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Jan. 6, 2009

Caroline B. Glick: Iran's Gazan diversion?

Dennis Prager: Dissecting Dershowitz

Jan. 5, 2009

Mark Steyn: Gaza has its version of rocket scientists

Mona Charen: The So-called International Community

Jan. 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Having a holy tongue

Caroline B. Glick : Hamas' march to victory

Dec. 31, 2008

Dore Gold: Is Israel Using 'Disproportionate Force'?

Renee Enna:: Succulent 'stewp' is quick, easy fix

Dec. 30, 2008

Jonathan Mark: Israel's Response Is Disproportionate

Wesley Pruden: It's time once more to blame the Jews

Dec. 29, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Chanukah: 'Give me Judaism or give me death'

Michael B. Oren: A crisis and an opportunity

Dec. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: When the past meets the future

Caroline B. Glick: Iran and Hamas do Christmas

Dec. 24, 2008

Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Judaism's Santa problem

The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman CHANUKAH FORK-FINGER FOOD FEAST

Dec. 23, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: Repeating failure in Gaza

Dec. 22, 2008

Rabbi Boruch Leff: Too many Jews today are missing the intended purpose of one of Judaism's most beloved holidays

Barry Rubin: Liar, liar, pants on cease-fire

Dec. 19, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Final Battlefield

Caroline B. Glick: Betting on a dead horse

Dec. 18, 2008

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Juicy Chef's hella top, hella bottom, hallelujah in the middle

Craig Crossman : More gifts for geeks --- and those who love them

Dec. 17, 2008

Dion Nissenbaum: Israel kicks out outrageously biased UN official

Craig Crossman : Gifts for geeks --- and those who love them

Dec. 16, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Gift of Joy

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Uncle Shariah

Dec. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Expert witnesses who put themselves first

Barry Rubin: What they say isn't what you hear

Dec. 12, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Can the Bible be a secular language?

Caroline B. Glick: What a PM Netanyahu faces from Washington

Dec. 11, 2008

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Our role in the Divine's global corporation, World Inc.

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: A retro-tasting pareve pot pie made with a light hand

Dec. 10, 2008

Rabbi Paysach J. Krohn: Groom admits he was caught "red handed"

Kara McGuire: No money for gifts? No problem

Dec. 9, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Can I make my boss treat me fairly?

Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Next Steps in the Indo-Pakistani Crisis

Dec. 8, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: 'Chanukah Bush' flap and graciousness

Mark Steyn: Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable

Dec. 5, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Truth --- The Key to Gratitude

Jeff Jacoby: UN's obsession is grotesque and Orwellian

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 12, 2005 / 2 Shevat, 5765

It may look like a duck, walk like a duck and quack like a duck, but it's really just a parakeet

By Jack Kelly


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Richard Nixon would have described CBS's report on Rathergate as "taking the modified limited hangout route." The "investigation" into the reliance on forged documents for a Sixty Minutes Wednesday story on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard:


  • Failed to identify the source of the forgeries.

  • Acknowledged only what has been on the public record for months.

  • Buried incriminating detail in appendices.

  • Backed away from the obvious conclusion from the facts presented, that the story was a hit piece designed to influence the election, and

  • Smeared those who exposed the forgeries.


    In response to the pseudo investigation, CBS took pseudo remedial action. Haldeman and Ehrlichman, er, Senior Vice President Betsy West, Sixty Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy, and segment producer Mary Mapes were fired. A new position (Standards and Practices) was created to make sure that in the future, investigative reporters follow "proper processes."


    Escaping the axe were Dan Rather, the "reporter" on the segment, and CBS News President Andrew Heyward, who screened it before it was broadcast.


    "I'm of the school that if my name is on it, I'm responsible," Rather had told the Los Angeles Times. But at CBS, taking responsibility apparently does not include accepting the consequences for irresponsibility.


    CBS Chairman Les Moonves excused Rather on the grounds that despite his title of "managing editor," he's just a talking head.


    When reporters Jayson Blair of the New York Times and Jack Kelley of USA Today were found to have made up stories, the editors of those newspapers were forced to resign.


    To recap for those whose memories of the controversy have dimmed, on Sept. 8th, Sixty Minutes Wednesday broadcast a report alleging that President Bush had received favored treatment in the Texas Air National Guard, and had disobeyed a direct order to take a flight physical. The report was based on four "memoranda to the file" allegedly written by LtCol. Jerry Killian, now deceased, who had been Bush's commanding officer.


    Web loggers   —   chiefly John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson of Power Line   —   demonstrated that the memoranda had been typed on a computer using Microsoft Word, which hadn't been invented at the time the memos purportedly were written. They also collected testimony that the format of the memos didn't follow Air Force procedures at the time.


    Killian's widow and son said Killian didn't keep a personal file, and wouldn't have said the things that were said in the memoranda. Killian's secretary at the time said she didn't type the memos. Killian couldn't type.


    The CBS investigation, conducted by former AP chieftain Louis Boccardi and former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, revealed that of the four document experts Sixty Minutes consulted before the broadcast, none would authenticate the documents, and two expressed concern that they were fake. Mapes got the documents from Bill Burkett, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army National Guard, and a flake whose previous criticisms of Bush had proven false. Rather called Burkett an "unimpeachable source."


    Burkett first said he got the documents from an Army warrant officer who had worked in the Texas Guard headquarters. He now says he got them from a woman, "Lucy Ramirez," who no one has been able to find.


    Boccardi and Thornburgh found 10 "serious defects" in the story, including Mary Mapes' call to John Kerry campaign aide Joe Lockhart, " a clear conflict of interest that created the appearance of a political bias." CBS compounded the initial failing with its "strident defense" of the broadcast by issuing "inaccurate press statements" and airing "misleading stories," Boccardi and Thornburgh said.


    But all this was just a series of "errors in judgment" brought about by "haste" to get the story before a competitor did, Boccardi and Thornburgh concluded. No bias here. It may look like a duck, walk like a duck and quack like a duck, but it's really just a parakeet.


    Despite its many flaws, the report has been accepted as definitive by a "mainstream" media that doesn't want the issue of media bias probed. But the truth will out. "We're a dying business, and this didn't help us," a CBS staffer told the New York Times.

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    JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. Comment by clicking here.

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    © 2005, Jack Kelly