The news media’s coverage of stories and events is no longer accepted as the full truth. Citizen journalists worldwide now know that even stories claiming to be fact checked still convey false or bias information. Luckily, with the tools of new media, these false claims can be exposed and voiced to the general public. Kate and Jessica’s presentation outlined a particular broadcast done by CBS’ 60 Minutes on September 8th, 2004 in which four documents critical to George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard were presented as authentic. Within minutes of the broadcast by Dan Rather, blogs all over the internet began discrediting the documents, mostly based on typography experts concluding their forgery.
Within hours of the segment, the authenticity of the documents was questioned by posters on Free Republic, a conservative Internet forum, and discussion quickly spread to various weblogs in the blogosphere, principally Little Green Footballs and Power Line. The Drudge Report picked up the exposure the following day. The initial analysis appeared in posts by “Buckhead,” a username of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta attorney. MacDougald questioned the validity of the documents on the basis of their typography, writing that the memos were “in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman”. An animated GIF of the altered fonts can be viewed here. CBS subsequently could not back up the authenticity of the documents, and Rather was forced to step down as anchor. You can read his official statement on their falsehood here.
The blogosphere’s response to Dan Rather’s report is a significant example of new media’s ability to critically analyze and respond to mainstream news coverage. In this case, blogs were able to channel the skills of experts (typographers) and fact check a false and bias news source. Not only were the blogs able to expose the false documents, but the mass audience for the blogs allowed for the exposure to be conveyed to a wide range of people, eventually reaching the mainstream media. Blogs and new media provide multiple angles on news stories, specifically a critical analysis of their biasness or constructed frameworks. Bloggers are powerful; all news media will be analyzed and criticized by citizen journalists.
-Alec