Feel free to reprint their correction and apology.

Oh, that’s right, you won’t be able to find it.

As for your attempts to insist what this “White House official” said, you will print an exact link to the source. You see, after having caught you in your frank misquote of Richard Clark, I no longer trust you to accurately report on such matters.

Further, the fact that they could not authenticate them does not mean they aren’t authentic — it means they couldn’t authenticate them and shouldn’t have treated them as such. I don’t even remember if it was ever proven they were fake; the important thing was that CBS violated ethics by not authenticating them.

Or, in other words, who needs truth and verification to air something anti-Bush?

In that case, I could send a story somewhere saying that I have evidence that Hillary Clinton raped children and forcibly injected them with cocaine so they’d become addicted. They can air it as gospel truth and stay within “journalistic ethics” as long as they just put a small blurb somewhere saying they can’t authenticate it, but it could be true.

Maybe one of these days you’ll figure out that no one believes your “objectivity”spiel when there are so many examples out there of how the Fourth Estate tells lies and runs smear campaigns against conservatives for which heads would roll if they pulled it against liberals.

The post you linked to was written before CBS conducted its investigation, admitted that it could not authenticate the documents, and before Rather resigned. So how is that evidence they are still in denial? Did you check the dates?

I know nothing about Clark being “dropped.” As you know, yet another set of notes, from a White House official, were released this week after a FOI petition. They too show that the administration ordered intelligence people to build a case against Iraq for the bombing.

Further, the fact that they could not authenticate them does not mean they aren’t authentic — it means they couldn’t authenticate them and shouldn’t have treated them as such. I don’t even remember if it was ever proven they were fake; the important thing was that CBS violated ethics by not authenticating them.

Let me pull for you a salient excerpt, emphasis mine:

The one person who should be happiest about the publication of Bob Woodward’s new book is surely former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke. After insisting that President Bush had begun planning the Iraq invasion soon after Sept. 11, Clarke was denounced by the White House and on the floor of the Senate as a lying, disgruntled profiteer. But with Woodward’s undisputed revelations that Iraq War planning began almost immediately after 9/11, Clarke has been vindicated as a truth-teller.

Of course, the left later dropped Clarke like a hot potato when it was made obvious that he WAS a disgruntled former employee. I find it ironic that they’re now twisting and manipulating the words of a liar to support their own lies.

I just did a quick search of MM and could find no evidence they are in “denial” about the case.

You obviously didn’t look very hard. Maybe because you didn’t want to see it. It makes it obvious that your favorite puppets are still defending CBS and claiming that they did authenticate the documents.

I have noticed, NDT, that you are willing to write anybody off who makes one mistake, aas if nobody on the right has done that. As I said earlier, if you think people making mistakes now and then totally discredits everything about them, there’s no place for discourse, because I don’t know anyone who doesn’t fuck up.

The Rather forgeries were not a mistake. They were a deliberate, concocted effort, with the connivance of the Kerry campaign, to release a false story smearing Bush in an attempt to throw the election. That’s why CBS did NOT follow standard procedure or fact-checking in airing them.

I dont’ remember the 1998 deal. I do remember that Saddam was not in compliance in letting the inspectors have as free rein as they were supposed to have. That’s certainly not the same thing as being incompliant by having stored WMDs.

The Rather business is controversial. Rather reported the documents without verifying their authenticity. When he attempted to do that and couldn’t, he apologized (after first defending them). An investigation was launched and Rather resigned. What remains unclear is who created the documents. I do not recall there ever being a finding that CBS itself made up the documents. I just did a quick search of MM and could find no evidence they are in “denial” about the case. I don’t see how they could be since Rather apologized and took responsibility. Where did you see it reported otherwise?

I have noticed, NDT, that you are willing to write anybody off who makes one mistake, aas if nobody on the right has done that. As I said earlier, if you think people making mistakes now and then totally discredits everything about them, there’s no place for discourse, because I don’t know anyone who doesn’t fuck up.

