I tried only minimal commenting on Rathergate, but I said at the time that you didn’t need to be a document expert, that it was HUGELY obvious that the documents were done in Microsoft Word if you had just a modicum of experience using computers.
Seems like the CBS report agrees with me.
The real issue is that it should have been minimally obvious to everyone involved that they were fake, even if they weren’t document experts. So its not just myopia on Rather’s part, its all computer illiteracy, the RatherGate story is interesting for what it tells us about CBS and Dan Rather.
Dan Rather probably doesn’t use a computer much. He’s probably the sort of person who has his secretary print out his email. If he, or any of the people who had looked at this story were both computer literate, and had reviewed the memos even a little bit, they would have thought: “That looks an awful lot like Microsoft Word”. Even if he either hates Bush, or he was so greedy for a story that he didn’t matter that his source was hugely tainted, he would have known they weren’t just forgeries, but bad forgeries
This story also serves as a warning to all professional journalists: These days, with lots of people having blogs, there are lots of people to call you on a mistake. You might want to remember that, even when under deadline pressure.
The annoying “helpfulness” of Microsoft Word to automatically put in superscripts probably got 4 people fired from their job. As a UI designer, I find this freaking hilarious.
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