....Rather did little reporting for the segment, but led the defense. Within three weeks the network caved and said it shouldn't have relied on the documents. That concession was viewed as acknowledging fundamental problems with the segment's veracity. So were the conclusions of the review panel headed by Thornburgh and Boccardi.
But their 223-page report did no such thing.
Though sharply critical of the network's strident dismissal of critics, the panel never concluded the broadcast was wrong -- that Bush's military record wasn't marked by favoritism and dereliction. Nor did it ever say the disputed documents were bogus. Instead, the panel concluded the documents couldn't be proven genuine, and for a simple reason: They were photocopies. And experts are reluctant to vouch for the authenticity of any document when they can't inspect its paper and ink.
Wasserman cites the Thornburgh-Boccardi report in support of his argument here, but It is hard to believe that Wasserman has read it. If he has read it, this professor of journalism ethics needs to be reminded that it's not ethical to withhold from your readers relevant evidence directly contradicting your thesis.
(1) The source of the documents: The documents on which Rather's story relied were asserted to have came from Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, then Lieutenant Bush's commanding officer. The documents purport to derive from his "personal file." Killian died in 1984; his family denies that the documents emanated from him or them. The lack of any evidence to substantiate the provenance of the documents in Lieutenant Colonel Killian's "personal file" by itself highlights the absurdity of the argument for their authenticity.
....
(2) The font/typestyle of the documents: The Thornburgh-Boccardi report provides the analysis of forensic document examiner and typewriter expert Peter Tytell, both in the text and at greater length in the report's Appendix 4. Tytell is a diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Documents Examiners and a highly qualified expert on the issues raised by the typographic characteristics of the documents. Tytell examined the official Bush Guard documents as well as the CBS documents procured from Burkett and concluded that the Burkett documents were produced on a computer in Times New Roman typestyle.
According to Tytell, Times New Roman was designed in 1931 for the Times of London and was only available on typesetting and other non-tabletop machines until the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980s. Tytell concluded that the Times New Roman typestyle was not available on a typewriter in the early 1970s and that the Burkett documents must have been produced on a computer. The Thornburgh-Boccardi report states: "The [Thornburgh-Boccardi] Panel met with Tytell and found his analysis sound in terms of why he believed that the documents are not authentic." If the documents are not authentic, they are frauds.
....
(3) The content of the documents: Rather's defenders such as Wasserman ultimately rely on the contents of the documents to authenticate them. However, if the documents did not come from the personal file of Lieutenant Colonel Killian, if the documents were not typed on a typewriter, they cannot be authentic regardless of their content. Even if the documents "meshed" perfectly with the official Bush Guard records, they would still be frauds.
And they don't mesh. All in all...
Thus the bad faith of the CBS TANG story pales next to that of Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley. Regardless of Dan Rather's level of culpabity for the story as originally broadcast, the story itself is a classic of institutional and professional disgrace. It is odd at the least that a professor of journalism ethics is insensitive to it. For a more clear-eyed view of Rather's lawsuit, by the way, see Bill Dyer's "Rather v. CBS: Experts, 'boardroom truth' versus 'courtroom truth,' and settlement values."
Dan Rather and Mary Mapes are still peddling the same fraud that CBS was peddling on September 8, 2004 in the story on President Bush's TANG service. Edward Wasserman has now come to their assistance in peddling the fraud. Whatever the state of their knowledge then, Rather and Mapes must know now that they are peddling a fraud. Although Wasserman portrays Rather as a victim, he is in fact a perpetrator who has yet to acknowledge his offense.
3 comments:
Mr. Johnson is invited to compare a copy of the Killian documents to Times New Roman on his computer. The design of letters differs, such as lower case "r." In Times New Roman the finish of the "r" branches from the vertical stem. In the Killian documents it is almost level across the top. The capital letters in the Killian documents have dimples at the top, but the tops of Times New Roman capitals are straight without dimples. And there are other differences.
If one takes any given letter in the copies available originally, and if one enlarged all instances of this letter, the wide variation due to toner loss and toner build-up would show the impossibility of identifying the font. However, it is easy to eliminate most fonts, such as Times New Roman, merely by showing at least one character is differently designed.
Mary Mapes points out in her book that the documents were shown to the White House officials before broadcast. The Republican officials there on President Bush's behalf never denied the authenticity. Instead, they claimed the documents supported their contentions about Bush's military service, thus implicitly acknowledging authenticity.
Respectfully,
Marcel B. Matley
PS: I do not write anonymously or under a silly pseudonym as most critics of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes do, suggesting much moral cowardice on their part. I respect Mr. Johnson for signing his essay and taking responsibility for not verifying facts easily verifiable, such as comparing each alphabetic character in the Killian letters directly with Times New Roman.
I've pulled up the images from Johnson's blog and I'm looking at some exemplar letters right now. Frankly, I can't see any differences that can't be attributed to artifacts due to multiple generations of photocopier reproduction. The fact that toner is made up of massive particles which are pulled into place by electric fields means that some of the particles won't land quite where they're expected to. In particular, the electric field lines tend to curve at areas where strong and weak electric fields exist in the copier plate -- corresponding to dark and light areas in the original document. I'm reluctant to attribute the diagnostic quality you wish to what amount to defects at the pixel level.
One specific example: The capital "H" in "Hodges" and "Harris", lines 1 and 2 of paragraph 1. The "H" in "Hodges" appears to have an extension from the crossbar on the left side of the letter, and this is absent from the "H" in "Harris". By your standard, the Killian memo was typed using at least two different fonts.
My standard, which asserts the diagnostic qualities you have identified are not validly diagnostic, is the one I prefer.
You write:
PS: I do not write anonymously or under a silly pseudonym as most critics of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes do, suggesting much moral cowardice on their part.
I guess I put less weight on pseudonyms than you do. As you mentioned, Charles Johnson does associate his name with his blog, and I have high confidence that Charles Johnson really is his name.
Another blogger I've cited is Beldar, and his name, Bill Dyer, appears on the front page of his blog. Again, I assume the blogger Beldar is, in fact, Bill Dyer, and the evidence suggests he is.
Now, while it would be nice to believe that a professional document examiner and handwriting expert follows my blog and has chosen to weigh in with a definitive answer, I have no way of verifying that one way or the other. The person who commented under this name left no link to his own Blogger account, or to any other blog or e-mail account for any sort of follow-up. For all I know, Dan Rather or Mary Mapes left this comment and attributed it to Marcel B. Matley. (Although the forger did very nicely attribute it "respectfully".)
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