The Daily Brief

To: Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and other Major Media
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Getting With the Program

1. I am so sorry that you are only now coming to realize that James Fallows had a point in his 1996 polemic “Breaking the News”, an exhaustive examination of the manner in which the major news outlets— especially television news— warped the democratic process. Eight years ago, Mr. Fallows’ work included chapters on the isolation of the big media stars from ordinary working Americans, a lengthy exposition on the contempt in which big media was held by much of their audience, and a number of suggestions on how major media could reclaim a degree of respect. For his pains, I have the impression that Mr. Fallows was written off by big media as some sort of cranky iconoclast, but while he did not foresee the explosion of internet blogging that would bring about a sort of citizens’ media which he thought would be necessary, I do not think the debacle of the Killian memos came entirely as a surprise to an otherwise astute and knowledgeable observer such as Mr. Fallows.

2. Gentleman, be assured it is a debacle, and whining about being “demonized” and the “object of a kind of political jihad”, and bitching about the expertise of a bunch of people in their pajamas does not change the fact that technology has given a large number of people the means of subverting your role as gatekeepers, checking out original sources for ourselves, and fact-checking your flaccid chair-born asses from here to the Arctic Circle and back again. The days of being the kindly and benevolent provider of “The News” to the backward and ignorant masses are now officially over. The masses, as befit the free people of a large, technologically sophisticated and prosperous nation, are not in the mood to accept your pronouncements unquestioningly, not when we have alternatives available.

3. Which brings up another point: who the heck died and appointed you all to be media gods, beyond criticism or question? Exactly, what are your qualifications, aside from being able stand in front of a camera with a suitably somber mien, and read broadcast copy at 14 lines per minute? J-school graduate? Well, being basically literate is a good thing, but most English majors can equal that. Research? Original thinking? Oh, please. Until two or three years ago, knowledge of a subject, ability to write in an interesting manner, a wide-ranging intellect, curiosity about the darnedest imaginable topics— until the explosion of the blogosphere, all this had no outlet save for letters to the editor. And now, it is the most marvelous intellectual smorgasbord, available to anyone with internet access. And anyone with the interest can have their own, for not very much at all. Look over your shoulder, gentlemen— they’ve been gaining on you. Why should we pay any mind to you when we have subject-matter experts in all kind of arcane knowledge, and eyewitness on the ground in far distant places?

4. Look, we’ve known for years that there is bias in news: there are some stories and issues that are treated gently, like a pearl of great value, and there are others that receive the inquisitional treatment. If you are truly unbiased, this is something that you will have to address, sooner or later. It’s the pretense of being unbiased that brought down the wrath of the pajamamati on Mr. Rather’s head— that, and basing a political hit-piece in an election season on documents that were so clumsily produced and easily debunked, by a large number of experts. I never like to attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by stupidity, but ummm… which of the two was the reason for this? And why should those responsible expect to have any credibility as news professionals now?

5. We are beginning to wonder what other stories may be, or may have been based on equally spurious documentation, never put out where the mass expertise of the blogosphere could take a good hard analytical look at it. Please don’t piss on the news-consuming audience, and claim that it is raining, not when the blogosphere includes people who have the ability to do all sorts of tests on the moisture falling down. The emperor has, in fact, been promenading though town in his birthday suit; the kindly disposed would hand him a dressing gown, and show him how to do a google search.

6. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I am sure; you people really, really need to get out more. Or at least, read Mr. Fallows’ most instructive book.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

Ratherbiased.com has fingered tin-foil hat Bush hater Bill Burkett as the source of the forged documents:

Bill Burkett, the disgruntled former National Guardsman widely believed to be the source of the disputed documents shown last week on ’60 Minutes,’ has been colluding with CBS News for quite some time. RatherBiased.com can report that Burkett has been giving documents to Dan Rather and his colleagues. These documents have been used in CBS’s reporting.

On February 12, 2004, Dan Rather reported that there was “more election-year squabbling today over President Bush’s National Guard service record during the Vietnam War.”

