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When I was listening to "On The Media" early this evening, I noticed yet another instance of something that has become a pet peeve of mine. That is people trumpeting the "power of the blogs" based on the takedown of Dan Rather and CBS news over the allegedly-forged documents about Bush skipping out on the Texas Air National Guard. By now that event seems to have seeped into the national consciousness as "Rather and CBS used forged documents" and "the [right-wing] blogs proved it". The claim was that the documents looked more like something out of Microsoft Word than out of an early-70s typewriter.
The problem is that the right-wing blogs were wrong about the whole thing.
At the time, one guy over at Daily Kos posted a six-part analysis of the documents based on high-resolution scans and actual research into the capabilities of typewriters of the time. (Go read at least part of it: part I, II, III, IV, V, VI) I had some interest in it because I have some knowledge of and interest in typography. But nobody paid attention to the actual typographical facts, and this guy finally got sick of the whole thing and wrote an outlandishly speculative (but highly plausible) article suggesting Karl Rove orchestrated the whole thing.
Now he's posted a quick review of the whole episode, with a link to a Columbia Journalism Review story about it. CJR seems to agree that the resulting conventional wisdom is simply wrong, even if nobody really knows for sure what's up with those memos.
But the whole episode accomplished a number of things. First it discredited Dan Rather and CBS news, putting them alongside Jayson Blair and the New York Times in the journalism hall of shame. This overshadowed the larger truths about Bush's Air National Guard service (and lack thereof), which are proven by other documents not in question, and managed to get rid of that story entirely. Finally, discrediting CBS cast a shadow over the other high-quality reporting they'd been doing on questionable actions by Bush and his administration.
In fact, this stupid thing may have even been enough to turn the election to Bush. If so I almost have to admire the judo of it. Almost.
The problem is that the right-wing blogs were wrong about the whole thing.
At the time, one guy over at Daily Kos posted a six-part analysis of the documents based on high-resolution scans and actual research into the capabilities of typewriters of the time. (Go read at least part of it: part I, II, III, IV, V, VI) I had some interest in it because I have some knowledge of and interest in typography. But nobody paid attention to the actual typographical facts, and this guy finally got sick of the whole thing and wrote an outlandishly speculative (but highly plausible) article suggesting Karl Rove orchestrated the whole thing.
Now he's posted a quick review of the whole episode, with a link to a Columbia Journalism Review story about it. CJR seems to agree that the resulting conventional wisdom is simply wrong, even if nobody really knows for sure what's up with those memos.
But the whole episode accomplished a number of things. First it discredited Dan Rather and CBS news, putting them alongside Jayson Blair and the New York Times in the journalism hall of shame. This overshadowed the larger truths about Bush's Air National Guard service (and lack thereof), which are proven by other documents not in question, and managed to get rid of that story entirely. Finally, discrediting CBS cast a shadow over the other high-quality reporting they'd been doing on questionable actions by Bush and his administration.
In fact, this stupid thing may have even been enough to turn the election to Bush. If so I almost have to admire the judo of it. Almost.
annoyed