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:: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 ::
Really, Really That's the Way It Is: Just a Mistake
Struggling like a lamed Houdini to extricate himself from a locked safe to which more chains are added by the hour, CBS Anchor Dan Rather along with CBS unloosed six additional varieties of memogate spin to the seven already described in the Spinspeak Letter:
The “partisan political operatives” redux spin – We thought those were the only people saying our well-checked documents were forgeries. And it is important to remind you of these “operatives” even though some others are also being unpleasant about our high journalistic standards.
The “we were led to believe” spin -- We never said they were absolutely the real thing. (Well, not in the last few hours anyway.) And now that everyone but us is saying they are forgeries, we want you, our diminishing viewers, to know that “we were led to believe” they were OK by “others.”
The Edward R. Murrow spin = “I’d like to break that story” if those documents turn out to be forgeries. (Of course, the trouble with this spin is that Rather was already scooped by the “ pajama-clad” bloggers who first spotted the fraud.
The “cannot prove that the documents are authentic” spin -- See, the problem here is not that the documents are blatant forgeries but that we can’t prove they are real; therefore, maybe they are not forgeries after all, maybe.
“I no longer have confidence in these documents” spin -- See how we safeguard the viewers’ interest: I, Dan Rather, after much research, now withdraw my confidence in what so many others on whom surely you can’t rely have been calling an outrageous forgery for days.
The big “apology” spin – Not for perpetrating and defending a major journalistic fraud for a week, not to the President of the United States for trying to destroy him in a presidential election campaign, but for a “mistake.” And, of course, we all make ‘em, right? As the spindocs for a former President used to say: It's time to move on.
:: James Baar 9/21/2004 01:20:00 PM [+] ::
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