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“It's ironic that the blogs were actually wrong when they had their criticism,” Missal said in a speech back in March at Washington and Lee's law school. “We actually did find typewriters that did have the superscripts, did have proportional spacing, and on the fonts, given that these are copies, it's really hard to say,” Missal said. “But there were some typewriters that looked like they could have some similar fonts there, so the initial concerns didn't seem as though they would hold up.” - Michael J. Missal, Esq., Lead Counsel to the Independent Review Panel for CBS, and principal author of the Jan. 5, 2005 Panel Report, quoted in an NPR Morning Edition piece, “Dan Rather Hopes to Tell His Bush Story in Court” Dec. 23, 2008 https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.npr.org_template...
"There has been comment upon my contribution to Democrats like Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry is a good man. I’ve known him for many years. But it happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one."
- Sumner Redstone, Chairman of Viacom, in a Time magazine interview, “10 Questions for Sumner Redstone” Sept. 26, 2004. https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__content.time.com_tim...
Allison’s account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence. Asked if she’d ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: “Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way.”
- Salon, “George W. Bush’s Missing Year” by Mary Jacoby, Sept. 2, 2004, quoting Linda Allison, widow of Jimmy Allison, Bush family confidant who employed G.W. Bush in the 1972 Winton Blount Alabama Senate campaign
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.salon.com_2004_0...
“Truth or Consequences” by Joe Hagan, Texas Monthly, May 2012, an exhaustive review and investigation of George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service and the 60 Minutes controversy. https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.texasmonthly.com... “Maybe Dan Rather’s longshot lawsuit deserves a fair hearing” by Edward Wasserman, Miami Herald opinion piece, Nov. 24, 2008. https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__ewasserman.com_2008_... “The Flawed Report on Dan Rather” by James C. Goodale, The New York Review of Books, April 7, 2005, authoritative critique of the CBS Independent Panel Report. https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.nybooks.com_arti... Perspective from Edward Wasserman and James Goodale
Edward Wasserman is the Dean of the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism.
From “Maybe Dan Rather’s longshot lawsuit deserves a fair hearing” by Edward Wasserman, an opinion piece first published in The Miami Herald, Nov. 24, 2008. At the time of writing, Wasserman was Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University.
"Though sharply critical of the network's strident dismissal of critics, the panel never concluded the broadcast was wrong -- that Bush's military record wasn't marked by favoritism and dereliction. Nor did it ever say the disputed documents were bogus. Instead, the panel concluded the documents couldn't be proven genuine, and for a simple reason: They were photocopies. And experts are reluctant to vouch for the authenticity of any document when they can't inspect its paper and ink.
What's more, the panel said, the producers failed to ascertain precisely how the documents got to them -- the "chain of custody" -- and therefore weren't justified in using them. In an extraordinary passage, the panel scolded the producers for not knowing "the background, identity, credibility, motivations, biases and other relevant information about the sources of the documents.
The panel's conclusions had little to do with political bias -- its own or the network's -- and a great deal to do with the radically different worlds inhabited by lawyers (who constituted the panel) and journalists. A journalist would never retract a story because an evidentiary base is challengeable, but only if the story is wrong -- something the White House never alleged."
Edward Wasserman’s 2015 perspective:
"I really objected to the facile way, the indecent haste, with which the people in my business—the people who monitor media rights and wrongs—relegated Dan Rather to the ranks of the Jayson Blairs of the world. ‘Rathergate,’ as it became known, became another example of a journalistic felony, and I thought that really was an unthinking and facile and fundamentally incorrect conclusion to draw from this. I do think CBS 60 Minutes did some things wrong with that story, but they don’t amount to anything like what we are talking about when we see plagiarism and fabrication.
What CBS ended up doing is recanting a story that was true. From an ethics perspective that may be the most egregious outcome. They recanted a story that in every critical regard was true.
James Goodale is a leading First Amendment lawyer. He is the former General Counsel and Vice Chairman of The New York Times and has represented the Times in all four of its cases that have reached the United States Supreme Court.
From “The Flawed Report on Dan Rather” by James C. Goodale, The New York Review of Books, April 7, 2005
Lost in the commotion over the authenticity of the documents is that the underlying facts of Rather’s 60 Minutes report are substantially true. Bush did not take the physical exam required of all pilots; his superiors gave him the benefit of any doubt; he did receive special treatment and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, Bush’s commanding officer, was unhappy with the loss of ANG’s investment in him when Bush informed Killian he was leaving for Alabama. Before the broadcast, Mary Mapes, the CBS producer of the program, confirmed the facts in the documents with retired Major General Bobby Hodges, who had been Killian’s superior in the ANG. Later Hodges told the panel he did not think the documents were authentic, but did not disagree that the facts were substantially correct.
Following the broadcast, Marian Carr Knox, who was Killian’s secretary at the time, confirmed the facts of the broadcast, saying, “There’s no doubt in my mind that [the] information is correct.” When the panel cross-examined Knox she seemed less certain of what she had told Rather but she did not contradict any of the broadcast. Since the broadcast, no one has come forward to say the program was untruthful."
James C. Goodale’s 2015 perspective:
The only issue I didn’t deal with [in the NYRB article] was whether the Republicans were out to get Dan with respect to any influence they could put on CBS. I think in retrospect that those who were out to get Dan were out to get him and they didn’t really care what the facts were.
It’s very hard to prove but we do know that Rather was the Republican’s nightmare and he was hated by Republicans. I would think that is in the atmosphere and is bound to influence the management of CBS. CBS has got to go to Washington to get approvals for its license and that sort of thing. It’s part of the atmosphere, and I think that inferentially, implicitly, at the very least, the whole event seems to be a plot to get Dan. I think the prejudice is reflected by the way the report was received. When it came out on day one, everyone on the evening news said—that’s it for Dan. They couldn’t possibly have read the report, so there’s enough evidence there to build a case that there was tremendous prejudice against Dan and because there was so much prejudice no one wanted to sit and fairly judge him.
Keeping in line with our running gag of Spider-Man-related films, the writer of Truth, James Vanderbilt, wrote The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He was also behind Zodiac and other films: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0888743/
Finally, a link to our amazing guest Bob Mann's weekly media radio show, Let's Consider the Source: http://www.bobmannmedia.com/lets-consider-the-source/