Comments on: Reaping The Leftist Whirlwind

By: Dorothy

Dorothy — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 01:07:01 +0000

How about the two verse following?

Fret not because of evildoers, neither be envious of the wicked,

For there shall be no reward for the evil man; the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.

It seems like there’s some hope that Rather will resign.

By: Ernest S.

Ernest S. — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 13:32:39 +0000

I have to agree with Phil – the news media in this country have become SO cut-throat in the past 20 years that they’re willing to do “whatever it takes” to make sure they get the big story – even if it means they become the big story themselves.

By: Don Hagen

Don Hagen — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 06:51:07 +0000

RatherGate!!! Below is a NewsMax.com article that says CBS steered the forged document source to the Kerry Campaign!!!

(www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/20/225421.shtml)

With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

For the story behind the story…

Monday, Sept. 20, 2004 10:52 p.m. EDT

CBS Steered Forged Doc Source to Kerry Campaign

In what may be the most damaging revelation yet in the Rathergate document scandal, CBS News is admitting that it steered the source of forged military records damaging to President Bush to the Kerry campaign.

In exchange for the meeting with Kerry communications director Joe Lockhart, that source – former National Guard Commander Bill Burkett – agreed to give CBS copies of the Bush records.

USA Today is set to report in Tuesday editions:

“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.”

“At Burkett’s request, we gave his [telephone] number to the campaign,” Betsy West, senior CBS News vice president, confessed to USA Today.

Late Monday, CBS said it was investigating the role of “60 Minutes” star producer Mary Mapes in setting up the contact between Burkett and Lockhart.

“The network’s effort to place Burkett in contact with a top Democratic official raises ethical questions about CBS’s handling of material potentially damaging to the Republican president in the midst of an election,” the paper said.

Aly Colï¿½n, a news ethicist at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said the collusion between CBS and the Kerry campaign to damage President Bush “poses a real danger to the potential credibility of a news organization.”

The White House reacted sharply to the Lockhart development, with Communications Director Dan Bartlett complaining, “The fact that CBS News would coordinate with the most senior levels of Senator Kerry’s campaign to attack the president is a stunning and deeply troubling revelation.”

By: Phil Dillon

Phil Dillon — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 02:33:14 +0000

I saw a report on Fox News tonight that outlined problems Ms. Mapes had with the Colorado Bureau of Prisons a few years ago. She apparently had a quid pro quo with one prisoner to have him deliver a letter to her, then she in turn would get the letter to another prisoner in this maximum security lockup. The quid pro quo was the story itself. She wanted the story so badly she was willing to violate the the prison’s rules that were meant to protect the staff and ultimately the public. The warden apparently got all of this on audiotape and sent a memo to CBS about this and revoked all visitation privileges for her and CBS.

All that’s to say that this type of conduct could be much more pervasive than the mainstream media is willing to admit.

Does anyone really think that the ops at NBC and ABC are pristine? ABC is the network that did a hatchet job on Jesus a while back (a Peter Jennings report) using the discredited scholarship of the Jesus seminar. Jennings passed them off as reputable scholars when they are anything but serious scholars. NBC is the network that rigged the gas tanks on cars to ensure that the viewing public would “know” that the auto industry was building unsafe vehicles.

This goes on all the time. We’re just seeing some of it now.

By: Six Meat Buffet

Six Meat Buffet — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 02:05:43 +0000

The trouble with journalists
Mapes is a shining example of the media elites’ tendency to allow their ideology to infect the way they create, report and slant the news in the favor of whichever cause-of-the-week-obsession they’re pushing.

By: DarkStar

DarkStar — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 01:47:44 +0000

If CBS handled this correctly, they could have saved their reputation and news operation.

All they had to do was first suspend Rather, then apologize, and then investigate. Then make changes.

By: Carolus

Carolus — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 01:23:17 +0000

LaShawn, you shouldn’t feel too guilty about the schadenfreude over CBS. For one thing, they haven’t really fully admitted their wrongdoing in this case. (Check out Powerline, whose been a Blogosphere clearinghouse on the story.)

Numerous leftists are still trying to spin the fact that the memos are forged with variants on the NY Times story from about a week ago – that the memos were “fake but accurate” (yes, the NY Times actually used that oxymoronic phrase). It’s the Tawana Brawley defense all over again.

By: La Shawn

La Shawn — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:50:59 +0000

I guess I get by. Thanks for visiting, Adam. Do come again…

By: Adam Wood

Adam Wood — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:50:06 +0000

Hey, La Shawn: love your blog. Found you from allahpoundit. I read down through a couple of pages, and you’re clearly very articulate and very intelligent. I assume that you’re “educated,” but that has become a misnomer today anyway, so I stopped considering that before I even got out of college.

As for the local affiliates, I’m sorry for them, but the fact is that every time I’ve seen a local CBS affiliate’s news broadcast in numerous towns across the land, they all seem to have been “toeing the line” along with their liberal colleagues in NYC. I think it’s time they felt a little sting. I don’t think that this little debacle/victory (depends on your point of view) will bring down CBS or any of the affiliates; I doubt anyone will lose a job that they can’t afford to lose. But a little sting as a reminder that the people are actually watching, and not just eating their spoon-fed crap without consideration, will bring about some thought about changing their ways.

All of that having been said, I doubt that we will ever completely eradicate the bias that is out there without actually shaking these guys to their core. That, unfortunately, will mean basically bringing these guys to their knees. Sounds easy enough, but it means more than a few short-term activists; the American people will have to become so incensed that they will, en masse, flat-out refuse to watch any of the “big three” for quite some time.

The day that comes will be a great one, but I’m not holding my breath that it will happen in my lifetime.

Keep up the good work! I’ll be watching your blog from now on!

By: La Shawn

La Shawn — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 23:39:39 +0000

“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls,
And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles;
Lest the LORD see it, and it displease Him,
And He turn away His wrath from him.”

I stand convicted.

By: Tim (Random Observations)

Tim (Random Observations) — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 23:35:12 +0000

Not to be moralising. But none of us, I think, wants the pressure to be let up so soon.

By: Tim (Random Observations)

Tim (Random Observations) — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 23:33:44 +0000

Proverbs 24:17-18

By: Mike from Virginia Patriots

Mike from Virginia Patriots — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 23:05:05 +0000

CBS is going to have an ‘investigation’ but it’s just an academic exercise. They’re not going to confront the real issue — that the journalism profession has become so pervasively left-wing that none of the top news organizations are capable of reporting objectively. This CBS News producer made no bones about her politics, apparently, and the higher-ups not only didn’t mind they put her on assignment to ‘get’ President Bush.