Oh, it was 0% valid, and anyone who knows anything about how typewriters work (which you would think Rather, as someone styling himself as an old-school journalist, would know) could tell you in an instant. A partisan viewpoint is exactly the problem here - if you hated Dubya enough, as Rather and the others at CBS apparently did, you were able to punt logic to the curb and believe the story they wanted to believe.

But even if you were ideologically opposed to Bush, this should have been interesting to you too as an example of something not to do. Why not report on the stuff that actually happened and was backed by evidence that wasn't easily-debunkable? Plenty of not-so-flattering things happened during the Bush Jr administration… starting with an unwinnable war in which military contractors made out like bandits.

But I think the yet-still-ongoing three-ring media circus around the Trump administration proved the press learned nothing from this. Oh well. So long as the people instead learn that the press is just as ideologically-driven as anyone - more so, even.