By the way yesterday Media Matters was all over David Gregory for not blasting Bush on the Dubai business. Hard to reconcile the accusation of unilateral liberal bias regarding Gregory to that.

If you’re gonna diss Brock because he made a switch to the liberal side, you’re gonna have quite a list of people on your side to defend for the same kinds of reversals.

Sorry, but your spin on the Iraq invasion isn’t even supported by Bush loyalists any more. There have been umpteen zillion accounts in this respect. The military never before had plans for a pre-emptive invasion. (It was opposed by Colin Powell, for example.) I don’t know where you got that one. As was reported in the Times this week, the neocons in office dreamed up that notion. Earlier plans of regime change did not feature pre-emptive military takeover.

The left, of course, is in denial that Iraq was ever a hostile nation, despite the Saddam regime’s cozy relationship with terrorist groups, despite the Saddam’s regimes constant targeting and firing at coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone, and despite the Saddam Regime’s refusal to comply with weapons inspection protocols. They embrace Michael Moore “Iraq was just children flying kites before the evil US showed up” fantasy.

As for Media Matters, I think it’s pretty comical that when David Brock was a journalistic whore for Richard Mellon Scaife in the 90′s, the left reviled him. Now that he’s a journalistic whore for George Soros, he’s their hero.

Media Matters, as I understand it, is still in denial that Rather and CBS News lied, especially when CBS publicly claimed that they had “checked facts” when they clearly had not. Do you agree with Media Matters’ denial of that?

The left’s position, like the security council’s, was not that Saddam should be left alone but that the weapons inspectors should have all the time they needed to reach a reasonable conclusion.

Funny, wasn’t it the left that demanded the inspectors be removed in 1998 — over the objections of inspectors who insisted that Iraq was NOT in compliance?

And of course we now know from multiple sources that the administration had begun t plan an invasion well before 9/11 occurred. One of the primary architects of the neocons’ agenda of benevolent hegemony and pre-emptive war recanted his position on that last week, as you know.

Again, the same leftist sources who fake and forge news about the Bush administration, as proven by Rathergate?

I make a good bit of my living, believe it or not (I’m sure you won’t), through media criticism and there’s very little that any of you have said that I haven’t said at one time or another. But your gross condemnation of all the media is simplistic in the extreme.

Matty, why don’t you give me your source on the founders’ motivations in the first amendment protections. I am talking about the philosphical motivation, not how this might have played out in such a stratified society. I would like to look up the text that you consult.

Yes, Raj, media have become corporatized and, for becoming such, they have also become much more conservative. As soon as I say that, someone will protest that, no, the media are liberal and oppose conservative values. So we are in this strange position where both sides of the political spectrum thinks the other side is being represented by the press.

Someone here, can’t remember who, keeps pointing back to the Watergate era as a time when reporters were more genuinely inspired by a Fourth Estate calling. That person needs to do some research too, since what you saw at that time was a simultaneous idealization of the investigative reporter AND the birth of the journalist as celebrity. It was also about then that so-called new and alternative journalism erupted with their advocacy agendas and abandonment of objectivity in just about any guise. As a result, then, as now, people on both sides of the political spectrum found something deplorable in the press.

So I don’t see things that changed in terms of bias.

Again regarding the Rather case, this is nothing new either on either side of the political spectrum but if I refer you to Media Matters and their reporting of lies by people like Ann Couilter and O’Reilly, I’m immediately dismisssed because of the source. Your facts are truer than my facts. Well, the actual truth is that both sides are rlying. It’s probably true that earlier White Houses also bought favorable reporting the way the Bush WH has in the Armstrong, GAllagher, etc., cases.

My question remains. What do you want to see happen? You find David Gregory’s outburst offensive. I find Ann Coulter’s outburst that all liberals have affection for terrorists offensive.

