CBS Does It Again

[Tiger in Spain 0]

CBS Does It Again

Network Uses Phony Documents to Promote Draft Conspiracy

September 28, 2004 20:41:03 EDT

Daniel Irvin Rather must be a masochist. You'd think that in the midst of the terrible publicity he is currently getting for working closely with a partisan Democrat bent on bringing down President Bush that Dan Rather would have the good sense to lay off the liberal bias for a while. But common sense seems to be in short supply at CBS News these days.

Three weeks after he denounced the internet as being "filled with rumors," the embattled CBS anchor ran a story on his Tuesday "Evening News" program hoping to stir up fear of an impending military draft.

In a story that was a textbook example of slipshod reporting, CBS reporter Richard Schlesinger used debunked internet hoax emails and an unlabeled interest group member to scare elderly "Evening" viewers into believing that the U.S. government is poised to resume the draft.

At the center of Schlesinger's piece was a woman named Beverly Cocco, a Philadelphia woman who is "sick to my stomach" that her two sons might be drafted. In his report, Schlesinger claimed that Cocco was a Republican and portrayed her as an apolitical (even Republican) mom worried about the future.

Schlesinger did not disclose that Cocco is a chapter president of an advocacy group called People Against the Draft (PAD) which, in addition to opposing any federal proscription, seeks to establish a "peaceful, rational foreign policy" by bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Like Schlesinger's Cocco, the group portrays itself as "nonpartisan"although its leadership seems to be entirely bereft of any Republicans.

The group's domain is registered to a man named Jacob Levich, a left-wing activist who in a 2001 essay compared the Bush Administration to the totalitarian government portrayed in George Orwell's 1984.

PAD also lists Anita Dutt, a Green Party activist who is also a member of an anti-war group called Bronx Action for Justice and Peace. In a March 3, 2003 New York Times profile of the group reprinted on the organization's web site, Heidi Hynes, one of its leaders, said of her fellow members that "none of us are Republicans."

Also left out of the CBS story was the fact that while there are two bills in Congress that are seeking to reestablish the draft, both of them (S-89 and HR-163) are sponsored exclusively by Democrats and have been pronounced DOA by the Republican leadership

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[AURaptor 1,125]

Democrat Charles Rangel is the leading voice in reinstituting the draft. Did that tiny nugget find its way into the story? Oh, you said CBS reported....never mind.

[Tiger in Spain 0]

[rexbo 104]

Does anybody even watch CBS News now, I mean besides Kerry?

[BamaGrad03 0]

Their news coverages is about as credible as The Daily Show.