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I generally don’t post on political topics – there are enough political sites out there already – but the whole CBS memo thing…
So now after a week of insisting the memos were real, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, CBS and Dan are backpedaling –
“‘We will keep an open mind and we will continue to report credible evidence and responsible points of view as we try to answer the questions raised about the authenticity of the documents,’ CBS News Anchor Dan Rather said on 60 Minutes on Wednesday.”
…but they maintain that story is still correct! Give me a break! If the story itself is real you should have been even more careful vetting the story and all the supporting evidence so you could stand resolutely behind it, and let the evidence speak for itself. Instead CBS and Dan have destroyed the entire story, and with it their own credibility, because of the lengths they went to try and prove it conclusively using forged documents and highly selective editing of “expert” analysis.
Journalism has taken another blow, another black eye. The whole field has been sunk to new lows in this election cycle, but CBS really has set the limbo bar to a new low.
The funny part to me is that if they had come clean in the initial 24 hours of the outcry, they most likely could have salvaged the core of the story, and been able to come back to it later to make a stronger case. Now, the issue is dead, especially for CBS News and Dan Rather. They can no more claim to be a news organization than I can. They have proven that they are a biased opinion organization that occasionally reports on current events, politics, and the weather. Gee, I guess that makes them, at best, no better a source for information than those guys they smeared trying to deflect attention away from evidence they knew was highly flawed – guys that were “sitting in their living rooms in their pajamas” with “no checks and balances, no vetting, no fact checking.”
“On next Sunday’s show: The entire 60 Minutes staff will debut the CBS News team’s whole new look. Dan Rather will appear on the new living room decor 60 minutes set in monogrammed black silk pajamas, a monogrammed, burgundy crushed velvet, silk lined and edged smoking jacket and handmade Italian leather bedroom slippers. Tune in to see Andy Rooney, Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and Lesley Stahl in their favorite pajamas as well! “
:)