Correspondent John Roberts reported CBS had obtained a document along with the writer of an anti-Bush book.

“In a six-year-old letter to Texas lawmakers, obtained by CBS News and in the new book Bush’s War for Reelection, former Guard Officer Bill Burkett claims that in 1997, Guard commanders purged Mr. Bush’s records to ‘make sure nothing will embarrass the governor during his re-election campaign or if he runs for president.'”

The letter was given to CBS and author Jim Moore, who also wrote Bush’s Brain.

Burkett, who lives in central Texas near Abilene, believes that Bush is personally responsible for denying him National Guard medical benefits, has been making a number of charges against Bush beginning during his time as governor of Texas. The former guardsman has been trying to get news organizations to report on his complaints but most have been loathe to relay his charges because they are denied by a number of people, including his friends.

Most likely, Burkett’s liaison at the network was Dallas-based CBS producer Mary Mapes who has been pursuing allegations that President Bush evaded his military obligations for five years according to network officials.

This From Mike Shelton at the Orange County Register:

This from Ratherbiased.com:

CBS News is scheduled to release a statement to the media shortly but chances are that the Eyemark Network is going to stick to its story.
While the release is being carefully crafted with the assistance of the Viacom legal department, Dan Rather and his associates are directing members of the media to an interview which Rather did with the highly influential New York Observer media columnist Joe Hagan in which the 72-year-old anchor blasts his critics in no uncertain terms.

“I think the public, even decent people who may be well-disposed toward President Bush, understand that powerful and extremely well-financed forces are concentrating on questions about the documents because they can’t deny the fundamental truth of the story,” Rather told the paper. “If you can’t deny the information, then attack and seek to destroy the credibility of the messenger, the bearer of the information. And in this case, it’s change the subject from the truth of the information to the truth of the documents.

“This is your basic fogging machine, which is set up to cloud the issue, to obscure the truth,” he said.

So first it’s “some guy in his living room in pajamas,” now it’s the vast right-wing conspiracy.

Ratherbiased.com reminds us that this isn’t the first time 60 Minutes has relied upon fake memos:

Lesley Stahl apologized for it back then, but currently the network is still holding out on apologizing for memos Dan Rather used as proof that George W. Bush was a misfit in the National Guard. The memo cited in 1997 was supposedly written by Rudy Camacho, a customs official whom CBS suggested was linked to a drug cartel. The memos today are supposedly written by Jerry Killian, a National Guard officer whom CBS claims gave preferential treatment to George W. Bush.

To: Dan Rather and 60 Minutes
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Featured Documents

1. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that if something looked/sounded too good to be true…. the chances were, it probably wasn’t?
2. Scroll down to the story “Sixty-First Minute”. It’s right there below the story about the AP reporter who reported booing…
3. Mainstream media is just not having all that good a week. I fear their energies are all devoted to avoiding describing the Chechen terrorists as such.
4. Seriously, you really need to get out a lot more.

Sincerely
Sgt. Mom

Well, the Swiftboat Veterans story has finally broken out in the main stream media outlets; and I swear, NPR’s Juan Williams actually sounded rather aggrieved this morning, being made to eat the broccoli, along with everyone else. So far, they are saucing it with the assumption that of course this is all part of the Dark Lord Rove’s evil plan… for what other reason could their be, but politics as (dirty) as usual?
I think it is a great deal more complicated than that, and believe me, if I am one of the Dark Lord’s puppet pawns, than the contract and paycheck are conspicuously absent, and you don’t have to look any farther for a motivation than to the experience of Vietnam veterans; those of them that are not John Kerry.

