Media

The role media plays in politics is undeniable. Our soundbite culture with its inherent special attention span dictates a McNugget of information. Unfortunately this often leads to misrepresentations being accepted as fact. A glaring example of this was the Killian documents controversy. In family line 2004, the CBS program 60 Minutes Wednesday aired a report critical of President George W. Bushs avail in the United States National Guard. The four documents included criticisms of Bushs service in the Guard during the 1970s. These documents were purportedly created by Bushs commander, the new-fashioned Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian. It was also reported that the documents were obtained by a CBS intelligence service producer from Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, a former officer in the Texas Army National Guard (TexARNG). During the report, Dan Rather asserted the documents had been au pastticate by experts hired by CBS News. Within hours of the broadcast, several net income forums and blogs were bombarded with postings from forensic document examiners. Assertions were made questioning the discrepencies in the paper and the content. For instance, one of these experts recreated the exact text of one of the memos on a Microsoft Word document. He ran a copy on the copier, then copied that copy.

He continued this process 13 times with the last blurred result being an exact match to the supposedly authentic memo. Eventually, a number of these experts concluded that the memos were indeed hammer documents. For two weeks, Dan Rather and CBS defended the authenticity of the documents. Finally on September 20, 2004, Rather stated, If I knew then what I k at one time now â€" I would not have gone ahead with the spirit level as it was aired, and I certainly would not have apply the documents in question. (Wikipedia, 2006). This whole event occurred less than two months in the lead the incredibly contentious 2004 Presidential Election, which leads one to believe this was a deliberate attempt... If you want to get a full essay, show it on our website: Orderessay

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