Yahoo! News – U.S. Servicemen React to Bush Guard Memos
You know, I’ve come to expect nothing from the AP. Keep in mind, however, that doesn’t preclude me from being livid when I read a hit piece disguised as a news article, I still fume.
Take for instance the piece linked above.
628 words.
A deep analysis on reaction to the memos that were presented by Dan Rather, and yet only a passing mention of one fact:
“Questions have been raised about the documents’ authenticity.”
Those 8 words were buried in paragraph 6.
They aren’t just baseless questions, they’re questions that don’t have answers. Of course, in order for you to accept these documents as valid, you’d have to accept the fact that a 1972 typewriter in a National Guard office in Texas or Alabama could produce documents with the same kerning as Microsoft Word, could center text precisely, and could superscript text, while simultaneously changing font sizes on a metal ball.
Got all that?
So seeing as you’d have to be either a rabid partisan or a complete idiot to believe the authenticity of these documents, and seeing as every news organization with the exception of CBS has paraded analyst after analyst documenting how the documents are most likely forgeries.
Dan Rather’s response?
“The documents raise important questions that should be answered.”
Why should questions raised by false documents even be addressed?
I swear, I hear stuff like this, and I chuckle at how people rip on me when I mention liberal bias in the media.
If Dan Rather’s presentation of obviously falsified documents, his defense of them after a conga-line of experts dispute their validity, and his exhortation that (regardless of the fact that they are most likely fakes) the questions those fakes raise need to be answered while he has not had one of the 251 Swift Boat Veterans on who are questioning Kerry’s service, does not represent a liberal bias in (at least) CBS’ news room, then I’m open to explanations about what exactly it is…
Until then, I’ll just keep believing that Dan Rather is hopelessly biased to the left, and I’ll hold this up against any proof otherwise.
And as for the AP? Well, I think a 628 word story on the reaction to the memos, and 8 words where the validity questions raised about those documents are mentioned does more to demonstrate either a serious sloppiness in their reporting, an overall lack of consideration toward the importance of the falseness of those documents, or a desperate desire to sling any mud they can at the President are more telling than any examples I could ever give.
Forget the validity of the documents; they criticize Bush, and that’s all the truth anyone needs about them.