Posted on 01/21/2005 9:55:35 PM PST by RayChuang88
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NBC's top executive sharply criticized CBS News and anchorman Dan Rather on Friday for broadcasting a botched report questioning President Bush (news - web sites)'s military record -- and said such a mistake could never happen at his network.
In a public rebuke of a rival network's news judgment that was rare for its bluntness, NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker said NBC News had learned its lesson from a discredited report on automobile safety aired by "Dateline NBC" in the early 1990s.
Asked about the recent CBS News gaffe at NBC's annual winter presentation to TV critics, Zucker said, "Nothing like that could have gotten through at any level (at NBC) because of the safeguards that we instituted more than a decade ago."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
However, the fact that even that a high-level executive at NBC Universal is denouncing what CBS News tried to foister on an unsuspecting American audience tells me that Viacom COO Leslie Moonves has a major PR fiasco on his hands with Rathergate and it may be many, many years before CBS News gets its reputation back, if ever. 
Asked about the recent CBS News gaffe at NBC's annual winter presentation to TV critics, Zucker said, "Nothing like that could have gotten through at any level (at NBC) because of the safeguards that we instituted more than a decade ago."
B.S. If you have everyone on staff hating the administration and rooting for the other guy and they happen to be DimocRATS, it wil happen.
Slandering a sitting President up for re-election in wartime is JUST a touch more serious than fudging an auto-safety report. The mainstream television media needs a MASSIVE spanking on the part of its viewers. Not viewing at all would be a dandy start.
Total, naked hypocrisy from NBC. The nerve of them, trying to lecture another news organization when they themselves are questionable.
The NBC rebuke still misses the point by calling it a "mistake". His statement carries with it the assumption that no mischief was involved.
NBC also had Kitty Kelley on the Today Show for quite a few days to promote her book of lies about the Bush family so, they are no better than CBS!
Then why did Lisa Myers tell Broaddrick that "the bad news is, you're very credible?" Why did NBC sit on the story and then pared the interview down from 3 hours to a little 10 minute Dateline snippet?
I see you missed the sarcasm in my post.
On the night of the Dateline interview NBC spent the beginning of their evening news program talking about a special on ABC.
Watching Zucker lecture CBS on ethics is like John Kerry giving a speech on honor.
Yeah...the pot here is at the very least calling the kettle black! As you point out, it's certainly very interesting that a high level exec is making such a statement, but, after clearly helping the other alphabet networks dump pails of manure on conservatives, Republicans and conservative views in general for decades, I'm not convinced of NBC's objectivity by this one statement.
One supposes that NBC is rather (LOL, no pun intended!) opportunistically tryng to create the image of high standards of objectivity to capture some apparently available market share. :-\
In any case, even if sincere, as 'jennyscool' has pointed out, the so-called mainstream media needs a spanking and still has a drastic lesson to learn - and, I'll add, has a long, long way to go before conservatives, and serious truth seekers generally, can rely on them.
- knightshadow.
"Watching Zucker lecture CBS on ethics is like John Kerry giving a speech on honor."
Yup!!
- knightshadow.
You're right, that's how I looked at it too. This is more of a "Damn CBS, why'd you have to do something stupid and make us look bad too?" speech from Zucker than actual criticism.
The sharks smell blood in the water. The fact that it is another shark that's bleeding is immaterial.
I'd recognize the sarcasm if the typing was a little more cohesive...
It is too late for CBS News. The "investigation" of CBS's attempt to fix a Presidential election by using forged memos has already been thoroughly exposed as a whitewash. CBS is toast. The only (very slim) possibility that CBS has of beginning a long, slow recovery would be for the network to unceremoniously axe Rather, Heyward, and Moonves and then bring in a complete surprise (from the outside) as the new anchor. And that new anchor would have to be one heck of a choice.
Of course, the "old" (formerly "mainstream") news media is a dying institution anyway, so there may not even be any point in trying to recover. Good riddance to the lot of them.
pot, meet kettle.
Yes, it should be used for this article.
NBC playing this little line would be the same as Noah standing deckside on day 20 and asking the zebras if they think it will rain.
Ray they won't
I think we saw end of Evening news on CBS as we know of I hearing about Les Moorives may drop the CBS evening news or change the format with different anchor
I hear that
|
"Of course, the "old" (formerly "mainstream") news media is a dying institution anyway, so there may not even be any point in trying to recover. Good riddance to the lot of them."
Amen! In my book, whatever happens to CBS isn't really good enough - or a good enough example to the liberal media - until the FBI investigates and files ferderal charges for trying to rig the election.
- knightshadow.
You need to lurk awhile before you post again.
