Does CBS have ANY credibility left?

[dude1394]

CBS still holds out HOPE that the memos are real. So this is how an unbiased network reports.

From powerline

General Hodges speaks

Reader Susie White has kindly alerted us to this Dallas Observer column by Mark Stuertz on retired Major General Bobby Hodges and the misuse of his testimony by CBS/60 Minutes for its hit job on President Bush: "Poke in the eye." Please read the whole thing.

Incidentally, Stuertz's efforts to elicit CBS's side of the story result in this paragraph:

CBS News didn't return calls for comment, and Mapes declined to discuss Hodges' charges. "I can't, I just can't," she says. But she did forward a study by Utah State University Associate Professor David Hailey disputing the contention that the memos were created on a word processor using digital type rather than a '70s-era typewriter--the key challenge to their authenticity. "I really believe they are not digitally produced," Hailey says. "I'm not saying that they're authentic. I'm saying they were probably typewritten. That doesn't make them authentic. But it does take CBS off the hook a little bit."

Now it's not find the truth, it's find enough of the truth to confuse your customers enough to think it MIGHT be true. Rather has to be fired.

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The dallasobserver link

Poke in the Eye
Arlington general tosses CBS News in the brig

Major General Bobby Hodges places a neat stack of newspaper clippings next to two decks of playing cards, the gear of a bridge aficionado. The clips are heavily highlighted. There are photos in the stack, too. One hazy black-and-white shot shows a ground crew shoving a delta-winged F-102 fighter. The canopy is open. The pilot is visible in the cockpit.

Hodges piloted the F-102 in Vietnam while in the Texas Air National Guard. He flew 51 combat missions from South Vietnam and northern Thailand, escorting B-52 bombers and intercepting enemy aircraft during a 90-day tour known as Palace Alert.

But among his most challenging battles has come not against a tenacious pilot but against a dogged broadcast network, CBS News. Hodges was one of the sources the network used to validate a series of 30-year-old memos allegedly written by the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian hinting political favoritism was exerted to sanitize President George W. Bush's military record in the Texas Air National Guard. Hodges insists the network never showed him the documents and he never authenticated them. When he finally did get a peek at them a day and a half after a 60 Minutes broadcast highlighting the memos aired, he was convinced they were fakes. "It didn't take me but a minute or two to realize that Jerry Killian did not write these," he says. "No way."

Hodges, 74, who retired from the Texas Air National Guard in 1989 and lives in Arlington, says he was first contacted by CBS on the evening of September 6, two days before the 60 Minutes broadcast. Hodges says that during a telephone conversation 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes read him small excerpts from the memos, among them portions relating to Bush's missed physical. "I said, 'Yes, I remember talking about his physical, that he missed his physical,'" Hodges says. "Everybody knew he missed his physical...I agreed that we had talked about the physical, which gave her authority to say that I authenticated all four memos."

[dude1394]

Good grief....CBS has less integrity than the maggot moore!!!

Michael Moore, director of the movie Farenheit 9/11, said Sunday that he was given the same phony documents used by CBS News in its infamous Sept. 8 “60 Minutes” story but that he rejected them for inclusion in his film because his staff did not believe they were authentic.

“Back when I was making Fahrenheit, I was offered the documents that were given to CBS but I didn’t use them because we couldn’t verify them,” Moore said following a speech at the University of Central Arkansas.

Dr. Rick Scott, the university’s honors program director, told RatherBiased.com that Moore said he had a three-tiered-system of fact checking which led him to believe the documents were not valid. He did not say if his source was Bill Burkett, the disgruntled former Texas Army National Guard Other university officials confirmed this account.

The anti-Bush filmmaker said that he was unhappy with CBS for using the fakes in a report, implying that the Memogate controversy had aided the president’s reelection campaign. He added that he had turned down other too-good-to-be true scoops, including one from a woman who claimed to have attended a dinner attended by both the Bush and family of Osama bin Laden.

[dude1394]

From powerline

CBS has announced that its investigation into the 60 Minutes fake document scandal won't be completed until after the election:

Les Moonves, the co-president of CBS parent company Viacom, told an analyst meeting that the review of the CBS "60 Minutes II" report being done by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi had no timetable for completion. But he said he did not want it to interfere with the Nov. 2 election.

"Obviously, it should be done probably after the election is over so that it doesn't affect what's going on," he told a Goldman Sachs media conference in New York.

A CBS spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the statement. But she pointed out that when CBS News President Andrew Heyward named Boccardi and Thornburgh to conduct the investigation of the Sept. 8 report, he said he hoped it would be completed in weeks rather than months.

Well, CBS certainly wouldn't want to influence the election by revealing how its news department conspired with the Democratic National Committee to slander the President and his commanding officers in the Texas Air National Guard in hopes of influencing the election.

[dude1394]

Wonder if CBS will report on this???

Rangel votes against own draft measure
By Michael S. Gerber

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) did something a little unusual yesterday. First he protested when Republican leadership scheduled his own bill for a vote.

Then he sent out a letter encouraging his Democratic colleagues to vote against it.

Rangel’s bill, which the leadership had placed on the suspension calendar, would create a national-service draft under which all 18- to 26-year-olds would serve in the military or perform two years of national service as determined by the president. Rangel has been advocating a draft for several years, but he argued yesterday that the bill was too important for the suspension calendar, “which is reserved for non-controversial items,” he said in a statement.

Let's do a cbs search and see. Top two reponses to "draft"

1. Trail Bytes | October 5, 2004 18:24:29 •••
...Mr. Bush also sought to put to rest rumors and speculation that the military draft will be reinstated to acquire more personnel for duty in Iraq. When...
..."We don't need a draft. We will not have a draft so long as I'm the President of the United States," declared Mr. Bush to applause. In recent days,...
...saying the Selective Service System is gearing up for a reinstatement of the draft, an assertion the White House denies. Monday's event was the 16th...

2. Washington Wrap | October 5, 2004 16:03:04 ••
...Mr. Bush also sought to put to rest rumors and speculation that the military draft will be reinstated to acquire more personnel for duty in Iraq. When...
..."We don't need a draft. We will not have a draft so long as I'm the President of the United States," declared Mr. Bush to applause. In recent days,...
...saying the Selective Service System is gearing up for a reinstatement of the draft, an assertion the White House denies. Monday's event was the 16th...

Go figure.