Posted on 01/10/2005 7:54:07 AM PST by ChicagoRighty
Mary Mapes, producer of the segmentRetained by CBS News
Josh Howard, executive producer “60 Minutes Wednesday”
Mary Murphy, senior broadcast producer, Howard’s right hand
Esther Kartiganer, senior producer, transcript reader
Betsy West, senior vice president
Yvonne Miller, associate producer from New YorkTwo rotten potatoes will spoil the whole sack, especially if they are sitting at the top.
Dan Rather, anchor (scum)
Andrew Heyward, president (scum)
Looks like positions are open at CBS.
Any Freeper producers with a freaking heck of a lot of experience want to applY?
Well, one can do a great job on most pieces and then screw up in one and get fired over it.
However, frankly, due to the SERIOUSNESS of how duty was ignored, it seems likely that this was not the first time. Just the first time it was found.
Sorry CBS. Too little, too late.
...and that tradition will be upheld in the grand CBS tradition. After all, they have won umpteen bajillion awards from other left-wing biased hacks who revere CBS's particular brand of propaganda. We all know that shelves full of awards equals moral superiority and unquestionable integrity, right?
Excellent post, MindBender26. This report and subsequent sackings of senior people is unprecedented in network TV, at least that I can recall. The model-rocket igniting Ford truck scandal sure didn't have fallout like this.
OF COURSE the report didn't claim political bias, the investigators knew they were hired to prove the opposite. The indications are there and they knew it too. After all, it's not like the Swift Boat Vets claims were aired without investigation.
As far as the Freeper calls for an "apology" to Bush it certainly isn't part of the scope of work of the investigators. That is the job of CBS executives and Dan Rather.
How long before Mary Mapes is quietly hired and placed in the same behind-the-scenes position at ABC, NBC, CNN or PBS? I'd give it a month at the minimum.
This "report" is just lap-dancing around the truth. Yes, it was politically biased. And, more importantly, it was part of a dnc campaign to impugn Bush that week. All the liberal t-heads were spouting the same talking points that friday about Bush's tang service. Coordinated attack among the liberal pundits that this report brushes under the rug. F the old media. And F their "investigative reporting" on why it happened.
Rather already said the story is true. Even though they lied about the docs, fibbed through their teeth...the STORY is still true...Duh < /sarcasm>
Yup, Mapes had been working on the story for five years, no obsession or political bias, only a sudden "urge" to get it on the air before the election!
She'll either be very busy or very bored.
One thing that was always instilled in me by my father was that when you are caught lying just once, you can never truly be trusted again. Moonves is lying here and therefore nothing else written in this memo can be fully trusted.
Of course, CBS was already caught lying by virtue of the network's attempt to fix a Presidential election by using forged military memos to support and embellish a one-sided, Bush-bashing hit-piece interview with a Kerry fundraiser, so any memo that comes out of CBS cannot be trusted on the face of it.
But CBS and Moonves now claim that CBS was trying to fix the election for Kerry but that there was no political agenda behind it? The claim is so utterly bizarre as to call into question not only Moonves competence and integrity, but the integrity of the investigative panel as well.
My conclusion is that the whole thing is a brazen whitewash.
Horrors! This may have a "chilling effect" on bad journalism.
The panel's report is a political whitewash. Les Moonves is a barking moonbat with his own political agenda that just happens to match the agenda of those responsible for this debacle and the sham that is CBS "News". His "gratification" at the "lack" of political bias fails to explain what he says in his own words...
"As far as the question of reporting is concerned, the bottom line is that much of the September 8th broadcast was wrong, incomplete or unfair. The Panel found that the producer of the segment, Mary Mapes, ignored information that cast doubt on the story she had set out to report"
"Instead of asserting its role of independent oversight, CBS News management circled the wagons and encouraged a campaign of support for the report, going so far as to allow the very personnel who were being challenged in the matter to produce follow-up reports in support of the segment."
"the Panel cites a number of instances where Mapes' accounts radically differ from those of her colleagues and sources. This is truly disquieting."
"It is difficult to understand how a person of Kartiganer's toughness and experience abnegated her assigned function, but the fact is that she did"
"Afterwards, he directed that the authentication of the documents and their source be thoroughly re-examined to answer the growing concerns about the segment. The Panel, while it "does not underestimate the storm that hit CBS News," finds that these instructions were not carried out."
"Dan Rather...The Panel has found that his unwillingness to consider that CBS News and his colleague were in the wrong was a mistake"
Moonves offers absolutely no logical explanation for any of this.
The Panel is an ass.
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