corrente

Pathetic. As usual, you've got to read to the end. The point at issue is whether the documents are authentic, right? (At least that's what the Time's toothless old whore, William Safire, wrote yesterday). So we first we get spewage about what CBS executives and employees think, then we get to the facts:

Richard Katz, a computer software expert in Los Angeles who was featured on the "Evening News" segment, said in an interview that he had called his local affiliate, KCBS, after looking at the memos on the CBS Web site after the initial broadcast, when some [Republican, back) experts were saying that the memos looked as if they had been composed using the Times New Roman font in Microsoft Word.

Comparing the CBS memos with a replication produced on Microsoft Word, he noticed a slight variation in the boldness of the letters, as there is on many typewritten documents. "It doesn't look like you can do this very easily," he said. If you use something like Photoshop you could come close to faking it, but why not just go out and buy a Selectric for $75?"

Duh. Point one to the professional analysts.

Bill Glennon, a technology consultant and I.B.M. typewriter specialist who had posted his thoughts on the memos on a blog and was quoted over the weekend in publications including The New York Times, said CBS called him Monday morning. The producer asked him to come in and look at the memorandums and say whether he thought that an I.B.M. typewriter could have produced the documents. He said he was initially leery of talking. Because quite honestly there's some people out there, they're scary," he said. "You don't agree with them, you offer opinions that don't jibe with theirs and you get a target on your back."

Wow. I wonder who those people could be? Kinda blends with our "MBG Watch" series, doesn't it?

Mr. Glennon was in charge of service for 1,000 contracts for I.B.M. typewriters for 15 years, starting in late 1972, around the time the memorandums were produced. He spent 15 minutes with the CBS documents, he said, and believes that they could have been created using the kind of typewriters he worked with at I.B.M.
(via that pathetic, crippled, once-proud newsgathering organization, the Pulitzer-light Times)

So, the real story—buried by the Times—has three points, one of which is (conveniently) left out entirely.

1. It was possible to produce the memos using 1970s technology. In fact, 15 minutes of work will do it—fifteen minutes that apparently nobody but CBS was willing to take. So, the always implausible winger story falls to bits.

2. The freepers who broke the story are intimidating opponents into silence. (Gee, does that remind you of another story the Times didn't cover until far too late? Say, Florida 2000?) Say, I wonder if they intimidated Hodge? ("Winger triumphalism premature")

And the third point, unmentioned by the Times:

3. How is it that there is a fast track from freeper typographic amateurs to the Standard to ABC News and the Times—all in a single news cycle? You'd almost think that the mainstream media have become an echo chamber for a megaphone with right-wing crazies shouting into it, wouldn't you? (Shamefully, blogger pimps the freepers too. I thought Google were supposed to be good guys?)

Hapless, overworked, and increasingly co-opted Public Editor Dan "Bud Man" Okrent is back from vacation. Readers, perhaps you could share your POLITE, thoughtfully worded concerns with him?

UPDATE Feel free to mention these questions from Paul Lukasiak in your note to Mr. Okrent. After all, if the freepers can get you asking the wrong questions, then whether the answers are right doesn't matter, does it?