On September 8, purported memos of the late Lt. Col. Jerry 'Dead Men Don't Sue' Killian were used within a CBS "60 minutes" program about President George W. Bush, and his prior military service with the Texas Air National Guard. News anchor, Dan Rather, presented the suspect memos.

Almost immediately, controversy surrounding the authenticity, or lack thereof, of the memos erupted both within the United States and, courtesy of the blogosphere, around the world.

However, it wasn't until September 16 - 8 days after the event - that the CBS Memo story was picked up by the news section of the world's most generously funded public broadcaster, the BBC.

The story of the fake memos was mainly about reporting standards at CBS News; partly about forged documents, and to a lesser extent, about Dan Rather.

However, back at the BBC, the chosen images accompanying the September 16 article were of a young George W. Bush in the National Guard, and present day presidential contender, John Kerry. Click on a BBC audio link and the chances were you'd hear a man with a very soft and comforting voice, saying over and over again, "You are getting very sleepy".

The BBC article was 56 lines long. Only 3 of those lines concerned the high probability of a forgery within the CBS story. A good deal of the article focused on how the "Content [of the memos] Remains". Thus, the BBC intimated towards what it saw as a more probable truth within forged memos. All of this happened, and Andrew Gilligan was nowhere to be seen - not even one of his many soft drink reimbursement vouchers.

For a while, some of the more leftist participants within the US media attempted to label the event as 'Rather-gate'. These people understood that a person is always dispensable for the greater good - a friendly TV network is not. However, acceptance of 'Rather-gate' appears to be slipping, as 'CBS Memo-gate' takes hold.

On September 20, the BBC reported of an apology of sorts coming from Dan Rather over a 'mistake in judgement' concerning the whole thing. Oddly enough, the chosen image for this BBC story was of a young George W. Bush in the National Guard. Maybe it was George W. Bush, as a young pilot, who forged these CBS memos? The caption under the image read "Doubts about Mr. Bush's service were first raised in the 2000 election". You know, I could have sworn this was an article about an apology from CBS, or Dan Rather, or something similar.

A notice alongside both BBC articles, of September 16 and 20, reads: 'The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites'. Thank God for small mercies.





These views are solely the opinions of the writer, regardless of how close to the truth they may be.

Note 1: The BBC receives nearly 2.8 billion pounds annually from the collection of compulsory licence fees.

(c) John Cavanagh
All rights reserved.

Article posted to this site on 23 September 2004.

All requests for permission to reprint, please contact Liz Foley at lizfoleyau@yahoo.com