SwiftVets.com

[The Balloon Artist]

Perhaps I've read too many posts on other liberal forums and I'm seeing the conspiracies everywhere now. Really go check some out There are all sorts of secret plans to do whatever. Don't drink their koolaide though.

But Consider the following.

Dan Rather I believe interviewed Saddam twice and showed him more respect than he ever did any president named Bush.

Saddam hates every president named Bush.

Rather hates every president named Bush.

Saddam got his butt handed to him by every president named Bush.

Dan Rather got his butt handed to him by every president named Bush.

It's the koolaide aauuuuughhh

Think about it.
_________________
What about John Kerry's four months in Vietnam qualify him to be president?
Al Gore was there for five.

[Guest]

from the wsj

60 Minutes of Fame
If Dan Rather's source turns out to be a partisan, say goodbye to CBS's reputation.

BY BERNARD GOLDBERG
Friday, September 17, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
On Feb. 12, 1996, I picked up a phone at CBS News in New York and called Dan Rather, who was in Des Moines covering the Iowa caucuses. It was a call that I--then a CBS correspondent--wasn't anxious to make. I'd written an op-ed for this page about liberal bias in the news that was going to run the next day. I knew I had to give Dan a heads up. "I wrote a piece for the Journal, Dan, and my guess is you won't be ecstatic about it." I hadn't given him any details yet, so he had no idea what the op-ed was about. Dan was gracious; he always was when we spoke. "Bernie," he said, "we were friends yesterday, we're friends today, and we'll be friends tomorrow. So tell me about it."

I did, and the more I told him the more tense the conversation got. After listening for a while, Dan told me, "I'm getting viscerally angry about this" and the call soon ended. And then the man who was my friend yesterday, today, and tomorrow told a number of our colleagues that he'd "never" forgive me for what I'd done.

What I'd done was not simply to say that there really was a problem with liberal bias in the news (if it matters, I'd never voted Republican in my life), I'd also broken a taboo, doing what no mainstream journalist (to my knowledge) had ever done: I'd given ammo to "the enemy" by very publicly saying, in effect, that the conservatives had been right all along.

As if that weren't bad enough, it was becoming apparent that by writing about bias, which Mr. Rather over the years had repeatedly said was a phony issue, I had (at least in his mind) also called into question the thing he holds most sacred--his integrity. That wasn't my intent. I was just writing about bias in the news, not about Dan Rather. But if Dan thinks his reputation has been attacked, understandably, he gets hotter than an armadillo at a Fourth of July picnic, as you know who might put it.





That's why in the midst of this Bush memo scandal, you have to wonder: Now that Dan's credibility really is taking a beating, why won't he blow the whistle on his source, the one who slipped him the documents that almost certainly are fraudulent and got him into this mess?
He doesn't have to give us the guy's name and address, just tell us what motivated him to leak the documents to CBS News. It's a common journalistic practice, after all, to shed as much light on an unnamed source as possible. That's why we often read "a source close to the administration" or "a police source involved in the investigation" said such and such. No name. But enough info so the news consumer understands, as they say, where the source is coming from. In the case of the leaked memos, does the source have any connection to the Democrats? How about the Kerry campaign? If Dan told us that, he'd still be faithful to his source, but at least as importantly, he'd be showing good faith to his viewers by giving them a clue as to the source's motives, whatever they might be.

Instead, Dan and CBS News do what they'd never tolerate in a crooked politician: They circle the wagons. First we get a statement about how there's no internal investigation going on at CBS; then we get a bunch of stories by CBS News backing up the original "60 Minutes" piece that are so one-sided they'd get a junior-high journalism student an "F" for lack of balance; then on "60 Minutes" we did get a former secretary, "a credible voice" as Dan Rather put it, who told him that "she believes the documents we obtained are not authentic. But . . . she told us she believes what the documents actually say is exactly as we reported." Put plainly: The memos may be fake, but "We stand by our story."

We're the ones who have a right to be angry with CBS News, but it turns out that Dan Rather is the one who's really fuming. Not at the source who got him into all of this, but at those "partisans" who are fanning the flames. The Washington Post quotes him as saying: "I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political forces." He's absolutely right that some of his critics are partisans. But how about Dan's source? Is he also a partisan?

Now it's possible that the mystery man (or woman) is someone who lives in Denmark or Tibet and somehow got his hands on genuine documents that make the president look bad in the middle of a race that might turn out to be tighter than the rusted lug nuts on a '54 Chevy. But I doubt it. I'm betting he lives a lot closer to home, and, who knows, he might indeed turn out to be a "partisan political force" himself. And this is precisely Dan's problem. This is why, I suspect, he isn't coming clean, despite the damage to his reputation. Because Dan Rather may be protecting not just his source, but himself; because, if the source turns out to be a partisan, then Dan wasn't just taken for a ride, but may have been a willing passenger.
And then Dan, and CBS News, can kiss their reputations goodbye.

Mr. Goldberg, a correspondent with CBS News from 1972-2000, is the author of "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News," and, most recently, of "Arrogance: Saving America from the Media Elite" (Warner, 2003).

[rekcutt]

In reply to Mr. Goldberg's article I offer this, everyone has bias in some degree to specific issues, that is just human nature. For a journalist to be bias on "some issues" is to be expected, I can accept it. In those issues, I do expect the journalists, or his/her producer and/or editor to insure that the bias is balanced to provide the ALL the facts from each side.

For a Broadcast Network, I expect that the executives should judge themselves by how many times their "News Division" pisses off or "gores" each side, cause if they are reporting accurately they will piss off all sides at different times when they follow the facts to a conclusion. If the executives at SeeBS and Viacom use this measure, I believe an honest assessment will show they have failed.

As for Dan Rather, I have the belief that he had a result he wanted to present, then assembled the facts to meet his result (discarding any facts that opposed his result), that is bad, but his producers and editors permitted this to occur. As a result they did not present "news" they presented selected "opinions" using other's opinions and fabricated supporting documents.

The insiders of the news business are joking that it is "a bad day at BlackRock" since that is what they call CBS's news headquarters, I suggest all these "broadcast" and cable news organizations use this as an opportunity to review their own standards and "journalists". Or they could be the next blackrock, cause average Americans are becoming "pissed".
_________________
SwiftVets, keep up the GREAT work, truth will win out over spin.