The OmbudsGod!
The Silence of the Ombudsmen: Boston Globe Division
Boston Globe obudsman Christine Chinlund writes about gWednesday's Page 1 story suggesting President Bush failed to meet his National Guard commitments,h without once mentioning that the article relied on documents widely regarded as having been forged. Instead she addresses a relatively minor complaint, that gThe Globe is biased because it has not gone after Democrat John Kerry's military records with equal vigor.h
Chinlundfs failure is particularly egregious because Philip D. Bouffard, an expert the Globe cited as supporting the conclusion the documents are not forgeries, claims he was misrepresented and that gc after looking at [a document] more, there are still many more things that say this is bogus."
The Globe has a serious credibility problem on its hands. According to Slate, gThe typography experts quoted by major media organizations are nearly unanimous in their doubts that the Killian memos are genuine,h yet the Globe takes Bouffard and misrepresents his views in a piece amazingly entitled, Authenticity Backed On Bush Documents.
If the ombudsman isnft going to address this sort of problem, then why does the Globe bother to employ her?
Fact Checking
Associated Press, September 11, 2004
Ahmad Majied of Albany, GA says the latest allegations about Bush's military record are more troubling to him than allegations about service honors leveled at Democratic challenger Kerry.
Majied, a Democrat from Albany who served 30 years in the Navy, including five years as a SEAL in Vietnam, said the memos support his belief that Bush was a "playboy" during his service years.
"He had enough money to get what he wanted," Majied said. "I think his main concern was not to go to Southeast Asia. I bet he never dreamed it would come back to haunt him."
AuthentiSEAL.org (via Free Republic), September 12, 2004
Unless he has undertaken the unlikely action of a full legal name change since his claimed service with the SEAL Teams, I can state conclusively that [Majied] NEVER completed SEAL training, and thus he is not now, nor was he ever a Navy SEAL.
via Brian Crouch at Oh, That Liberal Media!
Bias: It's not the forgery, it's the confluence
It's time to raise an issue identified on ABCfs The Note and repeated by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen: Whatfs behind gthe confluence of all the DNC, outside group, and media focus on revisiting the Guard story?h
UPDATE: Okay, why is confluence important? Because confluence strongly implies coordination, and if establishment media are coordinating with the Kerry campaign and outside groups, then negative reporting about George Bush becomes dubious. I strongly suspect that's one reason Rather can't come clean about the provenance of the forged documents.
posted at 1:10 PM
The Silence of the Ombudsmen
I took a quick perusal through the ombudsman columns this morning and I didnft see a single mention of the Rathergate memos. If there was a dominant theme it was coverage of the Beslan massacre, to which there was agreement that readers who complained about graphic front-page photographs are all wet. Oh, and they still won't use the word "terrorist" to describe, well, terrorists.
Toronto Star ombudsman Don Sellar responds to a reader who complains, gI know that people get killed every day around the world, but showing a dead baby like that was beyond the pale. My 6-year-old son picked up the paper on our doorstep that morning and saw that picture.h Don helpfully advises, gwhile the Star remains a family newspaper, it isn't published solely for children. Parents who normally keep an eye on what their kids watch on TV are advised to monitor Page 1 as well.h Is there a v-chip for newspapers?
New York Times Public Editor Don Okrent just returned from vacation, ggetting all my news only from The Times,h so hefs still on the Swift Boats controversy. He concludes, gFrom what The Times's news coverage told me, official records contradict the central charges leveled in the ads. However, it is not accurate to say, as Senator Kerry has, that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia.h Maybe Don ought to consider reading a few bloggers, (or this summary in the Augusta Free Press.) Instapundit is a good source to see whatfs currently hot in the Blogosphere. Oh, That Liberal Media! (to which I contribute), is a good source for complaints of left-wing bias in reporting.
OBG
posted at 9:31 AM
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Saturday, September 11, 2004
The Silence of the Beeb
It didnft take long for gPBS on steroidsh BBC News to trumpet the gnewh 60 Minutes memos purportedly from young George Bushfs commander in the Air National Guard, LTC Killian. If theyfve mentioned the allegations the documents are forgeries I canft find it.
via Biased BBC
OBG
posted at 11:18 PM
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Rathergate as a political scandal
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has some gquick thoughts -- not about the charges, which seem serious to me, but about the general atmosphere and what's at stake if this turns into a political scandal.h He lists four, but two strike me as particularly important:
Very quickly attention will shift to the confluence of events in the news media, in publishing, and in politics that made for "Guard week" this week-- to all the things that appeared within days of each other. Forces behind that confluence will be brought to light. As ABC's The Note said Friday, "Republicans can rightly ask about the confluence of all the DNC, outside group, and media focus on revisiting the Guard story."
Right inside the door of the CBS scandal there is a Dirty Tricks scandal waiting to come to light. If the documents turn out to be fakes, the question will immediately become: who dealt them to CBS? Perhaps that explains this: "Longtime Democratic strategist Pat Caddell said Friday that if documents aired by CBS newsman Dan Rather Wednesday night turn out to be forged, as alleged by experts, the presidential race 'is over. It would be the end of the race,' Caddell told Fox News Live. 'It would be the end of the race,' he repeated."
OBG
posted at 4:57 PM
¨ Comments (2)
Rathergate update: Boston Globe Division
Boston Globe, September 11, 2004:
Philip D. Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the documents in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, one in a wave of similar media reports. But Bouffard told the Globe yesterday that after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.
INDC Journal, September 11, 2004:
I just interviewed Dr. Bouffard again, and he's angry that the Globe has misrepresented him. He's been getting hate mail and nasty phone calls since last night's story was posted, and he wants me to correct the record. He did not change his mind, and he and his colleagues are becoming more certain that these documents are forgeries.
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