SwiftVets.com

[Me#1You#10]

Bloggers Win Their Air Attack vs. Dan
By DEBORAH ORIN
NY Post
November 24, 2004

WASHINGTON — CBS anchor Dan Rather's discharge under less than honorable circumstances is the icing on the 2004 election cake for a lot of Republicans who see him as the icon of liberal media bias.

It's also a dramatic sign of the Internet-fueled revolution that means the old "mainstream media," such as CBS and The New York Times, can no longer set the terms of political debate, as they did just a few years ago. CBS and the Times tried, but failed, to dismiss challenges to Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam War service from the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The Internet helped the group make its case.

Now Rather is going out in ignominy because of his "60 Minutes" report using fabricated memos from a discredited source to question President Bush's National Guard service.

The story was quickly torn apart by Internet bloggers, who produced convincing evidence that the memos were forged.

Some anti-Rather bloggers now fume that he is still getting away with murder, and that there is a CBS cover-up because he's keeping his job on "60 Minutes."

But go back four years to the 2000 presidential election, in the pre-blogger era, and Rather would likely have gotten away with his phony story and it could have tilted the election against Bush.

Instead, because of the bloggers, the story backfired, boosting Bush by revving up his supporters.

"The Michael Moores and Dan Rathers of the world attacking Bush kept the Republican base motivated and helped get out the vote, and that's why, to some extent, I'm actually sorry to see him go," said GOP pollster Jim McLaughlin.

Republican strategist Rich Galen put it this way:

"The problem with Rather is that he insisted his view was not just a view but the only view. But now the marketplace is deciding who people will read and who people will believe."

NY Post

[mach9]

Yes, yes, we know about CBS and the Times. When will we start seeing the stories about Koppel and ABC. In terms of sheer inanity, their notion of "investigative reporting" in South Vietnam (sorry, Vietnam) beat the other two media by light-years.