In September of 2004, the CBS News program "60 Minutes" ran a special on President George Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. One of the pieces of data they displayed was a memo alledegly written by the late Lt. Col. Jerry B Killian. As soon as the memo flashed accross the tv screens, bloggers began an investigation the would lead to the firing of three CBS News executives and the retirement of longtime anchor Dan Rather.
At issue was a simple question: was the memo authentic? CBS Newss assured the public it was, citing handwriting and document experts. Within 24 hours, the blogging community had shown that such was not the case, that the memos could not have been produced on any machine in the hands of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War era. Bloggers quickly demonstrated that the proportional spacing of the memo and the superscripting of dates were nearly impossible to create on 1970's technology and that the layout of the memo was unlikely anything produced at that time. In short, they showed that the memo was not created on a Texas Air National Guard typewriter as CBS News had alledged, but was instead produced on a modern computer using Microsoft Word on it's default settings and faxed or copied repeatedly to make it look old. They showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the memo was a fake.
As word of the fraud spread across the internet, additional data came to the forefront, questioning the use of CBS News' acquisition and handling of the ducuments. Within a week, other major news organizations began reporting on the controversy, within two weeks, CBS itself reported that they had been misled by their source concerning the origin of the memo. Soon after, CBS brought in a former attorney general and a former predident of the Associated Press to get to the bottom of the issue. the result was a shakeup of the entire CBS news structure.
My reason to share this story is to show what blogging has done for our communities and for the truth to all human beings. A network of knowledgable independent bloggers who posted their findings in real time, shared information, and tested ideas. This was one of the biggest public shake ups of a world news outfit and only took a couple of weeks to get to the truth.
This shows you the power of blogs. It's the tool that is becoming, by far, the best yet to get real messeges across and getting things known quickly.
The more you wait to start blogging the deeper the waters are becoming to swim through and harder to get out front to the public's view. Who wins a race? The person out front.
Dr. Lowell Graham, Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and Director of Music for all military music programs, answering directly to the President of the United States and now Chairman of the music department for the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), once said in his introductory speech to the student body of the Fine Arts department "I come to you with ideas and goals that will take this department to a new level and will make each of you leaders in your field. You want to be in first place because the in second place the scenery never changes and you are always looking up someone else's a$$."
There you have it. Why wait any more. Get blogging and get known NOW.
See you at the winner's circle.
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