CBS News: The Hermits' Network

Power Line is reporting, via Little Green Footballs, that CBS News is once again relying on discredited documents to attack President Bush.

When I first saw their report, I thought I was misreading it; but no, it really does say that CBS has used discredited documents to claim that the administration intends to bring back the draft.

According to LGF:

"In a story that was a textbook example of slipshod reporting, CBS reporter Richard Schlesinger used debunked internet hoax emails and an unlabeled interest group member to scare viewers into believing that the U.S. government is poised to resume the draft. At the center of Schlesinger’s piece was a woman named Beverly Cocco, a Philadelphia woman who is 'sick to my stomach' that her two sons might be drafted. In his report, Schlesinger claimed that Cocco was a Republican and portrayed her as an apolitical (even Republican) mom worried about the future. Schlesinger did not disclose that Cocco is a chapter president of an advocacy group called People Against the Draft (PAD) which, in addition to opposing any federal conscription, seeks to establish a 'peaceful, rational foreign policy' by bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Like Schlesinger’s Cocco, the group portrays itself as 'nonpartisan' although its leadership seems to be entirely bereft of any Republicans. The group’s domain is registered to a man named Jacob Levich, a left-wing activist who in a 2001 essay compared the Bush Administration to the totalitarian government portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984. CBS News also reported that there are two bills in Congress to reinstate the draft, but failed to mention that they were both introduced by Democrats."

To boot, via Power Line, the Selective Service overtly denies any intention of bringing back the draft.

CBS News has problems with the Internet on two levels. First, they still haven't learned that they're going to be fact-checked like never before -- something you'd think might make them more cautious. No matter how much antagonism they may have toward President Bush, they're not going to bring him down with bad reporting. Did Richard Schlesinger think he was avenging Dan Rather?

Second, note that this story originates with an email hoax. They're fooled by an email hoax? Will we be asked to believe that CBS was thrown off the trail by some trickster using modern technology which, in fact, isn't so new any more? (I began using email at Michigan around 1990.) Doesn't everyone at CBS have a PC with email and access to the Net? Haven't we all received such junk day in and day out, for years?

Perhaps CBS figures it has lost all credibility with the technologically literate (or semi-literate) and is gunning to capture the unplugged. But there's FNC, so maybe that means they'll have to go for those without cable. Of course, there's the telephone (and backyard chats), so that might reduce their potential demographic to non-phone-owning hermits. With electricity (or a generator).

Given their current ratings, I'd say they're well on the way to achieving those goals.