Talk:Killian documents controversy/Archive 6

message: Just wanted to say that the writers did an excellent job on this. Very unbiased, very balanced, well sourced and researched. If this comment is inappropriate please delete it, but really guys and gals, excellent work in creating an ideal entry.66.65.57.234 16:48, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Excellent work

message: I disagree that this falls into the category of a journalistic hoax, certainly not along the lines of the other things in that category.  Unlike Jayson Blair and other situations, I think CBS was absolutely convinced that they got it right.  They were led into a bad situation by their willingness to suspend disbelief and ingnore contrary evidence in favor of what they believed was right.  There have been other cases of this phenomenon (Winter soldier for example, or more recently the Iraqi who was reported by the NY Times that he was the one in a famous Abu Ghraib photo even though the Times itself had printed otherwise the year before.)  Maybe we can have a category for this sort of scandal but I think the journalist hoaxes should stick to things that were intentionally perpeutated as hoaxes. Thatcher131 02:41, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: CBS itself, perhaps yes, though Mapes I feel, knows more than she admits. But as the rabid partisan that she is, Mapes still feels she did the right thing. Rather looked the other way, but Mapes knew the documents were smelly. CBS failed because it paid not enough attention - other than to initially blindly trust Mapes and Rather. Merecat 03:40, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Hoax" clearly implies knowledge, not merely "paid not enough attention".  The same people who are quick to accuse CBS of a hoax in the Killian documents incident would, I suspect, scream bloody murder if the term were applied to the mainstream media's failure to expose the Bush administration's prewar lies about Iraq. JamesMLane t c 10:29, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Journalistic hoax?

message: I corrected the false claim that the view of the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel was "that the September 8 broadcast was not motivated by politics".  The report said that it did not "find a basis to acuse" those involved "of having a political bias".  That is not at all the same as what was claimed. -- JPMcGrath 05:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's subtle, but I think JPMcGrath's point might be that the panel did not conclusively state political bias was not a factor, but instead stated that it did not find enough evidence to make that accusation, as "bias is hard to prove," in Boccardi's words.  In any event, more precise citations are usually an improvement for an article.  I think it's a good change. Kaisershatner 13:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  False claim: political motivation 

message: I don't think "in contrast" is a weasel word, its another way of saying, these three experts say one thing; on the other hand, a fourth expert says a different thing.  I don't care if it gets left off entirely, I just do see how it's weaselly. Thatcher131 04:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: In contrast

message: I can't find the nomination or promotion for this article as "good" in the page history of Wikipedia:Good articles.  I do believe it is Good (and that my own efforts to clean up and verify the sources are at best a minor contribution).  However, to be fair I have listed it at Wikipedia:Good articles/Disputes for review. Thatcher131 04:34, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It was never even nominated.  The guy who listed it has done that several times now.  The other ones got speedy pulled, but this was missed. Derex 05:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Good article?

message: The article does not address the question of whether there has been, or why there hasn't been, a criminal investigation into the source of the forgery, which is presumably a criminal offense.  It would seem to me the most important question of all in this whole topic, yet no one has ever been charged, and no investigation was ever announced afaik?  How can this unless it is to coverup Karl Rove's dirty tricks? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.191.250.81 (talk • contribs) 
:Troll feeding time.  I think the "crime" would be really be civil libel or slander of either Bush or Killian.  I don't think it is criminal to make up a document that isn't a legal instrument.  Heck, half of wikipedia is made up.  In fact, your accusation of Rove's dirty tricks is made up yet you haven't been arrested yet.  I suppose this is another master plan by that evil genius Rove to discredit wikipedia. --Tbeatty 20:49, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not interested.  We could write endless articles on the "crimes" of various people that have not been investigated, and then wikipedia would be no better than Free Republic or the Democratic Underground.Thatcher131 21:00, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Why no Criminal Investigation of Forgery Source?

message: I added the word "possibly" to the first sentence of this article:
The Killian documents controversy (also called Memogate or Rathergate) involved several possibly forged documents
It has never been proven that these documents are forgeries.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.190.65.50 (talk • contribs) 
:I reverted you, sorry.  The degree to which the documents appear to have been forged varies directly with one's political point of view.  It is much more neutral just to note they are documents that were presented as authentic (which is unambiguously objectively true) and that they were not authenticated, and that many experts believe they were forgeries, etc.  I happen to think they were obvious forgeries, but let's stick to a neutral description.  Kaisershatner 15:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather still believes they were authentic.  Or at least, that they have not been proven to be unauthentic.  I added a blurb to this affect to the article, along with Rather's opinion that the story of Bush's service is more important than the nature of the evidence.  I'll try to dig up a source for this, it was in an interview from, I believe, last fall, when he won some award. Bjsiders 15:34, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're right but in order to keep that in it should be cited.  Kaisershatner 20:38, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, I haven't been able to locate the particular interview.  I'll find it.  Just probably not tonight. :) Bjsiders 22:28, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Forgery Has Never Been Proven

