Whooeee! Quite a week to be missing in action! I am so far behind the curve at this point that for those of you who have been in a coma or fell down a well, I'll just link to Charles Johnson's excellent font sleuthing and Power Line.
AP is now on the story, that doesn't provide much comfort given their recent difficulties. ABC isn't helping much either, they report that CBS noticed the signatures didn't match yet went with the story?
As of a few minutes ago, CBS radio news is still sticking by their story.
One has to laugh when fellow newies attempts at bailing the old media ship are this obvious. One suspects the WaPo was planning to run the material as well. The most ironic part of this story is not CBS's ineptness in fact checking and analysis, but their lack of computer skills and/or familiarity with typewriters. I am sure there are two new terms seared on the CBS hive mind; superscript and kerning.
I always knew Dan Rather would finally lose it on-air, he came close in his anti-Republican rant at the 1996 GOP convention over a purported grand jury leak. Rather might take his own closing remark in the disputed piece to heart
"Too strong or not to say that you are ashamed of it now," asks Rather.
Lileks sums it up nicely
Blogs haven’t toppled old media. The foundations of Old Media were rotten already. The new media came along at the right time. Put it this way: you’ve see films of old buildings detonated by precision demolitionists. First you see the puffs of smoke – then the building just hangs there for a second, even though every column that held it up has been severed. We’ve been living in that second for years, waiting for the next frame. Well, here it is. Roll tape. Down she goes.
UPDATE: Via various radio/TV feeds: A CBS producer hints that the Kerry campaign set them up and Rather gave an interview on the street in NYC stating that he stands by the story and that no retractio or on-air apology will be forthcoming and demands Bush answer the charges. Wha?
BREAKING: Seems the Russkies have produced documented proof that clearly disputes the Swifties.
Wizbang offers yet another document that appears to dispute the authenticity of the disputed Killian memos.
THE MOTHER OF ALL UPDATES: Allah has some interesting links about the IBM SC, Shape of Days has a dialog open with a guy who has a working IBM SC...here's a shot of one. From the description:
The first IBM Composer was the IBM "Selectric" Composer announced in 1966. It was a hybrid "Selectric" typewriter that was modified to have proportional spaced fonts. It is 100% mechanical and has no digital electronics. Since it has no memory, the user was required to type everything twice. While typing the text the first time, the machine would measure the length of the line and count the number of spaces. When the user finished typing a line of text, they would record special measurements into the right margin of the paper. Once the entire column of text was typed and measured, it would then be retyped, however before typing each line, the operator would set the special justification dial (on the right side) to the proper settings, then type the line. The machine would automatically insert the appropriate amount of space between words so that all of the text would be justified.Ask yourself, why would this particluar TANG unit have such an elaborate, expensive typewriter? For what purpose? Killian's wife and son claim he couldn't type, yet he would write private memos to himself with the above process.
Hugh Hewitt received a series of e-mails from a Professor of Computer Science at Rice University, including the Porfessor's response to Kos.
Jerry Furhman speculates on the origin of the disputed docs.
It occurs to me that we're probably enjoying CBS's implosion way too much...nah.
Posted by feste at September 10, 2004 08:59 AM | TrackBack