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Cover Story

Soldiers in pajamas

by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com

November 2, 2004

accuracy in Media (aIM) founder Reed Irvine must have flashed one of his signature grins on September 21, 2004.

While Irvine, felled by a stroke is missing from aIM action, the “Can Dan” campaign he launched against Dan Rather some 16 years ago, found new life.

aIM members, staffers and supporters gathered outside the CBS News offices in Washington, D.C. to call for the firing of Dan Rather in the wake of the CBS News anchorman’s use of forged documents in a story designed to smear President George W. Bush.

as history will someday record the deed for posterity, Rather, in a 60 Minutes broadcast on Sept. 8, featured documents purportedly authored by a National Guard commander, in order to prove that Bush had neglected his services to the nation as a young man in the Guard during the Vietnam War.

at the September 21 protest, aIM was joined by members of FreeRepublic.com, one of the national websites featuring the now famed Internet “bloggers” who were the first to draw attention to the discrepancies in the CBS documents and the fact that they were likely forgeries.

For their journalistic prowess, a former CBS News executive tried to ridicule them as people wearing their pajamas in front of their computers.

They may not don tuxedoes for the latest Washington cocktail party, where mainline media elites rub shoulders with the politicos of the day—bloggers just go out and get the job done.

at the anti-CBS protest, several of the “Freepers”, including FreeRepublic.com spokesman Kristinn Taylor, proudly turned out in their pajamas.

amid a media buzz that said he was more victim than perpetrator, Rather eventually apologized for the broadcast and acknowledged that the network had received the documents from sour grapes Guardsman Bill Burkett, a partisan critic of Bush, who admitted deceiving the network about where the documents had come from. But Burkett never did identify their true source.

“We say to Dan Rather: put on your pajamas, become a blogger, and take Journalism 101,” aIM editor Cliff Kincaid said after the event.

Kincaid correctly suggests that Dan Rather and CBS News producer Mary Maples are “political partisans masquerading as journalists”, while the pajama-clad bloggers in front of their computers are the real reporters.

Internet bloggers played a vital role in the U.S. presidential election campaign, and it was one, by and large missed, by the mainline media.

This is a story that gets to be inspirational with the realization that it was a hero in pajamas that kickstarted this chain of events some 35 years ago. That’s when a never-say-die Reed Irvine began what were to become his ongoing efforts to hold the media accountable for dishonest, fraudulent reporting.

While in 2004 his spryness may have been set back by a debilitating stroke, the spirit of Reed Irvine lives on.

No one has done more to keep the media honest than the plucky Reed aIM founder, who in everyday life, was always ahead of his time.

Irvine leaves a legacy that is unique, and is one that paved the way to Internet bloggers being better at the job of news reporting than many of those celebrated by a powerful mainline media.

In 2004, Irvine’s son, Don and editor, Cliff Kincaid carry on the Reed Irvine tradition, promising it will never die.

Thank you, Reed, for a legacy that continues to give the free world a chance.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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