Incredible news

Funny thing - I was thinking about making an entry today specifically about how traditional news media are losing their credibility, their presumption of honesty, and their image of impartiality, when I saw this poll, which said the same thing. I picked up on that story from this one, specifically about the credibility of CBS and Dan Rather. I'm surprised that Dan's credibility is still as high as it is, since it appears that only Dan and the suits at CBS still think the documents are real. Most frustrating to me are the rebuttals they offer to objections. The ones I keep hearing are: "We can't reveal our sources, but trust us, they're authentic." -- I don't expect them to reveal their sources, but I do remember from journalism class that you can't expect an article to be as widely accepted if you don't reveal sources. The source of the information helps each person to determine for themselves if the story can be believed. I'm not willing to let CBS or any other organization tell me what to believe. "The Jammies Brigade doesn't have the checks and balances of a news organization like CBS." -- Specifically aimed at the bloggers who broke the story of the documents being fraud. What the suits haven't realized yet is that the most popular blogs have become so by being honest and showing integrity in admitting their mistakes. Also, blogs give individuals (the readers) a level of interaction with the news reporters you can't get from CBS. A large readership is a very strong check-and-balance mechanism. If people don't think you're being honest, or can't admit a mistake, they won't stay long. "Technology did exist in 1971 to produce proportional type and superscript." -- Yes, but that technology has already been shown to produce a document significantly different from what CBS has published, even with major effort, where MS Word has been shown to easily produce an almost identical document with no effort. Lest it be missed in my comments to the previous entry, have a look at a reproduction of the "authentic" TANG document you can do yourself. Apparently, Dan hasn't seen this yet. I wonder if he's even used Word? "Our sources have changed their stories" -- No, you manipulated the situation, or their original statements to make it appear they validated your claims. How scary that a large organization like CBS can bulldoze over the truth by manipulating someone's words, then accusing them of waffling. The fact is, none of their experts offered solid confirmation to begin with, and some of the experts they contacted (but didn't quote) told them outright the documents were forgeries. Yet it was still too important not to publish. "It doesn't matter whether the documents are forgeries - President Bush should still answer the questions." -- If the documents are complete forgeries, then there's no reason to believe any of the facts implied by those documents. Likewise, if the documents were provided by someone with a clear partisan interest, or with an axe to grind, or even by an insane person (or all of the above), asking President Bush to answer the questions is the cart before the horse. First show me that there is something to answer. If the facts hold up, then I expect an answer from the President as well.