Contributed by: filbert Wednesday, August 26 2009 @ 06:33 PM CST
Mary Mapes knew before she put the story on the air that George W. Bush, the alleged slacker, had in fact volunteered to go to Vietnam.
Who says? The outside panel CBS brought into to get to the bottom of the so-called “Rathergate” mess says.
. . .
Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.
This information, despite the fact that it has been available since the CBS report came out four years ago, has remained a secret to almost everybody both in and out of the media — one lonely fact in a 234- page report loaded with thousands of facts, and overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the documents.
Here’s a simple question for those who think there’s no such thing as media bias, or if there is, the media leans to the right:
Why, if Mapes knew that Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam, did CBS News insist on the reporting angle that he had joined the Texas Air National Guard to avoid going to Vietnam?
I would assert that any reasonable person would look at that one fact and say “CBS News was trying to slant–BIAS–the story to make Bush look bad.” Furthermore, given that incidents of such slanted reporting are almost countlessly common at this point, any reasonable person would then take anything that the “traditional” or “mainstream” media say with an enormous grain of salt.
Fortunately, I am now taking eight salt tablets daily as a supplement to my doctor-prescribed weight loss plan, so I should now be able to believe anything that the media tell me. You, however, might want to Question yourself some Authority–as in media authority.