message: Anyone who thinks "likely" is NPOV compared to "possible" needs to learn more about the concept of neutrality and refrain from editing articles here until they do.  Also, referring to valid edits as "vandalism" is extremely offensive. --SpinyNorman 18:22, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to do so if you like - it isn't really relevant to the issue at hand.  Too many of the "experts" who talked about whether or not the Killian documents were forgeries are not objective scientists but rather professional, political axe-grinders.  The only relevant fact is that the documents have not been proved to be forgeries.  Everything else is speculation.  --SpinyNorman 22:43, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, that's your OPINION.  If you have proof they were forged then feel free to present it.  Personally, I think they were forgeries too.  But wikipedia is a place were facts (not opinion) are reported.  --SpinyNorman 23:24, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Before bothering to meet your standards of proof (assuming your standards mattered to me), I need to know if you would consider a PowerPoint presentation describing Bush's TexANG record dated in the 1970's to be a forgery.  Or if you would say "well, PROVE they are a forgery." That's what we're dealing with here.  Technology that did not exist in 1970's.  Surely, there is no law of physics that says someone in the 1970's couldn't have created a set of slides that just happened to look like a PowerPoint presentation, but if things that like cannot be accepted at face value as forgeries, then Wikipedia's concerns for the truth is worthless. --71.71.238.231 23:31, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your "Powerpoint" question is absurd and unworthy of response.  The technology to produce proportional spacing and superscript DID exist at the time and anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.  The question of kerning is more complex.  However, there is no agreement on whether or not kerning was used in the documents so the point is moot.  --SpinyNorman 23:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure you think it's absurd. It's a simple mental experiment to figure out just what one would accept as "proof," and when certain people are faced with a result they don't like, they try to pretend the experiment doesn't exist.   Glad to see you've thoroughly thought through what would be required as "proof" before demanding it of others. --71.71.238.231 23:48, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure I would consider mental masturbation to be "exercise".  Asking if a PPT that purported to be from the 1970s is a forgery is a ridiculous question.  I believe the documents are forgeries (though there is no evidence as to who forged them or the motives in creating the forgeries - for all we know, Karl Rove could have created them to plant in the hopes that they would be passed off as genuine and could then be "discovered" as forgeries in order to draw attention away from Dubya's appalling conduct in the TANG.  It is interesting that when the documents were first discovered, Bush didn't immediately denounce them as forgeries and also that those with knowledge of the events in question say that even if the documents themselves were forgeries, the events the documents describe were real enough.  Put another way, if I show you a photograph purporting show the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, the photograph itself may be a forgery but that doesn't mean Booth didn't shoot Lincoln. --SpinyNorman 06:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Spiny: Technology to produce proportional spacing and superscript did exist at the time, but the specific proportional spacing tech used in the memos did not. The question of kerning is not particularly difficult: the memos are not kerned in the digital meaning of "having adjustments in spacing between particular pairs of letters"; they appear to be kerned in the old metal typesetting sense of "having glyphs that protrude beyond the amount that they push the next glyph ahead" (that go beyond their advance width).  --Tphinney 07:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

text: And in the context you used it, "likely" is inherently POV.  You're talking about opinions...  Wikipedia isn't a soapbox, it is a place where objective facts are reported.  If you have proof that the documents are forgeries then feel free to report it.  Otherwise let's leave the bias and spin of a blatantly right-wing source like The Weekly Standard out of this article.  As for the "idiot" comment, what else would you call someone who insists that the typography of the Killian documents is anomalous because it contained superscript or proportional spacing - technologies that were available LONG BEFORE Bush joined his "champagne unit".  --SpinyNorman 00:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Possible" vs "Likely" 

