CBS has become a pew forum in its own right:

In a single sentence in one story on religion in the United States, CBS Evening News managed to insult the vast majority of the American people. Describing a major new study on Americans’ religious faith from the Pew Forum, CBS’ Wyatt Andrews suggested that atheism in particular and Americans’ widely shared belief in a secular society in general is immoral:

“The unprecedented survey of religion answers many concerns about a secular, morally void America. To the surprise of many experts, Americans are still deeply religious, with 84 percent of adults claiming a religious affiliation.”

(h/t Make Them Accountable)

So, we’ve got to go on an Easter egg hunt.

First stop, yesterday’s column. The Amazing Froomkin has this to say about Rather’s suit, in great contrast to chinless wonder Teabag Fred’s winger-rampant and disinformation-ridden Op-Ed page. Let me just fair-use the whole paragraph:

Dan Rather Watch

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters marvels at the reaction to Dan Rather’s lawsuit, specifically from all the “mainstream journalists who rushed in to denounce the former anchorman as dishonest, arrogant, bitter, and delusional, all the while making sure not to take up Rather’s challenge of addressing the underlying facts of the story surrounding Bush’s no-show military service.”

And the key point that Teabag Fred’s service providers conveniently omit:

Writes Boehlert: “[T]he dirty little secret that [winger] bloggers and mainstream journalists don’t want to discuss is that Rather is right — the National Guard story was true.”

We were never defeated on the merits of the story. Not ever. If CBS caved for business reasons after Federalist Society operative F/Buckheard fired off his Rovian triple-bankshot on serifs, that’s not our problem—except insofar as Bush got selected again, because our famously free press happily accepted any excuse to drop the story, of course.

Second stop, the long Googled list of Froomkin’s exhaustive posting—thank The God(ess)(e)(s) of Your Choice for Froomkin:

For more background, here’s some of my own coverage of the controversy over Bush’s service.

Third stop, the Easter Egg!  Read more 

This has been a week full of public lying. A funny thing happens to lies, though: often the truth comes along and leaves those lies in the poo-flinging category where they belong.

I interviewed Mary Mapes this week. Mary Mapes is the producer who got awarded a Peabody for uncovering the Abu Ghraib story. You probably remember her, though, as the “fired CBS producer” of a Sixty Minutes story that presented documents showing how Bush didn’t fulfill his service obligations to the Texas Air National Guard during the VietNam war. She has never been discredited for her work on that program, though you won’t know it by reading right wing blogs. The book that was going to be written to disprove her supportive documents was announced on December 20, 2005, at Powerline. They haven’t returned my calls asking when it was to be published.

Speaking of lies:  Read more