At the risk of being labeled pro-Bush (I am not), Bernie Goldberg raises some interesting questions about the old 60 Minutes II hit piece on the former president in 2004 just before the election, and Mary Mapes’ complicity in the shoddy reporting. Read it here.
A major media outlet withholding information that contradicts the Left’s claims? What a shock…
I mean, c’mon people. In the age of the internet, this stuff just doesn’t stay buried.
I vaguely remember hearing that story about Dubya’s volunteering for VN duty at the time of the Rather story fiasco
The article only makes me more cynical about the quality and ability of those reporting the news today. (I also read the discussion and was amazed at the irrational pov of some of the posters. They were totally incapable of discriminating between their own obsessive hatred and reality.)
The article also fuels my disdain for the media’s current gushing love affair with Obama. Their reporting is as biased in favor of him as it was against Bush. There is no balance in either case.
I heard about this a week or so ago, can’t say that I was particularly surprised.
The complexities of military bureaucracy cannot be overstated, during war-time especially so – but CBS News tried to simplify it for us simpletons rather incompetently, I think.
I don’t believe Mapes withheld, or Rather too if he knew, because it undercut their story’s headline. I think they did because they didn’t believe it mattered and only complicated the vision of what their story meant.
Avoiding irrelevant complication in several minute TV news story is not entirely a bad thing. Journalism is frequently about de-muddying the waters.
What is damning mostly is the intellectual incompetence to understand even slightly how important omitting the volunteerism was to the story. One of the reason news, in general, is declining as a viable business/profession is that most people are on to the fact that journalists are more frequently incompetent than they would have us believe. What they have to offer is empty when it is so incompetent.