"Independent" CBS panel would have included Coulter and Limbaugh

The fuckheadosphere manufactured much din in 2004 over the memos about Bush's Texas Air National Guard service. Despite what at least one local TV station has falsely claimed, nobody has ever proven the memos were fake. Nonetheless, Dan Rather's reporting of the memos led him to be hounded out of his CBS post by the Far Right.

In Rather's lawsuit against the network, something interesting has emerged. It turns out that when CBS announced it was forming an "independent" panel to investigate the manner in which the memo story was put together, its list of potential panelists included much of the pampered right-wing media machine.

Although a few of the names listed weren't reliably conservative, a disproportionate number were. They included Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, William Bennett, William Buckley, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, and Matt Drudge. (Matt Drudge??? Shit, I have more experience than he has just from The Last Word!)

Eventually, the panel was composed only of former AP head Louis Boccardi and Mad Dog Bush's Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. I don't know about Boccardi, but Thornburgh was clearly right-wing and already had ties to the Bush crime family.

Rather's legal team found that the disproportionately conservative list of potential panelists was vetted by Viacom's Washington lobbyists and unidentified Republican operatives.

No wonder nobody trusts the media anymore: They force Dan Rather out of a job because he reported a story that proved Bush was a spoiled baby - and then they hire almost nothing but conservatives to investigate the matter.

One more reason why we need an investigation into the news media's right-wing bias.

(Source: http://www.observer.com/2008/media/juicy-bits-surfacing-rather-case-2004-cbs-considered-matt-drudge-rush-limbaugh-ann-coulte)