Houston CBS Radio Affiliate 950KPRC Dumps Rather May Cancel CBS Contract
FGS
Posted on 09/20/2004 9:52:25 AM PDT by Ex-Dem
WKYT and WYMT Response to Recent CBS Reporting. CBS Acknowledges It Cannot Prove Documents Are True. Rather Apologizes for Error.
We appreciate the trust each of you as viewers have put into WKYT and WYMT during the past several decades. Because of that trust, we strive to be both fair and accurate in our local coverage of news, weather and sports. We want to hear from you when you think we've been unfair. We will often respond to your suggestions to provide better balance and fairness to our coverage. We want to know if you think we've been inaccurate. We correct inaccuracies quickly.
We believe this approach to covering local and state events has served our stations well. Because so many of you have faith in us, we have been the news organization most watched by Kentucky residents. Our approach is in sharp contrast to the debacle now occurring at our network partner-- CBS.
It is clear based on his own recent reporting that Dan Rather and CBS did not execute necessary care to be fair AND accurate in its reporting on the National Guard record of President Bush. As you can read below in a statement issued at Noon on Monday, CBS NEWS Management and Dan Rather have both acknowledged their reports were inaccurate. They admit they made an error in reporting the story. Many of you have taken the time to write us about how upset you are with CBS's coverage.
We have shared those sentiments with the people who run CBS. While we are just two of about 200 CBS affiliates, you can be sure that in almost every case, each of those CBS stations have sent the network thousands of such statements. Viewers are angry-- and with good reason.
We don't know how CBS will continue to respond and report on this story. I can promise you that WKYT and WYMT will not change our standards to report fairly and accurately all sides of an issue.
Wayne Martin
President and General Manager
STATEMENT FROM THE NEWS DIVISION
MAN WHO GAVE CBS NEWS DISPUTED DOCUMENTS DESCRIBES HOW HE OBTAINED THEM; IN TELEVISION INTERVIEW, HE ADMITS HE DELIBERATELY MISLED CBS NEWS PRODUCER
CBS NEWS ACKNOWLEDGES THAT, BASED ON SUBSEQUENT REPORTING ON QUESTIONS ABOUT DOCUMENTS, IT CANNOT PROVE THEY ARE AUTHENTIC AND, THEREFORE, THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN USED IN THE "60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY" REPORT .
CBS NEWS AND CBS MANAGEMENT ARE COMMISSIONING AN INDEPENDENT REVIEW
Bill Burkett, in a weekend interview with CBS News Anchor and Correspondent Dan Rather, has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents used in the Sept. 8 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY report on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Burkett, a retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, also 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. Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point.
Burkett's interview will be featured in a full report on tonight's CBS EVENING NEWS WITH DAN RATHER (6:30-7:00 PM, ET/PT).
In light of this and other developments reported by CBS News and other news organizations, CBS News President Andrew Heyward issued the following statement: "60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY had full confidence in the original report or it would not have aired. However, in the wake of serious and disturbing questions that came up after the broadcast, CBS News has done extensive additional reporting in an effort to confirm the documents' authenticity. That included an interview featured on last week's edition of 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY (15) with Marian Carr Knox, secretary to the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the officer named as the author of the documents; the interview with Bill Burkett to be seen tonight (20); and a further review of the forensic evidence on both sides of the debate."
"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret. Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting. We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust."
CBS News and CBS management are commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken. The names of the people conducting the review will be announced shortly, and their findings will be made public.
STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER
Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question-and their source-vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers.
That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question. But we did use the documents.
We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism. Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.
Well....the last comment sent a radio guy packing out West. Tread lightly.
STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER
If I knew the blogs would hand me my A$$ on platter I would not have gone ahead with this story!
I will say that WKYT and WYMT have been very fair to both sides in Kentucky in the past few years. They have a weekly interview show called "Newsmakers" that is a one-on-one interview. The host, Bill Bryant, has made sure that the show is fair in both booking Republicans and Democrats and by asking them fair, non-biased questions.
Not good enough.
Bravo Sierra!
I am the man who gave those disputed memos to CBiaS...and I categorically deny these claims that I have admitted to having misled CBiaS or anyone else. Deliberately or otherwise.
I stand by the validty of the documents, and challenge CBS to prove that it was not me who gave them the memos!
When CBS is ready to clean up their reputation - here's where to start -- hire the honest people of WKYT and WYMT.
The part at the end of the Dan Rather Statement, where he resigns from CBS, was the most impressive!!
Can you prove to us that you were the source of the documents given to Dan Rather?
1. No admission that they are forgeries.
2. No retraction of the story's merit
3. Apology for not proving them true?
4.Convenient joint release from Burkitt claiming he misled...but there own sources told them they were false so how could they be misled..
5.why do they center on good faith and burkitt..they were not misled and Burkitt is not the source. He is cut-away, the patsy
As long as they are going to coordinate press releases from this "unnammed source" (and as long as the dolts in the complicit Main Stream Media are going to credit these press releases from "unnamed sources", then I am going to maintain that I am the unnammed source, in reality, and that the press releases attributed to me are false...
...and dare them to prove that it is someone else, and not me.
(It may very well not be me, after all, but even if my statements are demonstrated to be false, I will still stand by the factuality of my underlying story. Heck, it worked for Dan Rather fo rtwo weeks.)
What's the frequency, Dan?
How far would they have to change their standards to begin to report fairly and accurately?
ping
What do you want WKYT and WYMT to do?
Looks like Burkett is going to have more than 15 minutes of infamy. - tom
CBS. I should've been more clear.
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