Posted on 01/10/2005 7:02:45 AM PST by 1Old Pro
Report just issues, mapes finally fired
A CBS bloodbath......... with the flavor of TANG........mmmmmmm, tastes mighty good.
Too true, but if CBS issues this report WITHOUT a retraction, they deserve what they've got coming.
As stated in an earlier post, this will be "overlooked" by the liberals.
Jim Warren on Fox lamenting how this will unfairly tarnish the many fairminded and honest reporters out there and most people don't understand the "nuanced" (yes, he said it) way they work.
I've got some nuance for Jim the dolt Warren.
The attacks on the September 8 Segment began virtually immediately. One of the first came on freerepublic.com, a website:
[E]very single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90’s. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn’t used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80’s used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.85
An over-zealous "admin moderator" locked a later thread on this that actually contained some information beyon the headline:
"(CBS) Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush’s National Guard service.
The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with “rigid and blind” defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report.
Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated.
The correspondent on the story, CBS News anchor Dan Rather, is stepping down as anchor of CBS Evening News.
The panel said a “myopic zeal” to be the first news organization to broadcast a groundbreaking story about Mr. Bush’s National Guard service was a key factor in explaining why CBS News had produced a story that was neither fair nor accurate and did not meet the organization’s internal standards.
The report said at least four factors that some observers described as a journalistic “Perfect Storm” had contributed to the decision to broadcast a piece that was seriously flawed.
“The combination of a new 60 Minutes Wednesday management team, great deference given to a highly respected producer and the network’s news anchor, competitive pressures, and a zealous belief in the truth of the segment seem to have led many to disregard some fundamental journalistic principles, “ the report said.
The piece was aired during a tight and hotly contested presidential race between Mr. Bush and Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry. The timing of the story prompted charges of political bias against CBS News.
While the panel found that some actions taken by CBS News encouraged such suspicions, “the Panel cannot conclude that a political agenda at 60 Minutes Wednesday drove either the timing of the airing of the segment or its content.”
The story, which aired last Sept. 8, relied on four documents allegedly written by one of Mr. Bush's Texas Air National Guard commanders in the early 1970s, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who is now dead. Questions about the authenticity of the documents were raised almost immediately.
After a stubborn 12-day defense of the story, CBS New conceded that it could not confirm the authenticity of the documents and asked former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press President Louis Boccardi to conduct an independent investigation into the matter.
Their findings were contained in a 224-page report made public on Monday. While the panel said it was not prepared to brand the Killian documents as an outright forgery, it raised serious questions about their authenticity and the way CBS News handled them.
The panel identified 10 serious defects in the preparation and reporting of the story that included failure to obtain clear authentication of the documents or to investigate controversial background of the source of the purported documents, retired Texas National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett.
The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was also faulted for calling a Joe Lockhart, a senior official in the John Kerry campaign, prior to the airing of the piece, and offering to put him in touch with Burkett. The panel called Mapes’ action a “clear conflict of interest that created the appearance of political bias.”
The panel noted that the Guard segment was rushed on the air only six days after 60 Minutes Wednesday had obtained the some of the documents from Burkett and that preparation of the piece was supervised by a new management team of executive producer Josh Howard and senior broadcast producer Murphy.
A key factor in the decision to broadcast the piece was a telephone conversation between Mapes and Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, Killian’s commanding officer. Mapes told the panel Hodges confirmed the content of the four documents after she read them to him over the phone.
Hodges, however, denied doing so. He also told the panel he had given Mapes information that should have raised warning flags about the document, including his belief that Killian had never ordered anyone, including Mr. Bush, to take a physical.
Hodges said that when he finally saw the documents after the Sept. 8 broadcast, he concluded they were bogus and told Rather and Mapes of his opinion on Sept. 10.
“This alleged confirmation by Major General Hodges started to march 60 Minutes Wednesday into dangerous and ultimately unsustainable territory: the notion that since the content of the documents was felt to be true, demonstrating the authenticity of the documents became less important.”
Mapes’ telephone conversation with Hodges was part of a vetting process that the panel concluded was wholly inadequate, largely because it had to be done so quickly. The key executives vetting the piece were West, Howard, and Murphy.
After rushing the piece to air, the panel said, CBS News compounded the error by blindly defending the story. In doing so, the news organization missed opportunities to set the record straight.
“The panel finds that once serious questions were raised, the defense of the segment became more rigid and emphatic, and that virtually no attempt was made to determine whether the questions raised had merit,” the report concluded.
The panel believes a turning point came on Sept. 10, when CBS News President Andrew Heyward ordered Betsy West to review the opinions of document examiners who had seen the disputed documents and the confidential sources supporting the story.
But no such investigation was undertaken.
“Had this directive been followed promptly, the panel does not believe that 60 Minutes Wednesday would have publicly defended the segment for another 10 days,” the report said.
The panel made a number of recommendations for changes, including:
Appoint a senior Standards and Practices Executive, reporting directly to the President of CBS News, who would review all investigative reporting, use of confidential sources and authentication of documents. Personnel should feel comfortable going to this person confidentially and without fear of reprisal, with questions or concerns about particular reports.
Foster an atmosphere in which competitive pressure is not allowed to prompt airing of reports before all investigation and vetting is done.
Allow senior management to know the names of confidential sources as well as all relevant background about the person needed to make news judgments.
Appoint a separate team, led by someone not involved in the original reporting, to look into any news report that is challenged.
©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
On his head. While Mapes points and laughs at his genitals.
Yep, journalistic standards turned on their head. The real question is, why did 60 Minutes II go with documents that they could not prove were authentic, especially when there were so many people raising red flags during the research phase?
The DNC has probably already offered her a job.
I wonder what CBS had to do, or promise to do, to get that sentence inserted into the report. Terminations and resignations are necessary in this case but I am disappointed that the end result allows CBS to claim "fairness" still exists in its reporting.
Even the casual observer knows the "story" was a political hit piece designed to cause the maximum amount of damage to the Bush re-election campaign. But that's now swept under the rug.
This committee did the public half-service.
Doncha just love liberal CYA?
Can you believe it! They still can't admit the docs are forged!!!
Here ya go. :)
Probably because it's posted already on this thread?
He's a faker, always has been a faker, and will be remembered as a mother faker.
It'd be nice it they put the CORRECT URL in the footnotes!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1210662/posts
The Nation?
MSNBC?
The New Republic?
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