Networks Continue to Criticize Bush Despite Memo Suspicions

Here are several examples:

1. LA Times Commentary appearing tomorrow (9/15): A Black Eye for CBS. CBS News has been had. It's hard to reach any other conclusion about newly discovered documents that CBS and anchor Dan Rather are defending as revealing the truth about George W. Bush's military service. On the surface it appears that journalistic integrity and righteous indignation are driving the editorialist to take CBS to task. Unfortunately, similar to their earlier article that blames partisanship for the intense criticism of Dan Rather, this editorial is off the mark. Powerline Blog comments, "What outrages the L.A. Times, however, is not so much that CBS tried to perpetrate a fraud, as that it failed to help the Kerry campaign, as it intended." Their analysis is evoked from the editorial's statement, "CBS' real error was trying to prove a point that didn't really need to be proved."
   


2. New York Times published an article that reports Killian (the alleged memo writer)'s secretary confidently asserts that the memos are fake. However, the article is titled "Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says."
   


3. The Mercury News concludes, "The problem is Bush's lack of honesty about Guard - President Bush's paramount problem with his National Guard years is not that he took shortcuts in 1972. The problem is that he still refuses to come clean about it.


4. The Arizona Republic opines, "Rather shrugs off attacks on the story as the work of "partisans." A network executive denigrates those people raising questions on the Internet as "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas."

CBS itself has continued to defend its use of the memos on the basis of the belief that the story is true. Responding to criticism, Dan Rather defiantly calls on President Bush to "tell the truth" and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West states, "We continue to believe in this story." After it was learned that Killian's former secretary, 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, said the memos were fake, CBS News spokeswoman Sandra Genelius is quoted as saying, "It is notable that she confirms the content of the documents, which was the primary focus of our story in the first place."

In each instance, rather than addressing the very serious charge of fraud, CBS responds that the authenticy of their evidence doesn't matter, they believe their story is true. This is what some woud call "faith".

While the media feeding frenzy is well on its way there is likely to remain an awkward and obvious inconsistency in the articles by those who irrationally want the story to be true even though the evidence is false. Could this be THE DEATH CRY OF SNOB JOURNALISM ?

See also: The Twists and Turns of CBS' Memo Controversy