing the likelihood reporters won't properly validate allegations before airing them. Ironically, what news consumers really need now is a bracing dose of old-school reporting - which Rosenstiel calls the "old journalism of verification." "In the modern information culture, there's even more need for journalists and journalism to help guide people . . . (and show) them, "What here can you believe?' " he said. For example, when the swift boat group's anti-Kerry ads first began to air after the Democratic National Convention, the New York Times spent more than two weeks sifting through their charges before producing a story published Aug. 20 that systematically challenged many of their allegations. Now, when referring to the group's allegations about Kerry's medals, New York Times stories often attach the adjective "unsubstantiated." "The most valuable thing in an environment of information overload is some guidance as to which information is the most valuable," Rosenstiel said. "In the modern world, it's not enough to provide facts; the press has to provide the truth behind the facts." Indeed, that may be the toughest task for those consuming campaign news these days: finding the difference between "facts" and the truth. Nightline anchor Ted Koppel outlined the issue during a recent on-air discussion with Daily Show host Jon Stewart, trying to soothe Stewart's anger over the success of the Swift Boat Veterans. Koppel noted that journalists can report facts - veterans who served in Vietnam at the same time as Kerry are saying that he lied to win war medals, for example - without getting at the truth of the charges themselves. "Is it news? Sure it is," the Nightline anchor continued. "Is it the truth? No. The truth may not . . . catch up for another week or two or six." Of course, for every media-related problem, there's often a media-related answer. In this case, help can be found at some nonpartisan Web sites devoted to knocking down rumors and clarifying the misleading accounts from all sides. Sites such as Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Campaign Desk (www.campaigndesk.org) the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck (www.factcheck.org) and the independently operated Spinsanity (www.spinsanity.org) focus on exposing the truth behind facts, figures and allegations tossed around on the campaign trail. FactCheck has noted that Kerry's claim of $200-billion spent in Iraq includes $70-billion to be spent next fiscal year, for example. Spinsanity has outlined the Bush campaign's habit of presenting Kerry's Senate votes on huge, multilayered bills as individual decisions on specific issues. Though the trio of analysts who run Spinsanity take on Democrats and Republicans alike, they have also authored a book on how the Bush administration systematically exploits the gap between accuracy and truth called All the President's Spin: George W. Bush, the Media and the Truth. They suggest Bush's team takes advantage of four stratagems, inspired by both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, to spin the media. * Reporters' fear of bias accusations may prompt them to avoid testing the truth of misleading political statements, adopting a "he said/she said" approach to reporting controversies that lends crediblity to specious charges. * Reporters need information from offices and departments controlled by incumbent politicians for news. Restricting the flow of information can shape coverage (limiting stories of war dead by banning photos of coffins arriving in the U.S. from Iraq, for example). * The White House can bring political pressure and reprisal to bear against journalists it views as too critical. * The media's pursuit of scandal and entertaining news can blind it to serious public policy issues. "Most of the time, Bush has gotten away with half-truths," said Spinsanity analyst Brendan Nyhan, a graduate student at Duke University. "He'll connect Iraq to 9/11 by saying people there were celebrating the attacks. Well, they may have been, but is that really a link (that validates) the Iraq war?" Nyhan and Spinsanity have criticized Kerry for his own rhetorical blurring, including criticizing Bush for American job losses totaling 1.6-million when the total of U.S. job losses is more like 913,000. "It's not that the media hasn't fact-checked George Bush," Nyhan said. "But it rarely has changed the narrative that (affects how) the media covers him. The media didn't connect the dots in terms of the pattern of deception used over the course of his term." The Dallas Morning News' Slater, author of a biography of Bush adviser Karl Rove called Bush's Brain, said he has seen such dynamics up close in his years spent covering Bush during his time as Texas governor and president. In one instance, he recalled how Rove browbeat him over a critical story before a group of reporters, sending a subtle message to the others of what might happen if they presented similar coverage. During a recent interview, Slater recalled how one big-shot Washington journalist new to covering Bush once requested he ask an incisive question on China policy at a news conference. The big shot feared that asking the question himself would prompt the White House to quickly label him a troublemaker. "Far from being this confident force, the national press corps can be amazingly timid," said Slater, who felt insulated from such concerns by years of contacts amassed covering the Bush family in Texas. "I was seeing early on how this fear of being shut out in a highly competitive environment does weigh heavily." Slater also said the success of the Swift Boat Veterans' charges reminded him of a political strategy often cited by Rove: If you're explaining, you're losing. "Under those rules . . . (once) you raise the issue and (force Democrats to address it), Kerry loses," said Slater. "He may be able to refute the points, but the issue itself is out there." © Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved http://www.sptimes.com/2004/09/19/P...out_there.shtml

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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

So, did the Bush Administration agree for the debates allready?!?!.. I know it is beneficial for Kerry to do the three debates, while Bush's side wants only once ( to avoid economical/fiscal policys and issues , which would be the third debate ).. so, Im really looking into them, hence people will really see which of the two is better..

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Upcoming:

Michael Andrews Feat. Gary Jules - Mad World (Grayed Out Mix)

I believe i saw it reported on CNN today that they agreed on 3 debates.

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