Hello, loyal readers and fellow bloggers. I need your help. I’m conducting an informal survey about the role (if any) small- and medium-sized bloggers played in Rathergate.
I haven’t defined “small” and “medium” because I want to hear from a wide range of people. If you believe you’ve contributed to the exposure of the forged Killian memos or just the flow of information, I want to hear from you.
If you’ve been following the scandal from the beginning as I have, you may know that Power Line and Little Green Footballs did some independent investigating of their own. As a result of the increased traffic, the Power Line bloggers posted this entry. I commend them for the hours put into the ongoing investigation. They’ve been interviewed and written about by magazines such as Newsweek and Time.
Small- and medium-sized bloggers, how closely did you follow the story? Did you conduct an independent investigation or interview people?
Readers, I’d also like to hear from you. Which blogs did you check everyday to find out the latest news about the scandal? Only the big bloggers or some of the minor players?
Please spread the word far and wide about my survey. You may leave a comment on this post or e-mail me or both. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks for your support! 
Update: CBS is still in the discredited document business. Check Power Line. Allahpundit does more investigating.
Ace of Spades: What’s this about a NYT reporter tipping off Islamic terrorists?
Reminder:: I’ve disabled linking in comments because of spam.
Update II: More Memogate/Rathergate stuff from HobbsOnline.
INDC Journal says Texas has launched a criminal investigation into the forged Killian memos.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 52 comments }
I also followed coverage by Little Green Footballs and Power Line as well as Rathergate-specific commentary on numerous mid-sized blogs. My posts focused primarily on the Mary Mapes-as-stereotypical-leftist-”journalist” angle and cited traditional media sources for jumping-off points.
I followed The Mclaughlin Group; just kidding. I looked at voxday and powerline as well as listen to WMAL in Washington D.C.
LaShawn, I use my blog as a method of lowering my blood pressure. When I saw that memo, purportedly being dated from the 70’s, I blew my top, and went to my blog. I was a legal secretary in the 70’s, and I used every type of typewriter. I used to try to recreate the tiny ‘th’. I would try turning the platen to a half space up, but the scripts were the same size, so I tried changing the typeball from pica to elite, and I STILL couldn’t make it look right! I knew it was a phony from the address line! Plus, as I mentioned on my blog, I did a little research and found that there were no 5 digit mailbox numbers until the mid ’80’s, I believe around 1986, when the four digits were added to the zip codes. They used the current address of P. O. Box 34567! Whoever forged it, wasn’t terribly bright, and was probably in their 20’s!
LaShawn, I followed the story closely (several times a day) via The Drudge Report, Little Green Footballs, The Kerry Spot, and Hugh Hewitt. (BTW: I also listened to the Hugh Hewitt radio show on my commute from work to home.) Less frequently, I checked in with Powerline and Captain’s Quarters (say, three times a week). I did not conduct an independent investigation or interview people.
From time to time, I learned of an interesting perspective from middle or small-sized blogs when these were noticed by the bigger blogs. I followed the link and when I liked what I saw, I inserted the new blog into one of my blogrolls for weekly or monthly visits.
LaShawn, I followed the story very closely as well. I am a relatively new blogger and I tend to check serveral sites a day including Townhall, Rathergate.com, little green footballs, Hugh Hewitt, Power Line, Wonkette (strictly for the profanity), and I listen to a large variety of radio and tv news on Satellite Radio on the way to work. I recently signed a petition at danrathermustgo.com because I think the whole thing stinks, especially since it’s not the first time Mr. Rather has injected flagrant partisanship into his broadcasts. Finally, I now run my own blog at dalyblog.blogspot.com, which so far, isn’t visted by many people, if any. But like one of the previous commetors said, my blog acts as a way for me to blow off steam on issues that really get under my skin. I’m hoping that more people will visit as I expand.
I checked Instapundit and LGF and surfed off the links they provided for a good 360 degree view.
