|
Contributors
Cliff Kincaid- Contributor
Cliff Kincaid, serves as editor of the Accuracy
in Media (AIM)
Report. A veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff has
appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and
The O'Reilly Factor, where he debated O'Reilly on global
warming, the death penalty,
and the homosexual agenda. He was a guest co-host on CNN's Crossfire
(filling in for Pat Buchanan) in the 1980s, where he confronted
the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. with evidence of Libyan
involvement in international terrorism. Through his America's
Survival, Inc., organization (www.usasurvival.org), he has been
an advocate on behalf of the families of victims of terrorism
and has published reports and held conferences critical of the
United Nations. His articles have appeared in the Washington
Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events, Insight, and
other publications. He served on the staff of Human Events for
several years and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor
for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at
his Freedom Alliance educational foundation. He has written or
co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign
policy issues. Cliff is married and has three sons.[go to
Kincaid index]
 CBS
News Vs. The White House
The
administration is not helping itself...
[Cliff Kincaid] 9/15/04
If
there is some lingering doubt as to whether or not the CBS
News documents
on President Bush’s service in the National
Guard are fakes, the White House has itself partly to blame.
It continues to act as if one or more of the documents may be
legitimate. Considering the fact that the White House refuses
to condemn the documents outright as forgeries, the media cannot
be blamed for saying that the jury is still out. Clearly, however,
the burden of proof is now on CBS News to validate the controversial
documents.
USA Today reported
that its own editors initially accepted them as legitimate
in part because the White House “did not
challenge the memos’ authenticity” and released copies
of the documents to reporters. The White House, which was given
copies of the documents by CBS, distributed them by e-mail to
reporters. USA Today says it obtained copies of the documents
independently, soon after the 60 Minutes segment aired on Wednesday,
September 8, “from a person with knowledge of Texas Air
National Guard operations.”
The administration may have given CBS News the benefit of the
doubt, assuming that the documents provided by a major news organization
were legitimate and deciding to release them so that other news
organizations could make their own independent judgments. These
other media organizations could, of course, have gotten the documents
directly from CBS.
On the other hand, if the White House had refused to release
them, saying their authenticity was in doubt, the administration
would have been under pressure to prove they were fakes. That
was a case it did not want to make. As it happened, bloggers,
conservative news personalities and organizations, and several
mainstream news organizations did stories questioning the documents.
This part of the controversy, demonstrating the power of alternative
media and competition among news organizations, has clearly played
to the advantage of the White House.
The Washington Post
reports that First Lady Laura Bush “became
the first person from the White House to say the documents are
likely forgeries.” Her charge was made on a radio show
five days after CBS News cited the documents on 60 Minutes.
Yet, the White House continues to act as if one or more of
them may be authentic. In a September 14 Washington Times story,
Joseph Curl reports that White House communications director
Dan Bartlett actually cited one of the disputed documents to
rebut the accusation that Bush disobeyed a direct order to take
a physical exam. While Bartlett cited the document to defend
Bush, he said that he was making the assumption for purposes
of discussion that it was authentic.
The Times quoted
Bartlett as saying, “Even if you take
the documents at face value and said that they were authentic,
you can tell by one of the memos where it said that he talked
to Bush about his flight exam. We obviously interpret that as
he was working with his commanders on the very issue as to whether
he needed to take it or not. He obviously ended up not taking
it because he was not flying.”
Why is the White House citing information from an allegedly
fake document to rebut charges in another of the allegedly fake
documents? Why assume the documents are real when so many questions
have been raised about them?
The Times then adds, “Mr. Bartlett said he had showed
the documents—broadcast last week by CBS News and questioned
by many analysts—to Mr. Bush ‘and he did not remember
them.’” The purported memos, of course, were not
intended for Bush, and he would have no reason to remember them.
But he was obviously familiar with the facts of the case. This
exchange raises the intriguing possibility that one or more of
the documents may turn out to be fake but the information in
them may be legitimate. Bartlett was certainly acting as if the
information in them may be correct and therefore deserves a response.
The White House has to figure that the mysterious source who
allegedly provided the documents to CBS News and USA Today could
emerge, possibly with evidence of their authenticity, or perhaps
other documents. On September 13, Dan Rather once again offered
a defense of the documents, saying the news organization continues
to believe they are authentic. But Rather and CBS News have taken
such a beating from their colleagues that they may have to produce
that source in order to salvage their own reputations. CRO
copyright
2004 Accuracy in Media
§
|
