NationStates Jolt Archive

CBS news just announced they have fired four staffers who were involved in the rush to go public with the bogus information on President Bush's Air National Guard service. :D

Way overdue, way too few fired, way bad publicity for CBS.

CBS news just announced they have fired four staffers who were involved in the rush to go public with the bogus information on President Bush's Air National Guard service. :D

Way overdue, way too few fired, way bad publicity for CBS.

Dan Rather has been a "mouthpiece" for Democrats (esp Clinton) for years.
Bad publicity? Ha, CBS' news rating have been tanking since the "error" occured. Honestly I can't name five people who watch 60 minutes. What's just as fun is that I don't know of 1 person who listens to Air America (which I saw a commercial for during the game on Saturday, I almost laughed my Schmidts out of my nose).

Here is some info on the biasness of Dan Rather:

New president Bill Clinton congratulated Dan Rather on his on-air partnership with Connie Chung: "Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. President. If we could be one-one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been together in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk away winners."
--Dan Rather at a meeting for CBS affiliates, May 27, 1993. Quoted in Columbia Journalism Review Sept./Oct. 1993.

Talk show host Don Imus asked Dan Rather what he thought of the Juanita Broaddrick incident, where Bill Clinton allegedly raped a woman, and tried to, years later, make her keep quiet:
"[E]ven if it...turns out to be true, it happened a long time ago and...they've gotta be figuring maybe, just maybe the American public has heard all they want to hear about this and are saying, you know, 'Next; let's move on to the next thing.'"
--Dan Rather on Imus in the Morning, February 23, 1999

C-SPAN Booknotes host Brian Lamb asked 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt about interviewing Bill Clinton on his program:
BRIAN LAMB: If he called you today and said "I'd like to do 60 Minutes," how much time would you give him?
DON HEWITT: 60 minutes.
LAMB: Why?
HEWITT: Because I think that whatever he has to say--I tried. And we got nowhere. He's going to do something with somebody. I'm guessing he'll do it with Dan Rather. He--he likes Dan. And Dan likes him, I think.
--Don Hewitt on Booknotes, April 1, 2001

"Punishing the President. A court committee says Bill Clinton should lose his law license for allegedly giving false testimony under oath....
"Good evening. A committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court today recommended that President Clinton's law license be taken away because he allegedly gave false testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. This disbarment has long been sought by Republicans and some other Clinton critics." "The President's lawyer made it clear tonight it will be challenged."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, May 22, 2000.
Note: Clinton was found in contempt of court by an Arkansas judge and did not appeal. He did not allegedly commit perjury.

BILL O'REILLY: And I want to ask you flat out. Do you think President Clinton's an honest man?
DAN RATHER: Yes, I think he's an honest man.
O'REILLY: Do you really?
RATHER: I think -- I do. I think he's an honest man.
O'REILLY: Even when he lied to Jim Lehrer's face about the (unintelligible)?
RATHER: Listen, who among us have not lied about something?
O'REILLY: Well, I didn't lie to anybody's face on national television. I don't think you have. Have you?
RATHER: I don't think I ever have. I hope I never have. But look, it's one thing.
O'REILLY: How can you say he's an honest guy, then?
RATHER: Well, because I think he is. I think at core, he's an honest person. I know that you have a different view. I know that you consider it sort of astonishing anybody would say so. But I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.
O'REILLY: Really?
RATHER: Yes, I do.
O'REILLY: See, I can't. I can't -- I want my government to be honest across the board.
RATHER: Well.
O'REILLY: I don't want people lying.
--Dan Rather on the O'Reilly Factor, May 15, 2001

Ah, but they did not oust Rather. He'll still be doing minor things for CBS. The cowards.

I'm not going to defend Dan Rather, but that interview between him and Bill O'Reilly is great. Bill O'Reilly is so self righteous. That was probably right before he went and told a woman about all the freaky things he likes to think about when he showers.

I think the prerequisite for being a television personality (talk show, news, or pundit) is that you have to be a complete asshole. It explains everything.

Yeah, and Bill O'Reilly is a paragon of virtue! :rolleyes:
On Outfoxed they said it was very hard to sue him for slander, largely as you have to prove he knew he was lying and that, being the supposed pathological liar he is (from the way he twisted the interview I saw, it's true), he may not have known he was lying!

I don't know the full extent of the scandal but when a Sky News reporter filed a false report (using old file footage and saying he was somewhere he wasn't, or something like that) he quit his job. There are different conditions here, obviously, but if you broadcast something false then you should face the repercussions.

Yeah, and Bill O'Reilly is a paragon of virtue! :rolleyes:
On Outfoxed they said it was very hard to sue him for slander, largely as you have to prove he knew he was lying and that, being the supposed pathological liar he is (from the way he twisted the interview I saw, it's true), he may not have known he was lying!


The same can probably go for the makers of Outfoxed. The easiest way to fight propaganda is with more propaganda, and I personally try to avoid both sides. The agnostic side of me has discovered that if you ignore the idiots on one side it becomes very easy to ignore the idiots on the other side.

Hell, I'd fire them too if they used bogus information about Bush going AWOL as opposed to the mountain of real information about Bush going AWOL.

Hell, I'd fire them too if they used bogus information about Bush going AWOL as opposed to the mountain of real information about Bush going AWOL.

It would appear that for some reason, they couldn't find the "real information", so they made it up in Microsoft Word.

I, for one, would like to see this "real" information. Vetted information.

I would like to see it. Do you have it?

The same can probably go for the makers of Outfoxed. The easiest way to fight propaganda is with more propaganda, and I personally try to avoid both sides. The agnostic side of me has discovered that if you ignore the idiots on one side it becomes very easy to ignore the idiots on the other side.

I would doubt it insofar as they showed him "interviewing" a 9/11 victim's son who happened to be anti-war and then showing O'Reilly's references to him on later shows and how he used his own erm, logic, I guess, to say that by being anti-war he was un-American and accusing Bush of killing his father etc. etc. as well as any number of other unpleasent things. More than enough for any litigious American to go call in the legions but alas he didn't.

Regardless, I'm not an American and apart from Outfoxed and 3rd hand accounts I don't know much about the regular content of any US news station (occassionally CNN or ABC on Sky News or BBC News 24 repecively). What was obvious, however, is that Outfoxed was openly critical and backed up its assertions with interviews from former Fox employees and media watchdog groups.

Some left-wing nut is typing it as we speak... lol