20-Sep-2004: Judgment Day for CBS

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

CBS: "We were deceived"

America: "No, you were part of the deception."

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

But what if Claudius' secretary said the information was accurate? i

That is what is known as hearsay.  And there is other hearsay which contradicts the secretary's account.

Without the authenticity of the documents, there is nothing new to this story.  

The only “news” is that someone, with contacts to the Kerry Campaign, committed a felony by forging government documents.  That forgery was used  by a major network in an attempt to bring down the office of the President of the United States during a time of war.  

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Who cares about felonies? The Bush adminstration committed treason with Valarie Plame.

Changing the subject so soon, are we?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Good point. CBS cares about ratings; nothing else. They are a business, and they want to make money. What is so complicated about that?

And what better way for a network to make money than to have its whole news staff implicated in forging federal documents in an attempt to bring down a sitting president.

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Apparently this is the number one issue in this campaign...forget about everything else. Let's avoid talking about the real issues, and spend the whole damn campaign talking about Vietnam. Since there aren't any, you know, substantive issues or anything else to talk about....

I do believe that an attempt on the presidency during a time of war is a pretty "substantive issue", wouldn't you agree?

Or would you rather Americans discuss Kerry’s 20 year voting record while in the Senate, allowing Americans to judge if that voting record is the kind of leadership needed to solve this country’s problems?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

EXCLUSIVE // Mon Sep 20 2004 11:58:02 ET
STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER:

Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, 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. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I guess after a week and a half of no one on the planet being able to reproduce these documents on a 1974 era typewriter.....it finally hit Dan like a ton of bricks.

To Dan,

I forgive you for being stupid.  In turn, please forgive me for never watching your news network again. (CLICK...)

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Oh yeah!  I almost forgot about "Part 2: The Source"

....but "Part 1: Dan Gets Canned" was so funny, I need at least a 12 hour break.