Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
News

Journal pudge's Journal: Forgeries 25

Journal by pudge

It seems likely those Bush memos are forgeries. At the very least, that's where the evidence overwhelmingly points, and the burden of proof now rests with CBS to show they are not.

This has gone from a major CBS event one night, to -- all in the next 24 hours -- the independent journal sites, then to the independent news media (CNS News, WND), then to the major news (MSNBC, AP, CBS), including a front page story on the Washington Post.

Howie Kurtz contributed to the Post article, and he is the host of CNN's Reliable Sources, a program that airs on Sundays that critiques the news media. So I imagine CNN will be picking up the story too, and I am so gonna TiVo that show this week.

They have typographical evidence (looks like word processor), they have documentary evidence (questionable signatures), they have personal evidence (family and friends denying it). There's only one person who somewhat verified them, and he said only that the contents reflected in the memos were accurate, not that the memos themselves were authentic.

To me, this has almost nothing to do with Bush or Kerry. My degree is in journalism, and for years one of my little crusades is attacking improper and irresponsible use of sources: anonymous, unreliable, forged, whatever. I love seeing reporters slammed when they badly break the rules because it helps all of us see how we put way too much faith in what we see and hear, without critically examining it.

So I really want CBS to eat it hard on this one.

And I hope this causes more people to say, "the only reason we found out about these fakes is because they were so poorly done; we just as easily could have been fooled. So why are we believing all of this other junk about what happened 30 years ago that we can't verify?"

This discussion was created by pudge (3605) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Forgeries More

Forgeries

Comments Filter:
  • Who requested these "new" papers and who provided them?

    I just want my insane conspiracy theroy to hold some water :)
    • I doubt they were requested. They appear to have been provided unsolicited. But we do not know who provided them, and CBS is pretty much obligated to tell us at this point. Any promises of anonymity they had are void at this point, since they were lied to.
      • At the very least, they should disclose their validation sources...they have said the documents were scrutinized before being released, I'd be interested to know who these people were and how they thought these were copies of the original. Again, bloggers discovered discrepancies within a day, CBS checkers had 6 weeks.

        --trb
  • What's going to happen to the public's view of journalistic integrity after this campaign? Purported partisanship has already soured many peoples' view of the media. This is the first campaign I've been a part of where no matter what information comes out, and no matter what source you reference, the immediate response is "That source has partisan motives". Will there be a source, from now on, that we can point to and claim they are just delivering the news and not slanting it?

    --trb
    • This is the first campaign I've been a part of where no matter what information comes out, and no matter what source you reference, the immediate response is "That source has partisan motives".

      That would be because Conservatives are finally fighting back. If you look back at:

      Bush in 2000 (drunk driving charge)

      Investigator Walsh's release of the Iran/Contra findings in 1988

      People were demanding that Starr not release his Whitewater findings until after the 1996 election
      And there are many others. This

    • Ever since Jayson Blair, the traditional (liberal) media sources have been an in a major downward spiral. Well, it's become a fullblown nose dive now :)

      Presumably they won't hit rock bottom til the election...
    • What's going to happen to the public's view of journalistic integrity after this campaign?

      Hopefully people wise up and realize they need to be hypercritical of the news media.

      The sources that we should question are not the journalists and the news orgs themselves, primarily. It's the people they talk to, that they often don't even tell you about. Who are they? What are THEIR motives? Question! I wrote about this nearly seven years ago [pudge.net]. I was speaking not about anything specifically, but very broadl

      • I love how the past couple of years on the Internet have taught me to be this way. If it's interesting to me, I always want to check up on the source. And I may even want to check the source's source. And I might want to check to see if everybody's just repeating what one original source said.

        Learning about New Testament textual and source criticism as a teenager has really come in handy here, too. :)

        And to be honest, I'm going to plunk my kids in front of Wikipedia or whatever just as soon as they'r

      • The sources that we should question are not the journalists and the news orgs themselves, primarily. It's the people they talk to, that they often don't even tell you about.

        If they don't tell us about them, how are we supposed to even know about them, much less who they are? I think it's exactly the journalists who we should question because they're the ones giving out the info in the first place. From there we should continue to follow the trail, but every journalist presenting information should be

        • Accountability is going to come the way it comes to places like slashdot. Here, when you post an urban legend, 100 people correct you and you find out you're wrong (and the reader can evaluate and discover the truth). Whenever someone makes a comment about the lady who sued McDonald's because she burned herself with a cup of coffee, for example, twenty people jump up and explain that actually McDonald's was deliberately keeping the coffee 40 degrees above the safe temperature range, that the lady had (thi

    • Will there be a source, from now on, that we can point to and claim they are just delivering the news and not slanting it?