I didn’t really follow Rathergate very closely. The only site I followed on it was Beldar. As a former counsel for CBS he had an interesting point-of-view.
I followed Rathergate by reading the blogs I always read (LGF & Powerline were particularly useful, though yours, Hog on Ice, and a number of my other regular reads had useful tidbits), as well as Rush’s site and NRO.
As for my contribution, I’m afraid all I did was an entry wherein I mused that James Carville’s ranty quote about Zell Miller (following his speech at the GOP convention) seemed to fit Rather much better than it did Miller. Not too useful, I’ll admit, but it made me chuckle.
I checked National Review Online, Best of the Web from Wall Street Journal, Litte Green Footballs, Allah is in the House, Instapundit. I also dropped in on other sites including my first visit to yours last week. Keep up the good work!
LaShawn, I followed the bouncing little green football on this one. It was shocking how quickly and how accurately they called it. Makes me feel all warm and yummy inside to know that there is such unrelenting brain power on our side.
My main contribution was to be a “high-trust” site for a very small group of people who read my blog but don’t read other conservative blogs — these are people I know from other places and who disagree with me regularly on issues. You wouldn’t know it from the comments, but that’s because there seldom are any…
And, like many others, my blog’s mainly a place for me to vent. This is reflected in the tremendous eclecticism (not to say schizophrenia) of my topics.
I read Instapundit, WorldMagBlog, Belmont Club, Andrew Sullivan, and of course your Corner.
I went to RatherBiased, Power Line, LGF, LaShawn Barber’s Corner, Allah, Country Store, INDC Journal, the Kerry Spot, Rathergate, Hugh Hewitt, to name a few. All of the above had great coverage and links.
I contributed a thimble’s worth to the ocean that was the CBS News debacle at (one of) my blogs. Bascially, I wanted to see if I could reproduce something they guys at Pacetown claimed they did (type one of the Memos into Word for an exact fit, a’la LGF) but The Talent Show claimed was bunk (long story short, like Pacetown I also got an identical match). Got a nice little bounce in traffic from that post.
As for following the story, I first came upon it from Instapundit and LGF, but ended up also following it pretty closely at InDC, Wizbang, NRO, Allahpundit and Pacetown.
Drudge mostly.
Thanks for the comments, everyone! Keep ‘em coming…
Sorry about that held-up post, Nathan. I’ve disabled linking in posts due to spam.
Do you need links to specific posts? If so, I’ll have to revisit this after I wake up, and have time to delve in my archives.
I left the heavy lifting to the people like Ace, Powerline, INDC, and Allah that were doing the investigation. They were doing a hellacious job of investigative blogging, IMO.
I concentrated mostly on information flow: gathering links to what was being said where, and aggregating them in the DailySpam! updates that are a regular feature of ours. I had an especial amount of fun in tracking the dismay and outrage over the Rathergate blogging that was running rampant at the DU and in some leftist blogs.
Other than that, I did a bit of analysis, and Sneakeasy’s, IrreconcilableMusings and I did a *LOT* of truly rude filking poking fun at Rather and the media/lefty outrage over it. *g*
We also serve who merely filk. ;]
PS: I think whotendsthefires qualifies as a “Small to medium site”, but we make up for it by being loud and racous. ;]
Nothing specific, Ironbear. I’ll check archives myself. I need the names of blogs and bloggers so I can compile a list of the most-often mentioned.
Sounds good. Not that I’m lazy or anything… well, ok I *am lazy, but…
You’ll find most of the RatherGate stuff in my archives in the “News you can lose” and “The ‘Bear’s Cave” categories.
I seem to have been the site’s designated Rathergater, kind of by default. We’re not much of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy over there – we can’t even coordinate three bloggers on a group blog. We all just kind of do what strikes our fancy at the time. ;]
Trying to think… Commissar over at The Politiburo Diktat also did a *lot* of Rathergate analysis and links gathering. So did Rusty at Mypetjawa. You might also check my blogbrother, Blake over at Laughing Wolf – although I believe he got in on it late due to being out of town for most of it.
