Interviews reporter & producers responsible for fake-email/fake-Republican draft story.

Great job, Bill. I'd be so happy for you if I weren't boiling over with seething jealousy.

I'd still like to know the following:

Do all the people involved in this matter believe that reporting about chain emails without mentioning they're false is responsible?

Would they similarly put up sham emails while implicitly vouching for their accuracy -- using the emails as the news peg -- if the emails in question stated erroneous facts that damaged John Kerry?

What is their rationale is for refusing to re-report on the story and stating, explicitly, that the text in the emails is inaccurate? These reporters always claim they just want to "get the truth out there," but when the "truth" might undermine their credibility or previous reporting, suddenly "the truth" is irrelevant.

I think the reporters and producers are fundamentally dishonest, by the way. Confronted with Bill's common-sense question about putting up false emails as a news peg, they all attempt to pretend that Gee, that never even occurred to me.

If it didn't occur to them, they should be fired for incompetence.

They also all claim that the emails weren't important to the story, which is sort of odd-- since when do reporters carefully scripting and cutting a three-minute piece include irrelevant information?

If the emails weren't important, why did they feature them?

And finally, note their eagerness to get a "Republican woman" (right) as their subject. They say that they didn't include a left-winger because that would be taken as suspect. And yet they also seem to be implying that the story wasn't particularly harmful to Bush; that the story was about both parties equally.

If it's about both parties equally-- why the driving need to get a "Republican voter" who just happens to associate with International ANSWER as a subject?

Update: PrestoPundit catches the CBS News reporters almost saying their report was fake, but accurate.

Turns out it really doesn't matter if there's any chance of a draft, or if the emails were fake.