4 ms·

The scandal wasn't near as big, but a similar issue arose during the 2004 US Presidential election. Documents claiming to be from the early 1970s about George W

The scandal wasn't near as big, but a similar issue arose during the 2004 US Presidential election. Documents claiming to be from the early 1970s about George W Bush's air national guard service were found to use things like proportional-width fonts - and, indeed, the entire document seems to have just been typed using the default settings for a contemporary version of Word. Here's some details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy

perl4ever 8y ago
The letters were short, so someone could easily have retyped them in Word. Did anyone old enough to have used a typewriter seriously claim they were photocopies of 70s era typewritten documents? Surely Dan Rather of all people must have some experience with typewriters.
- djrogers 8y ago
  Yes, on air Dan Rather did in fact claim they were taken directly from Killian’s files and had been ‘authenticated’. The person who sent them to 60 Minutes also claimed they were originals, which he subsequently burned after faxing. CBS then spent the next couple of weeks in a ‘strident defense’ (their own investigators’ words) of the documents and their use, before ceding they screwed up and firing people over the incident. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controvers...
  - rrauenza 8y ago
    Culturally, this to me is a turning point of the political bloggers -- the knee in the curve of their credibility and a large drop in the trust of the news media, particularly among conservatives. The blogs leading the document debunking were Powerline and Little Green Footballs. This was also when the term Pajamas Media was coined (quote from wikipedia PJ_Media page): > The network's original name was derived from a dismissive comment made by former CBS news executive Jonathan Klein during the 2004 Killian documents affair: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances at 60 Minutes and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas." I followed the whole thing closely at the time -- it was a bit surreal.
    - creaghpatr 8y ago
      That whole ordeal seems so quaint now, in retrospect. I wonder if this happened in today's day and age, CBS would have anticipated that the twitter gonzo journalism class would rapidly attempt to identify flaws in the doc and vet it harder?
      - Shivetya 8y ago
        it was their, the traditional media, wake up call. it also forever broke the belief that the media was impartial. remember that while Rather and Mapes brought this shameful act of reporting we got to witness the New York Times go full Onion with a "fake but accurate" declaration. Could it happen now? Not as blatant but I simply believe they have changed to simply relying more on innuendo and unidentifiable sources.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - telmnstr 8y ago
    One would think the "untitled.txt" at the bottom would have given it away...
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Proportional typewriters did exist at the time.

perl4ever 8y ago

The letters were short, so someone could easily have retyped them in Word. Did anyone old enough to have used a typewriter seriously claim they were photocopies of 70s era typewritten documents? Surely Dan Rather of all people must have some experience with typewriters.

djrogers 8y ago
Yes, on air Dan Rather did in fact claim they were taken directly from Killian’s files and had been ‘authenticated’. The person who sent them to 60 Minutes also claimed they were originals, which he subsequently burned after faxing. CBS then spent the next couple of weeks in a ‘strident defense’ (their own investigators’ words) of the documents and their use, before ceding they screwed up and firing people over the incident. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controvers...
- rrauenza 8y ago
  Culturally, this to me is a turning point of the political bloggers -- the knee in the curve of their credibility and a large drop in the trust of the news media, particularly among conservatives. The blogs leading the document debunking were Powerline and Little Green Footballs. This was also when the term Pajamas Media was coined (quote from wikipedia PJ_Media page): > The network's original name was derived from a dismissive comment made by former CBS news executive Jonathan Klein during the 2004 Killian documents affair: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances at 60 Minutes and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas." I followed the whole thing closely at the time -- it was a bit surreal.
  - creaghpatr 8y ago
    That whole ordeal seems so quaint now, in retrospect. I wonder if this happened in today's day and age, CBS would have anticipated that the twitter gonzo journalism class would rapidly attempt to identify flaws in the doc and vet it harder?
    - Shivetya 8y ago
      it was their, the traditional media, wake up call. it also forever broke the belief that the media was impartial. remember that while Rather and Mapes brought this shameful act of reporting we got to witness the New York Times go full Onion with a "fake but accurate" declaration. Could it happen now? Not as blatant but I simply believe they have changed to simply relying more on innuendo and unidentifiable sources.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- telmnstr 8y ago
  One would think the "untitled.txt" at the bottom would have given it away...

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

Proportional typewriters did exist at the time.