The Mainstream Media’s Selective Standards

by John Hawkins | September 13, 2004 11:59 pm

The most amusing thing about the Dan Rather forgery scandal to me is that if Dan Killian, the man who was supposed to have written the forged memos, was alive and saying something negative about John Kerry instead of George W. Bush, the mainstream media would have immediately written him off as untrustworthy.

That’s what has happened with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth[1]. You have this enormous array of vets who knew John Kerry, fought beside him, and were in his chain of command all saying he’s lying about his record. Moreover, Kerry has been caught in lies about the “No Man Left Behind” incident & Cambodia. His own biography contradicts his accounts of how he got some of his medals. The Navy is investigating Kerry right now, he’s refusing to release his records, and he is dodging Swift Boat vet related questions from the press.

Yet, the mainstream media reaction to the Swifites has been pure skepticism. Not only are they refusing to buy into what the Swift Boat Vets are saying, they’re treating it as lacking in credibility to such a degree that they don’t believe John Kerry should even have to bother to respond to it.

But, when charges are leveled at George Bush, the media basically adopts “Enquirer” standards as to what are “credible” allegations.

Consider some of the people making allegations against Bush who’ve been in the news in the last few weeks.

Kitty Kelly, who has a long had a reputation for making wild & unprovable allegations with no proof to back them up is accusing George Bush of using cocaine during his father’s tenure in the White House. However, the supposed source of her allegations, Sharon Bush, is denying that she ever told Kelly that and she’s now considering suing Kelly for libel[2].

Ben Barnes has once again been trotted out by the media to claim he helped George Bush get into the National Guard. However, Barnes is a Vice-Chair[3] of the Kerry campaign who raised more than $100,000 for John Kerry and has personally introduced him at a fund-raiser. Moreover, his OWN DAUGHTER[4] has been calling talk radio shows and admitting that her father told her that he’s lying about George Bush for political purposes and to sell a book.

Next up are the obviously forged “George Bush National Guard” memos that Dan Rather is currently peddling at CBS. Not only were they written in Microsoft Word[5], experts have been coming out of the woodwork to point out these memos aren’t genuine. There are literally DOZENS of examples I could use, but here’s a fairly typical piece of testimony about the authenticity of these memos that was given to the Washington Post[6]…

“I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake,” said Joseph M. Newcomer, author of several books on Windows programming, who worked on electronic typesetting techniques in the early 1970s. Newcomer said he had produced virtually exact replicas of the CBS documents using Microsoft Word formatting and the Times New Roman font.

Newcomer drew an analogy with an art expert trying to determine whether a painting of unknown provenance was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. “If I was looking for a Da Vinci, I would look for characteristic brush strokes,” he said. “If I found something that was painted with a modern synthetic brush, I would know that I have a forgery.”

Despite an overwhelming mountain of evidence to the contrary, Dan Rather is still claiming that these memos are real.

The new, hot, anti-Bush book that’s starting to get attention is written by Seymour Hersh, the Kitty Kelly of mainstream journalism. Hersh’s book, “Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib,” tries to tie the Bush administration to the Abu Ghraib scandal. Here’s how the The Seattle Times[7] describes Hersh’s sourcing…

“Hersh’s account is based on anonymous sources, some of them secondhand, and could not be independently verified.”

Secondhand anonymous sources, huh? That sounds ironclad. Especially coming from the guy who quoted an anonymous source“the war was now a stalemate” and that “The only hope is that (our troops) can hold out until reinforcements arrive” during the middle of our three-week long invasion of Iraq.

If you want an explanation of why the media throws all standards out the window when George Bush is involved, you need look no further than this[8]…

“The New York Times conducted an informal poll of journalists at the recent Democratic convention that showed they favor John Kerry for president over President Bush by 3 to 1, while reporters based in Washington, D.C., support the Massachusetts senator by 12 to 1.”

The mainstream media is full of liberals and they’re ready to report almost any negative story about George Bush whether the sources are credible or not…

Endnotes:
  1. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/interviews/johno.php
  2. libel: http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/13/133346.shtml
  3. Vice-Chair: http://www.gop.com/RNCResearch/read.aspx?ID=4625
  4. OWN DAUGHTER: http://www.wbap.com/listingsentryheadline.asp?ID=239369&PT=wbaptopstories
  5. Microsoft Word: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12551_One_More_CBS_Document_Example
  6. Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18982-2004Sep13.html
  7. The Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002033473_abuse12.html
  8. this: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39754

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/uncategorized/the-mainstream-medias-selective-standards/