by Paul albers
September 30, 2004
Now even Dan Rather agrees that the National Guard memos he used as the foundation of a 60 Minutes story are not what they claim to be.
The forgeries may have easily gone unexposed were it not for the fact-checking power of the Internet. Shortly after the story aired, 'Buckhead', a frequent poster at the political discussion board FreeRepublic.com raised serious questions about the authenticity of the memos.
His observations sparked further investigation by experts and amateurs. as new findings emerged they were shared online, creating an ad hoc research team. In less than a day the weight of evidence collected against the memos was overwhelming and the Drudge Report vaulted the issue onto the national stage. Talk radio, along with network and cable news stations took up the story and the public became aware that not only was CBS wrong, they were negligent.
In the process of putting the story together, CBS ignored every expert and witness who contradicted the content and authenticity of the memos; they mislead and misrepresented other experts and witnesses, or wrote them off as being too 'pro-Bush'. Rather's subsequent attempt to portray the memos as 'fake but true' stands as the final confirmation of the liberal media bias he has always denied.
This is not the first time that the Internet has outshone network news. Every day the Internet outperforms traditional media in terms of speed, quality of analysis, depth of coverage, and variety of viewpoints. It is also the ultimate media watchdog. Discussion boards connect a large group of people with a wide range of professions, skills, backgrounds and experience. Between them, they can fact check media reports and expose any perceived error, bias and deception better and faster than any team of editors.
What makes this story so revolutionary is that this is the first time a discussion board has so effectively undermined not just a media story, but also the credibility of the whole network and it's star anchor. The Web has turned the tables on a media that wrote them off as nothing but a source of rumours and the home of crackpots.
Hopefully 'Rathergate' will also benefit Canadian news websites, which are still largely ignored by the mainstream media.
a few days after the Liberals released the first of their attack ads, a subliminal image was discovered in the commercial. The ad itself was already the focus of controversy for pointing a gun directly at the viewers, but even those who said it went too far were unaware how far it went. The very last frame of that segment showed the muzzle flare from the gun being fired. It wasn't the traditional media that made the discovery though; I found the image while in the process of making a parody of the commercial to put on the web.
The use of a subliminal image is a serious violation of the ethics code of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. In the context of the Liberal ad, it is used to subconsciously evoke fear that would be mistakenly attributed to the portion of the ad that the viewer is aware of. Resorting to this kind of manipulation of the electorate is sinister, and big news as well, one would think.
The details were posted online at http://www.freedominion.ca/~grig/attack.htm (FreeDominion.ca’s the Canadian chapter of FreeRepublic.com). Other posters confirmed the image was there and the news quickly went up on Bourque.org.
Not one word of it ever made it to national television newscasts. Some local media outlets picked up the story, but nationally there were only a few sentences buried in the middle of an article on page a6 of one national newspaper.
Canada is hardly immune to the same media bias and sloppy journalism found in america. also, the CRTC exerts a significant influence on the mainstream media. They are responsible for holding back Fox News, allowing al-Jezeera in, and forcing CHOI off the air. The Web however, is beyond their reach.
Websites like cbcwatch.ca, FreeDominon.ca and rabble.ca are already in place to oversee the media. Other sites like CanadaFreePress.com, Bourque.org and Politics Canada (canadawebpages.com) offer an alternative news media, and hundreds of similar websites fill cyberspace. all that is missing is widespread public awareness of what the Web has to offer.
These websites could become the new best friend of the traditional media, but if they would rather to continue to ignore the Internet, it may become the biggest thorn in their side.
Paul albers is a freelance columnist and father of six.
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