They also concentrated more in information collating and dissemination, but the Commissar did do a bit of origional investigation as well, IIRC.
Just wanted to add, I think this survey of yours is a great idea. It’ll be interesting to see an overall picture of how all of the lower profile weblogs contributed to the whole.
I followed it from the start for about a week and even posted a few links to PowerLine and LGF. However, after the first week, I started getting ‘burned out’ on it as I knew they were forgeries and there appeared to be nothing very ‘new’ coming out.
I doubt I did much to contribute to the flow of information, but I did add my two cents in for what it was worth.
Light blogging today because I’m entranced by my new toy: a Treo Smartphone, a combination PDA and cell phone.
This is the coolest thing. I’m writing this comment from a wireless device! I can even blog from here. Substantive blogging to resume tomorrow.
I am going to step away from the crowd. Most of what I read about the CBS fiasco was written by a dear friend who is a writer with a major newspaper outlet.
I contributed very little because one does not follow the crowd and write about what everyone else does or you risk becoming lost in the mad rush. My belief is that there are peripheral issues that are under reported, which is where my blog will fit in during the future.
If everyone is writing about it all blogs begin to look the same. I link to stories I find interesting, such as Cornell defunding the schools conservative newspaper. These issues are vital to conservatives but fly under the radar of many of the “Whopper” sites.
For magazine writing, it is different to a degree but my basic philosophy stays the same.
Thank all of you for the wonderful writing. I feel privileged to read the material you post.
La Shawn
Isn’t wireless grand!
By the way, I’ve been getting my info on Rathergate from Drudge.
La Shawn, I added you to my links today. I enjoy your site so much, want to share it with my pals. Hope you don’t mind.
In re; your new toy: Oh goodie, we can look forward to you blogging when away from home/office!
Dear La Shawn Barber,
I am over 60 but have done computer programming since I was
16. I remember pica or elite (10 per inch or 12 per inch).
With mainframe IBM in mid 1980’s could not do proportional fonts. All the things we take for granted with word processors including MS Word were not available 30 years ago. Our first word processor was word perfect circa 1990.
James M. Barber
LaShawn
Just a reader and I don’t remember where I saw the beginning of the story early Sept. 9, but Mr. Newcomer closed the subject for me. Like James, I’ve been using computers since 1969 and I knew that those docs were not printed in 1972.
I work nights, and don’t watch much TV. The newspaper I where I work has said little to nothing about the whole thing. All of our papers (our flagship is USA Today) are slanted toward just about anything liberal. I get my editorial fix from bloggers like Instapundit, James Lileks, Vodkapundit, Michelle Malkin, yours and Lt. Smash and Wiggles. I follow most links, too.
Let me be clear: Bush gets my vote (got in the last election, too). Heir and beneficiary of his father’s experience and information, he’s our second shot at Bush Sr.’s wisdom. Kerry is too “come-here” for me. A late arrival selected by his party, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I remember some of his silliness from around the last election, when he compared himself to JFK. Don’t know as he’s grown up since then, either.
Anyway: Slanting and lack of followup seem to be the rule on network television. Find a story and go on the air. And God bless them, if there’s no story, then let’s do a story on that! Newspapers are the same.
Slanting and super-intense followup seem to be the rule in the blogosphere. Find a story and beat it to death. A regular round robin starts with each topic and goes until everyone has given their opinion, even the readers. I prefer the grass roots democracy (or anarchy?) of the Web. I can Google my way into the topic whenever I like. Network TV can so easily freeze us out, and smaller “stories” are dropped in favor of what sells airtime.
Bottom line: I can scan through several hundred cable channels right now and come up empty-handed on the topic. I saw one short crawl on Headline News, (one night!), that was the only reference I’ve ever seen on TV, due to my non-primetime viewing.
