Chalk this one up for the Blogosphere

CBS News and Anchorman Dan Rather have finally come clean and made a public apology . They acknowledge the authenticity of documents used in a recent "60 Minutes II" story about George W. Bush's National Guard service can't be confirmed.

Rather and CBS News have both said using the documents was a mistake. CBS also said it was deliberately misled by a key source in its "60 Minutes" report questioning President Bush's National Guard service.

CBS added former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."

Blog Bloke is not going to join his headline seeking peers who are demanding the public lynching of a news icon. There is no evidence Mr. Rather intentionally misled the public, and any conjecture in this regard is preposterous. For to even entertain such a notion would infer that Mr. Rather was in collusion and prepared to jeopardize an impeccable career.

I don't think so, and unless there is concrete evidence produced to the contrary I am satisfied with the apology and he has been redeemed as far as I'm concerned.

There is no denying that Dan jumped the gun and screwed up big time. A man with his experience should know better and he will always suffer the humiliation of this episode on his record. But he also did what was needed to rectify the matter.

The mark of a man (or woman) is not how many mistakes he didn't make - but rather how he handles those mistakes. Everybody messes up and his exemplary career to date demands absolution. As for CBS' handling of the matter, I'm not so sure.

Will that be the end of it? Not by a long shot. Already rumours abound the document was leaked by Kerry's bunch. Was it partisanship? Who knows.

But if there is anything we can learn from all this right here and now, it is exactly what your Momma has always told you. Don't believe everything that you read, or hear, or... chalk this one up for the blogosphere folks.