• crybabylu said on Dec 28, 2008....

  that figures!  Rush and Ann....now that is funny, don't you think?

• kelly said on Dec 28, 2008....

  Incredible.  This is truly bad news for Republicans that think the media is biased in the liberal direction.  It would appear that Bush Co. had CBS in it's back pocket.  Journalists are supposed to be watchdogs, not lapdogs.

• sheltercrow said on Dec 28, 2008....

  Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi made up the two-man investigative panel.
  
  Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi are hardly "independent."
  
  Thornburgh was appointed in 1969 by President Richard Nixon as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. And in 1975 President Gerald Ford hired him to serve as the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Criminal Division. He also was elected as a Republican governor of Pennsylvania in 1978.
  
  SourceWatch on Rathergate
  
  
  In addressing the "flaws", Goodale [see below] makes his points one by one:
  1. The "underlying facts of Rather's 60 Minutes report are substantially true."
  2. "Following the broadcast, Marian Carr Knox," who was Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian's (Jerry B. Killian in the Wikipedia) secretary "at the time, confirmed the facts of the broadcast."
  3. "Since the broadcast, no one has come forward to say the program was untruthful."
  4. Authenticity of the documents: "lawyers know how to hire appropriate experts even if journalists don't, why didn't the panel, which was backed by a huge law firm, hire its own experts to determine the authenticity of the documents?"
  5. "chain of custody" for the documents: "While such proof is relevant in the courtroom, it is often irrelevant for journalists. Few stories based on documents would ever be written if that were the standard." Goodale adds that if authenticity and chain of custody had been at issue, then the Pentagon Papers would not have been exposed.
  6. Journalists have to make judgement calls: "Apart from consulting forensic experts when it is appropriate, what journalists do when they receive copies of documents is to make judgments about the source and the contents of what they have. Are they consistent with known facts? Is it logical to assume such documents exist?"
  [...]
  
  In summation, Goodale writes, "The rest of the report, which is directed to the newsgathering process of CBS, is flawed. The panel was unable to decide whether the documents were authentic or not. It didn't hire its own experts. It didn't interview the principal expert for CBS. It all but ignored an important argument for authenticating the documents—'meshing.' It did not allow cross-examination. It introduced a standard for document authentication very difficult for news organizations to meet—'chain of custody'—and, lastly, it characterized parts of the broadcast as false, misleading, or both, in a way that is close to nonsensical. One is tempted to say that the report has as many flaws as the flaws it believes it has found in Dan Rather's CBS broadcast."
  
  [...]
  
  James C. Goodale, Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School, former Vice Chairman and General Counsel of The New York Times who "represented the newspaper in the Pentagon Papers case," host and producer of the TV program The Digital Age, wrote in the April 2005 issue of the New York Law Journal that the January 5, 2005, Report of the Independent Review Panel ("Report of the Independent Review Panel,"CBS News, September 8, 2004) on the September 8, 2004, 60 Minutes Wednesday Segment For the Record by Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service is a flawed report and it "should not be uncritically accepted, as it has been by the press and by television commentators" ("The Flawed Report On Dan Rather,"Crooks and Liars, March 27, 2005).
  
  And Louis D. Boccardi, the former President and CEO, Associated Press, is Director of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ's Board of Directors, International Center for Journalists, accessed March 3, 2008). The International Center for Journalists is funded by a 'whose who" of conservatives entities.
  

• sheltercrow said on Dec 28, 2008....

  Man. Soulcast has got to get the 'edit HTML' thing working again. Sorry for the sorry look of the comment.

• mobil said on Dec 29, 2008....

  Not to worry Scrow, the sorry look cannot be as bad as your sorry sources.

• sheltercrow said on Dec 29, 2008....

  mobil, mobil, mobil: still looking for the neoliberals?

• mobil said on Dec 29, 2008....

  No not really, but finding nut jobs everywhere Scrow.

• sheltercrow said on Dec 29, 2008....

  mobil: you gotta do better than that. If I am wrong please point out where and we both will learn something. You and I should not be wasting time in such an obviously pleasant fashion. 

• mobil said on Dec 29, 2008....

  Scrow, I have looked through your sources many times in the past, they are as bias to the left as Sean Hannity is to the right.  I never consider a breif conversation with you as a waste of time, it's always my pleasure to smack you upside the head Scrow.

• sheltercrow said on Dec 29, 2008....

  mobil: all I can say is that I at least have sources that you and the rest of the nutters seem to well... not have. Smack me upside the head? Dream on old girl. You are a breeze.

• mobil said on Dec 29, 2008....

  Ah, bad sources are better than no sources! haha I like that, you are beyond a breeze little lady, you are a very hot wind.

• sheltercrow said on Dec 29, 2008....

  mobil: how old are you?

• mobil said on Dec 29, 2008....

  60

• sheltercrow said on Dec 29, 2008....

  mobil: 16?

• stopmediabias said on Dec 29, 2008....

  Mobil if you ran for office I would vote for you.

  ----------

  Here is a quote from the article:

  "Among those CBS considered for the panel to investigate Rather's report were far-right broadcasters Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter."

   This coming from the British version of the New York Times. The documents were forgeries.  Rather should have apologized and this shows the character of person he is.  An excellant book is Bernie Goldbergs book on Bias in the media.  He gracefully and respectfully points out what a power-hungry nutcase Dan Rather is.

  One of the other members of the panel was a former president of the AP.  I have no idea where they get Rush and Ann were considered for the panel, and that in itself makes no sense.

  There is merit to the fact of special treatment, but in the context of painting George W. as a lazy coward is completely false.     