message: This is a bad joke.  TWS is a blatantly partisan publication and has no business being used as an objective reference in this article.  To do so is in clear violation of wiki NPOV policy.  --SpinyNorman 04:21, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Media Matters is also politically biased and has been used as a source on Wikipedia.  Valid information doesn't stop being valid simply because a politically charged organization reported it.  If that was the case, there'd be no such thing as "news" in the world. Bjsiders 13:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about the Washington Post?  They said the memos were "almost certainly" forgeries.  Or does their buy-in into this prove that they are conservatives, too? --71.71.238.231 15:43, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know the East Coast papers all that well, but isn't the Post the "conservative" DC paper and the Times the "liberal" paper?  Or is it the other way around?  In any case, the experts quoted in the Weekly Standard article can be independently verified to exist and political affiliations can be researched.  The article even spells out the political standing of one of them: "Either these are later transcriptions of earlier documents (which may have been handwritten or typed on a typewriter), or they are crude and amazingly foolish forgeries. I'm a Kerry supporter myself, but I won't let that cloud my objective judgment: I'm 99% sure that these documents were not produced in the early 1970s."  So it's not like the Standard just hauled out a bunch of neocon Bush fanbois to echo Republican talking points. Bjsiders 15:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reference to The Weekly Standard in the intro

message: The [edit] to the opening paragraph by SpinyNorman seems to me to be questionable NPOV. On the one hand, I think "characterized" is actually an improvement over "identified," and is more neutral. But demoting the experts criticizing the memos to simply "critics" is unreasonable. Folks like me and Newcomer have earned our credentials. I think this reversion should be revised. (There's also a question of correct quantities: it's only "several experts," but if you want to talk about the number of simple "critics" you'd have to say "many critics" or "dozens of critics.")  Thomas Phinney 08:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The cited Weekly Standard article refers to several experts.  While thats probably simply their partisan take on the matter, since that's the publication that's been chosen to represent this opinion, the sentence should reflect what the article actually says.  I think it should be changed back to "several experts", complete with quotation marks to clarify that this is what is stated in the article.Hal Raglan 16:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Arkon 23:31, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree.  Calling them "experts" is unnecessary editorial comment.  Using the more neutral term "critic" is a better way to go.  --SpinyNorman 07:28, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not 100% sure about that.  Not all critical opinions are of equal relevance.  If I happen to think they're fake, that's much less relevant than if a typesetting expert with 20 years of experience in forensic document analysis thinks they're fake.  I may be a critic, but they are an expert.  Possibly "critic" understates the importance of their views.Kaisershatner 18:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm. Two other folks agreed with my objection, and somebody changed it in the direction I had suggested. Then Spiny reverted it, ummm, because he disagreed. Seems like he doesn't like being outvoted by the community! I see somebody has changed it back already. Next time I will do it myself.... Thomas Phinney 07:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV Wars: "identified by several experts" vs "characterized by several critics"

message: Apparently, Michael Moore was shown these documents before CBS ran the story and declined to run with them because he thought they might be forgeries:
This says something about Rather's/Mapes' judgement that Michael Moore of all people turned it down.  OK maybe I'm showing a little POV there, but should we mention this Moore episode in the article?  Are there others on the record as turning down this story? Crust 22:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Documents also shopped to Moore and perhaps others? 

message: I think the recent changes regarding document experts have introduced excessive detail.  Flynn wasn't the only expert, and the dispute over his views about apostrophe's is not the main focus of this article.  I'd favor cutting this altogether, leaving something like "considered forgeries by a number of experienced document examiners" and in the footnote list them.  Alternatively, we could go back to where this was before the mention of Flynn in the introduction.  Kaisershatner 15:32, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I had very similar concerns, but have been too busy to post for the last week. The old version mentioned that there was a general issue and hubbub, and then had a citation or two to back it up. The current version has expanded one *representative* citation into being the whole story. This misses the entire point that there were *many* such articles and several TV pieces criticizing the memos, many from more prestigious sources than the one cited. I believe it should be reverted.  Thomas Phinney 07:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Sounds good to me. Arkon 20:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: SpinyNorman, under "restore balance to intro" you insert an indictment of Flynn, when Flynn isn't mentioned in the intro - he's in the footnote.  I moved your "restorative" comment there.  Kaisershatner 20:12, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: I'm not sure how to put this into the article; FactCheck.org repeats the claim in their article titled "Update: Documents May Be Forgeries" at http://www.factcheck.org/miscreports256.html
...Subsequently, members of Killian's family said they suspected the documents weren't authentic, and experts quoted by conservative websites and mainstream news organizations said the documents could not have been produced by the typewriters in common use in the early 1970's. The memos contain proportional spacing, in which the letter "i" occupies less space than the letter "m," for example. And they contain the "superscript" character "th" (in “Report to 111th F.I.S. administrative officer” in the May 2 memo, for example.) A feature of modern computer word-processing programs such as Microsoft Word automatically changes “th” to superscript characters when following numerals, but such characters were impossible to produce on ordinary typewriters in use in 1972. ...
and provides quotations from various people about it. And is lessthan sup greaterthan the correct way to do superscript in wiki-land? (LaTeX seems to be overkill!)  --htom 04:59, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  superscript "th" impossible source ?