Saturday, September 25, 2004
We were duped!
Of course, CBS News is trying to get away with presenting themselves as innocent victims of a fraud. Why, it could have happened to anyone!
I'm sure you can imagine what I think of that. Patterico expresses it well:
I keep hearing that CBS was duped, and that its main mistake was in poorly responding to the questions raised about its story.
No, no -- a thousand times, no!
...
These are not people who were duped. And the problem is not how they handled it once they were caught -- though they handled that part badly. Their main transgression was in ignoring the evidence staring them in the face before the story ever ran. At the very least, they could have given some time on the broadcast to the dissenters.
But they didn't. And I've said this before, but it bears repeating: don't fool yourself believing that this is the first time this has happened. Come on. If you have watched "60 Minutes" then you are familiar with that feeling you have at the end of a segment, when you think to yourself: "Wow, everything seems to point to one conclusion." You thought that was because everything really did point to one conclusion?
Nope. It's because everything else was left on the cutting room floor.
We're just seeing one very notorious example where they got caught.
Update
I'm pretty comfortable saying that if the shoe were on the other foot, that is if a similar story emerged that reflected poorly on John Kerry's military service, Dan Rather would have found a way to dismiss it.
How do I know that? Because in August, the shoe was on the other foot, and Dan Rather said this:
I would like us to concentrate more on issues and less on campaign process. But there is always a tendency to go with what's sensational. Also, we're human, and humans keep making the same mistakes. In the end, what difference does it make what one candidate or the other did or didn't do during the Vietnam War? In some ways, that war is as distant as the Napoleonic campaigns. What's far more import is this: Do they have an exit strategy for Iraq? If so, what is it? How will they address the national deficit? And what are the chances their plans will work?