My own independent research consisted of having my husband dig out his old Army paperwork circa 1995-1999 to show me exactly what “authentic documents” looked like. Worked for me.
And, I did present my findings on my blog for my four readers.
I did some stuff on this on my smallish blog:
Here: double-plus-ungood.blogspot.com/2004/09/bush-memos.html
here:
double-plus-ungood.blogspot.com/2004/09/more-on-memos.html
here:
double-plus-ungood.blogspot.com/2004/09/matthew-yglesias-is-wrong.html
and here:
double-plus-ungood.blogspot.com/2004/09/well-lets-hope-we-can-put-this-behind.html
My sources were Obsidian Wings, Boing Boing, http://www.ibmcomposer.org, shapeofdays.typepad.com, and http://www.flounder.com/bush2.htm
My tiny yet insignificant role in this episode was to build a permanent repository for the creative mockery it spawned (www.secondbreakfast.net/archives/000832.html).
The only independant investigation I did was to look at military documents on Kerry’s own website. Results here: http://www.secondbreakfast.net/archives/000823.html
As for which ones I read: many. Everybody linked to everybody but I think Power Line was the one I usually went to first, then Allah.
La Shawn,
Inspired by Bill at INDC Journal, we at Blog o’RAM maintained a running Scorecard of experts and witnesses on both sides of the story. Bill and a number of other readers kept us honest, pointing out our mistakes and pointing us to statements and retractions that we missed. It wasn’t reporting, it was tabulation; but we hope the tabulation helped some people keep the players straight.
(And at the end, the Scorecard stood at CBS 0, Truth 16. Yet somehow Mr. Rather STILL can’t get himself to admit the documents were forgeries.)
I did a bit of research on this. Basically, I repeated the Word test, and my jaw dropped as I typed and the words wrapped. I also printed some copies, held over original against a light source and noticed the identical bitmaps.
I made a bitmap image file, expanding a couple of letters, to demonstrate kerning, showing how letters encroach on each others’ space with Word, which cannot happen even with a proportional space typewriter.
I reported most of it here.
Of course, being a true “low volume” blog, it is hard to imagine having any real effect. Nevertheless, my grain of sand did get tossed into the blogosphere’s Grand Canyon.
I first heard of the fake documents through the Hugh Hewitt and Powerline blogs.
I downloaded the documents from the CBS News web site. I am 50-years old and grew up with typewriters. I’ve spent over 20 years in technical publishing. As soon I saw the PDF copies of the documents I said “Come on, a typewriter didn’t do these.” I had the same issues with formatting and spacing as the document forensics had with the docs.
I then followed the story on the other blogs (National Review Kerry Spot) and web sites such as Weekly Standard, American Spectator, and Drudge.
Of course, at the time, I wasn’t really following blogs as I do now.
I did a bit of research, posted here. I am old enough to have used an IBM Selectric many times, and know that even proportional space fonts did not support kerning, as described in my post. Prior to word processing, thas was the domain of typesetting equipment.
I don’t imagine a small blog such as mine having any real effect, but felt this was a validiting “stake in the ground”.
LaShawn,
I followed the RatherGate issue closely on my blog, which I’m sure would count as a small blog. My traffic went up by over an order of magnitude after one of my posts on the topic was linked by RatherBiased.com. I had several posts on the issue.
Sorry, article is on my blog at nonboxthinking.blogspot.com, titled “it’s too easy”, for those interested.
Jeremy had some good stuff early on.
Allahpundit, mostly. But he links to a zillion other blogs all the time, so I’d have to include those as well–if I could remember them.
We–that is, the three bloggers at QandO–followed it pretty closely. I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical of the initial forgery claims, and I stayed on the fence for quite awhile.
Our main “contribution”, I think, qando.net/archives/004070.htm was this post, which was linked in Dr Joseph Newcomer’s pretty flounder.com/bush2.htm definitive analysis.