This may have had more impact had Zucker blasted CBS back in September of 2004. Bringing it up now in the manner it reads, is beyond idiotic.
Do they say anything about ABC airing the funeral of one of our fallen during the inauguration?
What about Katie and Matt's daisy chain with Kitty Kelly for 3 friggin days right before the election?
There's no points to be made here. Forget it NBC. Too late now. Bone up for 2008. I'm sure you'll be just as crooked, if still around.
Sure it could. Ideology trumps all else in the modern American newsroom. Never mind if the story is factual. To liberals and their wiling accomplices in the media, truth is whatever serves the party.
Who would it be? O'Reilly? Liz Trotta? John Stossel? Bernard Goldberg? Dari Alexander? Laurie Dhue? Who?
Maybe someone wise at NBC decided it was time to distance themselves from wake of CBS as it goes down?
ABC & NBC didn't have a hand in the Fraud, but they are still "sister ships" of CBS. I wonder if the cable networks look down on all three as associated with the "myopic bias" problem.
Ted Nugent.
Just the name Kitty Kelly was enough to discredit the whole thing. You do remember that everyone hated her unauthorized biographies of Frank Sinatra and former President Ronald Reagan, and Kelly's book about the British royal family actually got banned in Great Britain! 
Re: Kitty Kelly on NBC.
The stupid liberals are renewing their drive to bring back the Fairness Doctrine". They think this is still 1988 and that they will be the ones constantly refuting any conservative message that happens to pass into the public airways. They don't realize it's a "doctrine" that cuts both ways. If the doctrine was indeed still the law, we could have had a three-morning segment on the Today Show to blast back at the lies from Ms. Kelley.
I say, YES INDEED!, bring back that "fairness doctrine". It will be the end of all liberals in the media.
you mean like adding exploding canisters on trucks to show how they explode when they run into another car?
A good axiom for internal controls, is never say never.
No and its sad. Back in the good old days when there were real conservatives with a real sense of humor one didn't need to identify sarcasm, it was assumed. In fact the sarcasm tags started as a joke.
I have witnessed sharks descending on another bloody shark in the water and I'm glad your post reminded me that analogy.
If it's true that 3 of the 4 fired CBS executives plan to file suit over it, that would be a most amusing turn of event. CBS would then be forced to either go through the "discovery process" which would put the lie to the results of their "investigation" or have to negotiate huge settlements to keep it out of court, which, in effect, admits to the cover-up. I guess you could say CBS finds itself "between a Black Rock and a hard place".
If I were one of the executives in question, I'd be happy as a clam knowing that I could squeeze CBS for enough cash to provide for my grandchildrens' grandchildren.
...everyone will have a clear view after we rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
"Even Brokaw threatened to resign if the entire Broaddrick interview was aired. "
He must have been quite hurt then, when Clinton gave him the cobra death stare during his Library-opening interview.
Vain little punks like Brokaw don't bend over without expecting something in return.
And he continued, "We put all of those things on our MSNBC."
Schadenfreude is nice during a snowstorm!
My system is to use<font color=red>"&"lt;/sarcasm> </font>which displays as:(hold the quotation marks around the "&"),</sarcasm>And even then, you may have to allow for people wanting to state explicitly what you consider to be obvious . . . and just say, "No," to flame wars.
NBC is trying to cover their backsides. I have been less than impressed by Brian Williams and the format.
Whether you hated or loved Brokaw, he had a keen interest and sense of history and politics.
Good ping, PGalt.Oh good. They're eating their own.
I think this NBC response should be filed right next to the CBS "investigation" of Rathergate.The CBS "investigation" made a show of roundly criticizing the "Killian memo" report and scapegoated some CBS employees, but it had no other purpose than to promote an infinite standard of proof on the "question" of political bias at CBS News (It was in service to that objective that the CBS "investigation" found it "too hard" to come to a conclusion on the validity of those forged documents). Likewise NBC scapegoats CBS when it claims that it is far above such chicanery as
using forged documentsplanting an incindiary in a gas tank in order to "prove" a vehicle's lack of crashworthiness.This is the obvious response to the egregious tendentiousness not merely of CBS's failure to vet the transparent forgeries but even of the effort, at that late date, to find those "documents" - given that Bush had signed Standard Form 180, and CBS was helping Kerry stonewall on that issue while claiming to have revealed his entire military record. NBC criticizes CBS far less sharply than the facts warrant.
NBC really, really doesn't want to start a flame war within "objective" journalism. After all, CBS was not alone in stonewalling for Kerry; NBC
wasis right there with all the rest of "objective" journalism in stonewalling the SBVT.Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate
Media bias bump.
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Oh good. They're eating their own.