Don't miss Power Line's shredding of the Columbia Journalism Review piece by Corey Pein on the Memogate-CBS scandal. As if Pein's criticism of bloggers could ever put the pieces of CBS' journalistic credibility back together again.
In a subsequent post, Hindrocket notes that the long-awaited Memogate investigation report is due out tomorrow (probably at about 4:45 p.m.)
More than three months after they were appointed to investigate the peddling of fake documents on President Bush's National Guard service by 60 Minutes, Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi are expected to release their report tomorrow. I have no doubt there will be a report; I have no idea whether there was actually an investigation.Posted by dan at January 7, 2005 12:55 AMThere is a story to be told here: a story about how CBS coordinated its attack on President Bush with the Democratic National Committee; a story about how fake documents were put into the hands of a mentally ill, obsessively anti-Bush crank named Bill Burkett; a story about how Burkett (if he can be believed) not only got the documents into the hands of 60 Minutes, but also into the hands of the Kerry campaign, via Max Cleland; a story about how left-wing CBS producer Mary Mapes pursued the Bush National Guard "story" for five years, beginning when he was Governor of Texas, without finding anything worth reporting until the fake documents came along; a story about how 60 Minutes was warned that the documents appeared to be fakes, but published them anyway...
...But I doubt whether Thornburgh and Boccardi will tell that story...
...The fundamental question here is whether CBS was the victim of a hoax, or the perpetrator of a hoax. It has been our view for a long time that Rather and his colleagues were perpetrators, not victims, in part because the documents were such obvious fakes that it strains credulity to suppose that they were actually fooled. When you read the Thornburgy/Boccardi report, keep that question constantly in mind: victim, or perpetrator?