In breaking news a week before the November 2000 election, the media reported Republican nominee, George W. Bush, had gotten a DUI
twenty-four years previously.
The expose' nearly cost Mr. Bush the Y2K election.
Four years later, with Bush running for re-election, CBS's Sixty Minutes claimed to have discovered documents which called into question Bush's service with the Texas Air National Guard thirty-two years earlier. Unfortunately for the network, Sixty Minutes and Dan Rather, skeptical viewers noticed the document was written on a modern word processor and not the typewriters in use in 1972, and used the Internet to disseminate that information.
Veteran reporter, Dan Rather, who'd spent much of his career exposing Republican misdeeds got canned as did his production team.
Recently, NBC News anchorman, Brian Williams, has come under scrutiny when an interview in Stars and Stripes called into question Williams's oft repeated tale of heroic helicoptering in 2003 while covering the war in Iraq. The Stars and Stripes article hit the Internet and Williams was quick to issue a mea culpa, claiming he'd mis-remembered being in a chopper that was shot at and forced down by an RPG. But photoshopped images ridiculing Williams appeared on the Internet -- Williams in the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, Williams marching with Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Williams in a moon suit covering the moon landing, Williams's footprint on the moon, Williams pulling Saddam Hussein out of his hidey hole, Williams scarfing down a slice of pizza at the Last Supper -- and the anchor became an embarrassment to NBC. He was suspended.
But the real story is not Williams or Rather or even bogus documents and anchorman woofies, but rather the Internet. Without the World Wide Web, a 24-year old DUI released at a propitious time in the election cycle nearly cost George W. Bush the presidency. Without the Internet, those who recognized the Sixty Minutes documents as bogus may not have been able to get the information to the public and the 2004 presidency may well have been decided on false information disseminated by supposedly trustworthy news sources. Without an Internet, only those who subscribe to Stars and Stripes would have known Brian Williams fibbed about his experience in Iraq. So one has to wonder whether before the Internet, did bogus news reportage influence our elections. And more curiously, why Democrats on the FEC are considering new regulations on the Internet (1).
For those who still believe the majority media does not function as the opposition division of the Democratic Party, The Washington Post currently is investigating why Governor (and potential Republican presidential nominee) Scott Walker dropped out of college in 1990 (2).
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You might have to cut and paste the following references into your browser.
(2) http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-scott-walker-mulls-white-house-bid-questions-linger-over-college-exit/2015/02/11/8e17ea44-b13e-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html
(1) http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dems-on-fec-open-to-new-regs-on-donors-internet/article/2560099
