Update (6:25 p.m.): “CBS Faces New Charges Over Discredited Bush Report”
Joe Lockhart, Bill Clinton’s former spokesman, poked his hand in the cookie jar once too often. He got stuck. According to USAToday:
CBS arranged for a confidential source to talk with Joe Lockhart, a top aide to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, after the source provided the network with the now-disputed documents about President Bush’s service in the Texas National Guard.Lockhart, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said a female producer talked to him about the 60 Minutes program a few days before it aired on Sept. 8. She gave Lockhart a telephone number and asked him to call Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer who gave CBS the documents. Lockhart couldn’t recall the producer’s name. But CBS said Monday night that it would examine the role of producer Mary Mapes in passing the name to Lockhart….
The network’s effort to place Burkett in contact with a top Democratic official raises ethical questions about CBS’ handling of material potentially damaging to the Republican president in the midst of an election. This “poses a real danger to the potential credibility…of a news organization,” said Aly Colon, a news ethicist at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Why would CBS need to contact the Kerry campaign? Wouldn’t their efforts to topple George Bush be more likely to succeed if they at least pretended to be non-partisan? This country doesn’t produce smart people the way it used to, I guess.
The Kerry campaign is involved. Wishes do come true. I’ll sit back and watch the fallout.
One more thing, I almost collapsed in hysterical laughter when I read this headline from the Chicago Tribune: “Admission about memos will likely fuel debate over media bias.”
That’s some understatement, isn’t it? Leon Lazaroff is obviously a liberal because he doesn’t know the “debate” has been raging for quite awhile and he’s just now catching on (or pretends to be). Liberals like Lazaroff probably consider the Media Research Center (MRC) a fanatical right-wing fringe group. On the contrary. The MRC has been providing a valuable and underrated service by exposing leftist bias since 1987.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Mr. Lazaroff, a new medium. Gone are the days when disgruntled readers had to be content with writing letters to the editor that may or may be read or published. We citizen-journalists have descended upon Big Media and left-wing bias, and reporters like you will no longer have the last say. This is an extraordinarily exciting moment: the blogosphere brought down Dan Rather.
And I thank the founding fathers for crafting something so innovatively astounding as the First Amendment.
If you don’t like it, move to Iraq.
For updated links…
Power Line has more questions for CBS. Allahpundit has more on the alleged source.
Bush camp tells CBS debate moderator to take a hike. Also see VodkaPundit and Slant Point.
More on collusion between CBS and the DNC from Balloon Juice.
Power Line blogger interviewed on CNBC. Also see Ace of Spades.
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