Finally, about the WMD and Saddam. The left’s position, like the security council’s, was not that Saddam should be left alone but that the weapons inspectors should have all the time they needed to reach a reasonable conclusion. Absolutely nothing had happened to indicate Saddam was preparing to attack anyone. So, you’re misrepresenting the goal of Bush’s critics at that time. You remember he even said that Saddam had refused to let the inspectors return, which was absolutely untrue. And of course we now know from multiple sources that the administration had begun t plan an invasion well before 9/11 occurred. One of the primary architects of the neocons’ agenda of benevolent hegemony and pre-emptive war recanted his position on that last week, as you know. So, once again, things are just not as simple as you present them and the truth is only more obscured by a bias that protects or diminishes the president rather than serves the truth.

Therefore, your whining about “the world press” saying that Saddam didn’t have WMDs is automatically suspect, especially given that CNN and other agencies were being bribed. Do you deny that they deliberately covered up information about Saddam’s regime?

Furthermore, don’t twist “indefinite conclusions” into “suspect”. No one knew conclusively whether or not Saddam had WMDs, apparently not even Saddam himself. But the general consensus was that the likelihood that he did was extremely high. Resolution 1441 minces no words in that fact and specifically said that Saddam was not in compliance.

You apparently have trouble realizing and condemning when the press lies to Americans out of political animus or being bribed.

Why do you think the Times printed a mea culpa? They admitted that they had not made an effort to validate Judith Miller’s reports. That means that other sources in the administration were not contacted, that no effort was made to verify the lies coming from Judith Miller’s sources.

You appear to misunderstand the role of modern media. Their role–other than to sell advertisements–is to maintain “access” to people in positions of power, so that they can get “stories” (regardless of how fictional they might be) for publication or broadcast. How do they do that? By publishing what the people in power want to be published.

They do little if any fact-checking. They–like Miller–are little more than stenographers for the people in power.

I’ve seen it happen too often at the local and state level, and I would be surprised if it didn’t happen at the federal level.

It wasn’t always so–note Watergate. But since then, the press has evolved until it has become so. And the problem has been exacerabated among newspapers by the fact that many of the companies that own the newspapers oftentimes have business before federal regulatory operations, such as the Federal Communications Commission, since they also own broadcasting properties.

The press can do better. When we stop accepting their piddle about being unbiased, responding to a “higher calling”, and being just interested in the truth. Or that the proper attitude of a free press is one of skepticism, as you contend.

Like Synova wrote: the press aren’t the unelected policy makers in this country, even if it would be easier for the Left. Nor are the courts –for the same reason.

When we keep a realistic view of the press and our expectations for the press in a free society, then we’ll have reached a balanced order.

Here’s the rub: while it might be helpful for the Left to defend MSM –in fact, without the MSM, I doubt liberals could ever regain political power in America—just don’t try wrapping the Founding Fathers into a politically convenient argument in defense of the press. It doesn’t work. It didn’t then, it doesn’t now.

While I agree with you that the press ought to be driven by a search for the truth… but when did that last happen in America? The truth from the press? What a cliché. It’s better saved, as I wrote, for Journalism 101 class and impressing novice students. Higher calling? Ha. I have yet to meet a sober journalist who actually believes that hacked, cliché.

Nope, JwGreen, you were wrong on YOUR proposition that the Founding Fathers sought to protect the press because of its “higher calling” of trained journalists helping to sort out truth in society. Simple as that. You were also wrong in proposing a skeptical press might have been able to sort out the WMD situation before the war began. Silly revisionist wishful thinking on the part of the Left trying to aid its absurd –but politically convenient– proposition in the aftermath of Iraq.

I can appreciate it’s impossible for you to acknowledge being wrong –so don’t worry about it. Sigh. Tsk. Sigh yet again.

It’s almost unbelievable you continue to maintain this. At least three or four books by former administration officials, testimony before Congress, the statements of the weapons inspectors themselves — all reported that the administration had been told repeatedly that its intelligence was suspect, to say nothing of the reports in the world press. Why do you think the Times printed a mea culpa? They admitted that they had not made an effort to validate Judith Miller’s reports. That means that other sources in the administration were not contacted, that no effort was made to verify the lies coming from Judith Miller’s sources.