Those veterans served their full tour, and did their jobs honorably and to the best of their abilities, even if it was on a rear-echelon base, or out at sea, or in a hospital. Some may have been wounded, some were decorated, some volunteered for the riskiest assignments, some looked for a safer billet, some were traumatized, others were unscathed, but not unchanged by the experience of being plunked down into an alien place and circumstances for a year. Just about all of them, contrary to what the popular media would show you, came back and got on with their lives. Some of them stayed on in the military, the rest became CPAs, doctors, teachers, technicians, police officers, actors and a hundred other professions, with more or less ordinary lives. And what did they get for their service, when they stepped off the Freedom Bird, and for a good long time after? Spit on occasionally, sometimes physically harassed, called baby-killers and mercenaries, despised and, painted in the popular media as unstable, violent drug-abusing degenerates… the list of injury and indignity went on and on, even when the war was long over.

I remember veterans being advised to not include military service on resumes and job applications, and the way that the older NCOs who had been there never, ever talked about it, unless among friends and very, very drunk, Gunny Kev confessing that he had volunteered for three more tours, since he could stick being shot at by the VC, but not being called a baby-killer by Americans. The subject was unmentionable, outside the military family, and even inside, people were pretty tight-lipped. On a Christmas night in Greenland, I was sitting between the public affairs officer, and the senior air traffic controller, talking of nothing much in particular. Then the PAO, rather lubricated, let it slip that in a previous service incarnation, he had been an Army infantryman, and how in the field they never washed, because the smell of soap would give you away, and the air traffic controller started, as if he had just been jolted by an electrical short— he also, had been an infantryman in Vietnam. Here, they had been at the same base for months, casual acquaintances for months, and yet never knew until then how much they had in common.

So, here we have people who have been proud of their service, and conduct, slammed by accusations of having committed atrocities— while war crimes committed by the VC and North Vietnamese got a free pass, falsely pictured in the media as being traumatized losers by movie producers and lazy reporters, even as they build quiet and successful lives. And as the final straw, the long bloody fight, all that sacrifice was for nothing at all. South Vietnam falls, in 1975, having been rendered politically untouchable.
So, in this year of 2004, three years after 9/11, when Vietnam is as far away in time as World War 1 was from the Korean War, irrelevant to a fight against the forces of Islamic fundamentalism, long after most of those involved have made their peace with it; here we are, going back into the jungles of 1968. John Kerry, who made his political bones as a leader of an anti-war group, rejecting his decorations, and testifying to a long series of improbable and unproven atrocities, was somehow advised that campaigning as a heroic war veteran would be just the winning ticket; that men whom he had maligned, and born false witness against had somehow magically forgotten their own experiences, their own pain, and guilt, to serve his ambitions.

The man who had no small part in creating the image of the unstable veteran, and in putting South Vietnam beyond the pale…. Oh, the response to that is anger, deep and abiding anger. I don’t know how it could have been otherwise, and I don’t know why the Democrats and Kerry advisers didn’t see it. Just anger…. Not political machinations, but anger, as unstoppable as a flood, and just as impossible to reason with.

To: Main-stream Media
Re: Potentially Imploding Aspirants for the Presidency
From: Sgt. Mom

1. I feel your pain, I really, really do. No wait, that may be a touch of heartburn. The little cafe on the ground floor does a superb breakfast taco, and their home-made salsa is – wow. Like vegetable-based napalm, you know what I mean? Just can’t stay away from it, it’s like an addiction. Just can’t stop myself, and neither can you all, apparently. That would be your sanctimonious insistence that you can really, really cover the news in an even-handed fashion, and in the meantime the biggest political story since Watergate is rumbling away under your Gucci-clad feet like a lava-dome about to blow. While certain of the smaller market traditional media, or perhaps those not so totally invested in anybody but GWB are beginning to pick up on it, you are giving the impression of a small stubborn child refusing to eat broccoli. Evasions, excuses, denial; “It’s all election spin! He was near Cambodia! And GWB was AWOL! It’s all just politically biased!” Followed by the despairing wail of “I don’t wan-n-n-na cover this story! You can’t make me!”