      No such thing -- "the news" doesn't exist until someone selects it. So everyone slants, even the Weather Channel, although unintentionally.

      But that's a different kettle of fish from accusations of intentional slanting. I have to say the blue-blogosphere (blugosphere?) has stunned me with their response this time. They're clinging to this story -- but why?

      Even if the memos were genuin
  • Do you think Rather is going to finally hang it up after this and hit the RV circuit? It seems so....scripted that he would take on Bush Jr. in this way, continuing his feud with Sr.. I'm not so surprised they would float these documents, just surprised the reaction isn't, nor will be, harsher then it is towards CBS.

    It also make sense if you were to return to last fall, during the debate over whether Moonvies would pull "The Reagans", and ask "Would CBS float a forged document about a GOP candidate in th
    • I'm not willing to believe the documents are forgeries yet.

      Granted, I've got enough doubt in my mind that I'm pretty much willing to dismiss them, but I'm not ready to say they are forgeries.

      Why?

      Simple: I *DO* trust CBS (60 minutes anyway) and Dan Rather. I'm willing to give anything they say more weight. That said, both 60 minutes AND Rather have made errors in the past -- and this could very well be another one.

      I wont crucify either Rather or 60 minutes if this turns out to be a hoax. I'll admit t

      • I wont crucify either Rather or 60 minutes if this turns out to be a hoax

        I won't, either, but I already don't trust them. It's not that I want to crucify them; it's that I want everyone to, like you, acknowledge and be aware of Rather's bias, and, more importantly, like pudge is saying, start questioning everything they hear, asking for sources, and assuming things they hear aren't true when not backed by a credible source.

        At this point I don't give any weight to the opinion of Rather and CBS, becaus

  • What irks me, is the less obvious use of "flattering/un-flattering photographs and "setting the agenda".

    When Ronald Regan was the prez, one never saw flattering photographs of him. Every photo I saw in the local commie rag (Sac Bee) was of the man speaking with his mouth open at an odd angle, or stumbling over a curb while trying to smile and shake hands with about a hundred people. But one never saw a photograph of the opposition that did not look beaming with excellent posture.

    Setting the agenda is: "To

  • It's not clear to me yet that these are forgeries. http://dailykos.com/story/2004/9/10/34914/1603 [dailykos.com] has an apparent refutation of the claims that they're forgeries, but on the other hand, it doesn't prove they're not.

    CBS will probably either issue some sort of evidence to defend it, or retract the story within the next week. I'll wait until then before I say whether they're real.

    And even if they are real, it's just one more shallow attempt to make this election about the Vietnam era rather than about th

    • The dailykos refutation was ridiculous. It attacked things no one serious was currently claiming (whether a typewriter could do proportional spacing or a th) and didn't address the real points about them (whether that exact font existed in a typewriter, how expensing it was to get proportional spacing and a th key) and completely ignored the more damning evidence (the y being kerned to come underneath the m in "my").

      CBS came out tonight and gave the same ridiculous refutation as dailykos, focusing on only
      • I hadn't heard about the kerning issue yet, and hadn't noticed it myself. But now that you point it out, I think you're right. Unless somebody addresses that, I'm assuming that they're forged. But I still say that arguing over this bullshit only distracts from what's important. I wish everybody (both sides!) would move on and discuss actual issues instead of focusing on things that happened 30 years ago. But I doubt that will happen until the debates.
        • I agree fully in the context of the Presidential election, and what Bush or Kerry did 35 years ago. I couldn't care less about what anyone did or did not do in 1968-73.

          But to me, this transcends the immediate political issues. This, to me, is about media and trust and sources and obligations. My degree is in journalism, and this is one of my areas of interest, and I love this story, regardless of the fact that it happens to be about the President's records.

          It's a shame it has to infect the quadrennial
    • I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I'd bet thousands of dollars. Easy money. I used to work in graphic design and I have a particularly good eye for this sort of thing.

      There's no way some machine from the 1970s could have done such a perfect copy of modern Microsoft Word. The setting, the fit of the letters, the default tab stops, everything would have to be identical.

      Even if the font had the same name, fonts are always reshaped for new hardware. A version of Times designed for impact letterpress (if such
  • The BBC ran an article on them [bbc.co.uk], claimed they were re-released by the White House.

    Now, if that's true, why would the White House reissue forgeries?

    I think they're likely genuine.
    • The WH thing is a complete non-issue. CBS sent the WH copies of the documents. The WH then released them to reporters. That's all there is to it ...

Slashdot Top Deals

Avoid strange women and temporary variables.

Close