He (Newcomer) even got a Drudge link, and I was curious to find out what second-hand Drudge traffic was like, but it only lasted a few moments, before Drudge pulled it. Presumably, it fried–or threatened to fry–the guys server. C’est la vie.
LaShawn:
I checked your blog, in addition to Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, Instapundit, Martinipundit, Vodkapundit and Michelle Malkin.
Hope that helps!
PC
I get all my RaTHer gate info from LGF, Drudge, and The Puppy Blender.
Powerline and RatherBiased.com were the two main blogs I checked out on this. Didn’t even bother to do any ‘independent’ research on this myself because they really had it covered.
Vive la blogosphere!
I went to RedState.Org and then later RatherGate
I followed the CBS affair, mostly by reading the obvious blogs. On my blog, I did 3 related posts…on 9/15, a post focusing on CBS’ probable motivations for their behavior, including matters of ego as well as bias. Then, on 9/19, a post relating the tension between blogs and MSM to some general concepts of business strategy (challengers vs incumbents). Another on the challengers vs incombents issues today.
Probably more than you really wanted to know….
I helped some with the flow of mockery, if not actual information. As far as heavy lifting goes, Rathergate.com has been my main stop. Ace has had some good stuff too. It’s all happened to quickly, and everybody’s linking to each other so furiously, it’s tough to remember where you heard what.
I didn’t have a blog at the time (since remedied), but did get a mention on PowerLine for some comments I made in an email to them. I also found a wider range of blogs to follow after clicking on links there, at LGF, at Captain’s Quarters, and on the NRO Corner – including yours! Having 26 years’ experience in Air Force military correspondence made it easy to spot the inconsistencies in military abbreviations and terminology, but no one dug deeper than the Big Five that worried this thing to death – LGF, PowerLine, Captain’s Quarters, INDC, and Allah. My list of sites to visit daily grew to three times its previous size because of RatherGate, so I should be thankful…
Good Evening,
I read several blogs that have already been mentioned.
Bill INDC Journal
Michelle Malkin
Little Green Footballs
Donald Sensing, quite a bit of One Hand Clapping
Dean Esmay
Stayed mostly with Michelle
I wasn’t blogging at the time.
I first heard about the questions about the documents through a link to the SwiftVets message board posted on the NoPC {libertarian} message board around 8 am the day after the broadcast. From there I quickly found Powerline, who had jumped on the story with both feet.
From there, I also followed it at the KerrySpot on NRO, Hewitt, Polipundit, Allah, and LGF.
My only potential contribution to the story was a theory on David Van Os – Burkett’s former attorney, Texas Democratic heavyweight and candidate for the TSC – and his possible involvement beyond typical lawyerly duties. I tipped PoliPundit on that one. I’m not claiming I was the first to think of it, but I hadn’t seen any earlier references.
That may seem a minor point, and is probably meaningless, but the importance at this stage in the story of finding out WHO actually created the fakes cannot be understated. I wish that story was being pursued with the same vigor as exposing the fakes as fakes.
I followed PowerLine having found it just a few days before 60 Minutes aired. I felt like I had an inside “scoop” to what was really going on thanks to the blogs.
I am a reader and a commenter. For the most part I think the small blogs and the commenters were mostly cheerleaders, questioners and humorists. My daughter and I both rewrote Shakespeare for humour over at Donald Sensing. I commented a little at lgf and powerline with specific questions on the minutia.
Good morning to you all. I am afraid I didn’t even know what a blogger was. I DO NOW and I thank you all for your dedication to ferreting the information that was needed to put “Rathergate” in perspective. It is also personally gratifying to know that their are others “out there” who have similar thoughts. I was beginning to wonder if I was on a different planet or something! Seriously, I do want to thank you and wish you good luck in your endeavours.
I used “Political Blog For The Politically Incorrect”
Those in the know, know that William Webb.org is in the forefront of the latest breaking stories.
Fair and accurate!
Randy
Comments on this entry are closed.