2. We shouldn’t have to make you cover the story, Main-stream Media— it’s your damn job. You have been telling us for years how special, and unbiased and credentialed and professional you all are, diddy-bopping down the campaign trail, being the gatekeepers of information in all forms, glowing with the nice warm satisfaction of being important, and strewing the pearls of your great wisdom and insight before us all. There is just this one little lump in the oatmeal of your self-satisfaction; anyone with a modem and a keyboard, and sufficient curiosity about the world can do an end-run around you. And anyone who has special knowledge, and can think analytically and string a couple of coherent sentences together can have a readership as wide as any of the journalistically anointed. So, here we have all these lovely investigative tools on the internet, websites and weblogs, and google, oh my— planning to utilize any of them in the near future, or are you just going to go strolling off the cliff and over the open air, until that lovely comic moment when you look down?

3. See; here’s the deal. The presidential candidate anointed and favored by all the blessed, and who has built his entire campaign on his (abbreviated) Vietnam War tour of duty and ostentatious displays of heroism and camaraderie – well, there may also be seriously whopping feet of clay involved here. A bunch of guys who served in the same unit, in the same lot of boats at the same time, well, they see him as the Eddie Haskell or Frank Burns of the Swiftboat Service— and they have sort of a different take on his much-vaunted service in those fabled times in Vietnam. They don’t see him as fit for any elected office above the rank of town dog-catcher, and maybe not even that, and they believe this so firmly that they have gone to a great deal of trouble to say so. Heck, there’s even a heavily footnoted book out, which is simply flying off the shelves. Interesting stuff in there, you might wanna check it out, sometime. OK, and after the anointed one returned from Vietnam— still with me, people? He built his initial fame as an anti-Vietnam War protester, and as part of that headline-grabbing stint, he accused his fellow servicemen of all sorts of gruesome and brutal war crimes, on very thin or even non-existent evidence. So there is another group of veterans who feel particularly and personally defamed by these accusations, most of which were baseless. Yes, they are a little irritated now, since he is now claiming status on account of that service – for which he defamed them thirty years ago. If many of the journalistically anointed hung around with veterans a lot, they would know this, and perhaps have a better sense of how angry this has made them, especially the ones who have been boycotting Jane Fonda all this time. It seems also that the chosen one has not done all that much to distinguish himself since being elected to his present office, except cultivate the ability to tell any audience what they want to hear, irregardless of what he told the last audience, and to induce two wealthy women sequentially to marry their lives and fortunes to his. (And represent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for two decades, but that’s their problem).

4. Unless you, as mainstream media want to give the impression that you have also married your lives and fortunes to him in a similar manner, you would be well advised to take as searching a look to this candidates’ particular qualifications, history and personal eccentricities, or the suspicion would be confirmed that you are not nearly as impartial and you represent yourself to be. As consumers of a particular product, that of news of current events, we wish to be given the facts, pure and unadulterated; we do not want to be told by commission or omission what to think about those facts— or even, as is presently the case, to have those facts and the questions that naturally arise from them, omitted from the public discourse entirely.

5. The perils of not addressing these matters are significant. A coldly logical examination of the record may bring cause to wonder why on earth this candidate was ever thought electable, in these perilous times, when there were other less immediately attractive but more solidly qualified candidates yet available— and exactly why did this empty suit looked like the best bet? Should GWB be reelected by a considerable margin, there will be a considerably surprised minority looking for the reasons they were blindsided on this. They will demand an explanation as to why they had been so misinformed.

6. And if this candidate be elected, and subsequent circumstances and events make it clear that his resume contained not a shred of evidence that he was up to the job— in fact, nothing more than a set of propitious initials, a quasi-royal sense of entitlement, and an all consuming desire for the office— who would bear responsibility for the disaster of electing a completely unsuitable person for the highest elected office in the land, but those guilty of attempting to conceal by omission certain unfavorable facts? We look to the main-stream media for essential information entire and complete, not our marching orders. We look for searching questions and comprehensive answers, so we can make up our own minds. And if we do not get the information which we need from you, we the people will get them from where we find them, and your expertise and standing will be diminished, discounted and compromised. More than they are now, anyway.

7. So, take my advice; eat the damned broccoli. It will do us all good.

Sincerely,
Sgt Mom