The Dan Rather case sucks but if it’s all you need to know to come to a general conclusion about the press, then of course you are right. Discourse with you on the topic is pointless.

Why? Were they being allowed into Iraq to inspect weapons sites? As I understand it, not only were they faking shots from Iraq to please Saddam Hussein, they were deliberately covering up the abuses of Saddam’s regime in the name of “dealing peace”.

Meanwhile, Jw, we know all we need to know about the press in this country by the fact that they faked and forged documents in an attempt to smear the Bush administration. That has been proven. These so-called “aggressive journalists” created a set of documents and then LIED to the American people by telling them they had been “verified by experts”, all at the behest of the Kerry campaign and in an attempt to throw an election. Then, when their scheme unraveled, they tried whining that it was unfair to hold them to professional standards.

Now I think that reporters *should* make an effort to determine the truth. This isn’t the same thing as being antagonistic, though. There’s a point at which skepticism is a poor excuse for actually thinking. Most of us start to get over it sometime between our Freshman and Senior years of college (or much sooner if we don’t *go* to college.) Everything is always a lie, is just as intellectually vacant as believing everything is the truth. It’s not enough to be skeptical, to be critical, if there’s no discernment going on.

When it comes to politicians, they do *not* always lie. Not on either side. Common sense demands that, at least some of the time, it’s in their best interests to communicate the truth and promote cooperation to attain a goal. An antagonistic press that is antagonistic for the sake of it misses the point that not *only* are they supposed to be keeping a skeptical eye open, but that they are supposed to report on what people are doing and why and *sometimes* this means reporting what the source *wants* reported.

Why should a White House press conference *not* be an opportunity for the White House to explain what is happening, what the administration’s goals are, and expect mostly clarifying questions? This is how we find out what our president, no matter which party, is trying to accomplish. It might not be exciting, but it *is* reporting. It in no way precludes sharp questions and ferreting out the truth when something seems dodgy.

And Jw… it is not the job of the press to run this country, to ferret out terrorists or set foreign policy. That they can’t *do* those things does not mean they are broken.

What’s amazing about that? The NYT & others are fronts for the DNC.

#42

Their commentator kept prattling on about the episode, and at one point said essentially, we don’t know what’s going on, but we’re going to keep talking about it anyway.

What’s the difference between that and the way CNN-BS, PMSNBC-BS etc. covered it?

The 9/11 commission and a handful of former administration officials have made it quite clear that there was no good reason to believe Saddam harbored WMD. They also had in hand that little memo whose title Condi could barely bring herself to utter. Most recently we have Risen’s revelations, which the Times editors rushed to print before his book came out so as not to look like total puppets of the administration and its messenger Judy Miller.

An aggressive journalist not licking Scooter’s ass — Sy Hersh for example — might well have brought this material to light before the invasion. This is so well understood that the Times printed a mea culpa, for which there would be no good reason if there wasn’t such powerful evidence to contravene Judy’s articles at the time of their writing.

You would be right to say that the preening egos of the Times editors and “star reporter” have a lot to do with the paper’s failure. Why this means the press cannot do better, I don’t understand. Nor do I have any inkling of what you propose — that we rely on blogs like this one for “news”?

I will say, though, that as “right” as Fox News may be….

I gave up on Faux News in the Spring of 2001. Remember the US surveillance plane that the Chinese forced down? I was watching Faux News early one morning at the gym. Faux News seemed to be “covering” it 24/7. They had cameras trained on the downed airplane–long range cameras I presume. Their commentator kept prattling on about the episode, and at one point said essentially, we don’t know what’s going on, but we’re going to keep talking about it anyway.

I literally rolled on the floor laughing. And I haven’t paid any attention to them since.