September 13, 2004

Rathergate Wins Mainstream Media Traction

There was concern last week among bloggers that mainstream media would back up 60 Minutes in stonewalling on Ra^thergate. But those doubts were lessened today with stories slamming 60 Minutes in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today.

From USA Today:

Questions about President Bush’s service in the Texas National Guard have been shunted to the background by a debate over the authenticity of newly disclosed documents that purport to show problems with his performance as a pilot.

From the Wall Street Journal:

A watershed media moment occurred Friday on Fox News Channel, when Jonathan Klein, a former executive vice president of CBS News who oversaw “60 Minutes,” debated Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard, on the documents CBS used to raise questions about George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service.

Mr. Klein dismissed the bloggers who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: “You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at ‘60 Minutes’] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”

He will regret that snide disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries.

Klein resorted to a typical tactic of the left, i.e. name-calling, as when they call GWB dumb. That’s what people do when they don’t have the facts on their side.

From The New York Times:

Alert bloggers who knew the difference between the product of old typewriters and new word processors immediately suspected a hoax: the “documents” presented by CBS News suggesting preferential treatment in Lt. George W. Bush’s National Guard service have all the earmarks of forgeries.

The copies of copies of copies that formed the basis for the latest charges were supposedly typed by Guard officer Jerry Killian three decades ago and placed in his “personal” file. But it is the default typeface of Microsoft Word, highly unlikely to have been used by that Texas colonel, who died in 1984. His widow says he could hardly type and his son warned CBS that the memos were not real.

When the mainstream press checked the sources mentioned or ignored by “60 Minutes II,” the story came apart.

The The Wall Street Journal provided these specifics on the contributions of the blogosphere:

If it turns out that the Killian memos are indeed forgeries, the Internet will have played an invaluable role in exposing the fraud much faster than the 18 months Mr. Camacho had to twist in the wind. Free Republic, a Web bulletin board, raised early warning signals about the memos within hours of last Wednesday’s “60 Minutes” broadcast. Powerlineblog.com, a site run by three lawyers, reposted those comments, which were amplified by indcjournal.com. Then design expert Charles Johnson, who blogs at littlegreenfootballs.com, retyped one of the memos using Microsoft Word and showed them to be a perfect typographic match.

A defensive Dan Rather went on the air Friday to complain of what he called a “counterattack” from “partisan political operatives.” In reality, traditional journalism now has a new set of watchdogs in the “blogosphere.” In the words of blogger Mickey Kaus, they can trade information and publicize it “fast enough to have real-world consequences.” Sure, blogs can be transmission belts for errors, vicious gossip and last-minute disinformation efforts. But they can also correct themselves almost instantaneously—in sharp contrast with CBS’s stonewalling.

(Links via PoliPundit .)

Updated 9-14-04 to remove the argument that the NY TIMES tried to take credit for MSM in exposing the hoax. Many bloggers have cited this NY TIMES article as one acknowledging the importance of the blogosphere.

Kerry Campaign: Paralysis by Nuance?

Kerry all but stopped campaigning over a month ago. He’s had not one serious question-and-answer session with reporters in all that time. (I would very much like to know how he got TIME magazine to ask him nothing but softball questions in yesterday’s interview. )

How could this have happened?

Yes, this was the result of the Swift Vet’s brilliant exposure of his various false claims regarding Viet Nam. But most candidates wouldn’t have responded as Kerry did, by dropping a necessary part of campaigning, i.e. talking to the press.

I offer the following speculation. We know Kerry can’t make a single statement without contradicting it almost immediately. Could it be that this is a defect not only of his public speaking, but also of his dealings with his own campaign staff? I speculate that just as he tells the American people one thing on Monday and a contradictory thing on Tuesday, he does the same thing with those who work for them. The result: paralysis.

Paralysis by self-contradiction—or, as Kerry likes to call it, “nuance.”

Update 9-25-044. I called this one 12 days ahead of this NY TIMES story. Via Betsy’s Page:

The New York Times has an article about Kerry’s management style. He seems to like asking questions almost endlessly. He can take a long time to make up his mind on decisions, always seeking more advice.

His attention to detail can serve him well on big projects, as it did when he sent aides scurrying across the country to find long-lost fellow Vietnam veterans who could vouch for his war record. But sometimes, his aides say, it is a distraction, as it was in early 2003, when they say he spent four weeks mulling the design of his campaign logo, consulting associates about what font it should use and whether it should include an American flag. (It does.)

His habit of soliciting one more point of view prompted one close adviser to say he had learned to wait until the last minute before weighing in: Mr. Kerry, he said, is apt to be most influenced by the last person who has his ear. His aides rejoiced earlier this year when Mr. Kerry yielded his cellphone to an aide, a move they hoped would limit his seeking out contrary opinions.