Bad Journalism, Worse President

As we learned from the CBS case, using possibly forged memos is bad. First it's bad journalsim. If we want to see shoddy journalism, where facts are ignored for the purpose of promoting a political view, we'd watch Fox, not CBS. I guess there is no point is asking why people were fired at CBS, while nobody loses their jobs at Fox for repeatedly airing discredited accusations against John Kerry as news. It also looks like nobody in the Bush administration will lose their jobs over going to war over the nonexistent WMD. (The Poorman has also compared the memos to WMD).

Using the controversial memos in this case was also foolish as it was unnecessary. As many appear to have forgotten, there was plenty of evidence against Bush even before the memos came out. The right wing media appears to have been successful in getting people to forget about the real story, George Bush being AWOL from his National Guard service, with all the screaming about the memos.

Dan Rather is leaving as anchor, but says he will not duck controversy despite the scandle. There will undoubtably be many more serious scandles to investigate in Washington with four more years of George Bush.

Before everyone forgets that there was a strong case against Bush before the memo scandle, Daily Kos has a comprehensive list of previously published facts, including those previously published in Salon last fall. He also notes refers to an Associated Press story on the White House's shiftting explanations (or lies).

The Kerry 2004 Reference Library also has a comprehensive collection of articles on Bush's National Guard record.