  In Christopher Anderson's book George and Laura, it states that George W. Bush enlisted in a program to be a substitute fighter pilot in Vietnam.  When his father found this out he used his influence to have his name taken out of the listing.  This was probably based on the fact that thousands per week were dieing in Vietnam. 

  George HW Bush was a war hero and while I disagree with him I don't see his actions as that egregious.

  Dan Rather is a very bitter man.  He hates everyone who is a threat to him and believes left leaning news to be middle of the road. 

• mobil said on Dec 29, 2008....

  Here here, Stop, these clowns roll out their sources, I've run them down so many times only to find the source to be bullshit. and Scrow is a fucking one man dog and pony show with bullshit sources. But I'm sure you already know that.
   
  Thanks for your Vote.

• bloc said on Dec 30, 2008....

  is the guardian a bullshit source? If so what are good sources? Let me guess, fox news?

• stopmediabias said on Dec 30, 2008....

  bloc-we were talking about shelternuts.  The Guardian is the liberal British version of the New York Times.  Isn't it funny how they only mention these documents in passing:
   
  "After an outcry from the White House and conservative bloggers who claimed that the report had been based on falsified documents, CBS retracted the story, saying that the documents' authenticity could not be verified."
   
   
  The documents were forged (according to experts) and still even to this day no-one can verify them.
   
  That is a far cry from:  "white house and conservative bloggers claim they were based on falsified documents."
   
  Rather and a number of other people fired were overzealous and thought they had a big one and it blew up in their faces.  Rather would still have a job and a reputation if he had set his ego aside and apologized.
   
  What makes this a bullshit source is their mention of Rush and Ann.  I'll bet they can't verify that sentence. 
   

• sheltercrow said on Dec 30, 2008....

  A little background material for the sheeple from Salon.com
  
  
  Bush's missing year
  
  The story emerged in 2000 when the Boston Globe's Walter Robinson, after combing through 160 pages of military documents and interviewing Bush's former commanders, reported that Bush's flying career came to an abrupt and unexplained end in the spring of 1972 when he asked for, and was inexplicably granted, a transfer to a paper-pushing Guard unit in Alabama. During this time Bush worked on the Senate campaign of a friend of his father's. With his six-year Guard commitment, Bush was obligated to serve through 1973. But according to his own discharge papers, there is no record that he did any training after May 1972. Indeed, there is no record that Bush performed any Guard service in Alabama at all. In 2000, a group of veterans offered a $3,500 reward for anyone who could confirm Bush's Alabama Guard service. Of the estimated 600 to 700 Guardsmen who were in Bush's unit, not a single person came forward.
  
  I know how you hate to read. But take a look and let me know what you think.
  

• stopmediabias said on Dec 30, 2008....

  Shelter-First of all as a general rule I never click on your links because it always turns out bad.  Most of the time that isn't the reason.  The real reason is you usually blanket your posts with numerous links that I don't have time to comb through.

  If I quoted a source from AnnCoulter.com you guys wouldn't consider it and move right on, with that said lets look at the character of Salon.

  It is the same ole same, a group like Salon picks out every negative thing from another publication and blows it out of proportion. 

  President Bush completed his obligations in the Air National Guard, if he didn't he would not have made to the rank of Lieutenant or through the program.  The Boston Globe article sited by Salon at least points this out:

  "Bush, they mistakenly concluded, had been training with the Alabama unit for the previous 12 months. Both men have since died. But Ellington's top personnel officer at the time, retired Colonel Rufus G. Martin, said he had believed that First Lieutenant Bush completed his final year of service in Alabama."

  When you click on "military documents" all of the links are so blurry you cannot read them.  I wonder how many people just trusted Salon without clicking on that link. 

  The main problem here is conflicting reports, we have people on one side that said they can't prove he was at a particular place for a particular time while others say he fullfilled his duties.  The documents obtained by Dan Rather were forged and he ran with them, that is what the issue is here.

• sheltercrow said on Dec 30, 2008....

  stopmediabias: fair enough. But "believed" is still a stickler here as in...
  
  
  ...retired Colonel Rufus G. Martin, said he had believed that First Lieutenant Bush completed his final year of service in Alabama."
  
  
  You see, technically, it's not proof.
  
  From George W. Bush, A.W.O.L we have...
  
  
  Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii and a World War II veteran, joined with Vietnam vets Sen. Max Cleland and Sen. Bob Kerrey to challenge Bush on the gaps in his military record. "The question is, where were you, Governor Bush? What would you do as commander-in-chief if someone in the National Guard did the same thing? At the least, I would have been court-martialed. At the least, I would have been placed in prison," Inouye said.
  
  The Washington Post, the New Republic, and others also presented the evidence that Bush had fled from duty.
  
  The most comprehensive piece I've seen was on Tom Paine.com with all the relevant links and documents.
  
  

• stopmediabias said on Jan 01, 2009....

  When you take into account that in the military if you don't fullfill your duties you get punished and/or discharged which George W. wasn't, it is highly unlikely his father would have helped let him slack off on his duties in the military especially after shutting down his chances of going to Vietnam.  This being the implication as to how he was able to get away with not doing his work.

  I find it interesting all this highpowered analysis on something that supposedly happened close to forty years ago.  Was the same analysis pointed at President Elect Obama?  I'll give you the last word.

• sheltercrow said on Jan 01, 2009....

  As I've explained before, all things being equal, I would support Obama and Hilliary for the simple fact that they are not white men. Breaking the monopoly of white men presidents, for me, was a move forward.

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