Whitewash [THE RATHERGATE SCANDAL]

The CBS Report ignores the heart of the controversy, refuses to draw conclusions, and strengthens the hand of Mary Mapes and Dan Rather. by Jonathan V. Last 01/10/2005 10:07:00 PM

MARY MAPES is right. In a response to her firing from CBS News, the former star producer accuses CBS of "scape-goating" her and says that her dismissal is the result of "corporate and political considerations."

The key to Mapes's defense is her insistence that the documents she provided CBS were authentic. "It is noteworthy the panel did not conclude that these documents are false," she says. She could not be more right.

The Thornburgh-Boccardi report deals mostly with the news-gathering practices of CBS, which is all well and good. But what was needed was a definitive accounting of the truth. There were three questions the report needed to address:

Where did the documents come from? We are told Bill Burkett informed CBS that a woman named "Lucy Ramirez" arranged a drop of the documents to him. We are also told that Burkett declined to cooperate with the panel. And that's that. But what of Lucy Ramirez? Who is she? What was her role? Does she even exist? We don't know. Ramirez is referenced seven times (on pages 35, 210, and 211). Here is the report's final mention of her: "[CBS News, after the story aired] sent personnel into the field to attempt to find Ramirez and thus possibly to confirm the new account. This effort proved unsuccessful." Exit Lucy Ramirez, stage left.

Unlike the New York Times, which painstakingly re-reported Jayson Blair's stories and aired all of the factual dirty laundry, the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel seems to have done little investigating of its own.

Were the documents legitimate? The panel seems to have made some minimal consultation with experts about the documents in question, but its conclusions could not be clearer: "The Panel reaches no definitive conclusion as to whether the Killian documents are authentic. . . . it may never be possible for anyone to authenticate or discredit the documents." (page 134) And "Again, the Panel stresses that it is making no finding as to the authenticity of the Killian documents." (page 150) The conclusion is summed up neatly by Les Moonves who, responding to the report, allowed that "documents could not be authenticated from Xeroxed copies."

But note the language: You may not be able to authenticate a document from a Xerox copy, but surely you can discredit it. If, for instance, I handed you a Xerox copy of a note purporting to be an email from Saint Paul to Saint Peter, you could, after careful study, conclude that it was a forgery. If, that is, you were concerned with such matters.

Why did CBS News run with the story? Here, again, the panel declines to posit a credible answer, citing only a vague "rush to air" and fear of "heavy competition." Yet they tip-toe up to a definitive answer, even going so far as to include a section of the report describing evidence of political bias. And then Thornburgh and Boccardi retreat, denying that the evidence they've just detailed proves anything.

FOR ITS PART, the blogosphere seems fairly sublime about the scandal's final denouement. Soxblog called the report "half a loaf." Jim Geraghty said that the "report did not live up to our worst expectations." At Captain's Quarters, Captain Ed saw the report as very nearly a victory: "In other words, we have CBS producers lying, management AWOL, and the entire enterprise embarrassing itself. These aren't minor points, and admitting them doesn't make this a whitewash." Power Line's John Hinderaker was even more gracious, saying:

I should add that I don't attach great significance to the authors' failure to state a definite conclusion that the documents were fakes. The report does an excellent job of marshalling the evidence as to content, format and typography. No one (except, perhaps, Dan Rather) can read that evidence without concluding that the documents were a hoax. Whether the authors stopped short of the obvious conclusion in order to help CBS, or out of an excess of caution, I have no idea. But the evidence arrayed by the authors against the CBS documents is the last nail in the coffin of those who have continued to argue that they might, after all, be genuine.

One of the only bloggers raising his voice against the report was Hugh Hewitt, who observed that the panel had abdicated the central question put to it.

HEWITT couldn't be more correct. Surely the blue-ribbon report had the responsibility not merely to critique CBS standards and practices, but to help us find out the truth about the incident at hand. To return to the New York Times analogy, it would be like judging the Jayson Blair case without knowing what he had and hadn't made up. By assiduously avoiding conclusions of any kind, the report has left only one possible conclusion: The Thornburgh-Boccardi panel believes that the way in which CBS went about its business may have been improper, but that the story they produced wasn't necessarily wrong. If anything, this represents a step backward in the official reckoning of the case.

Dan Rather understands this. On page 208 we learn that "Rather informed the Panel that he still believes the content of the documents is true because 'the facts are right on the money,' and that no one had provided persuasive evidence that the documents were not authentic."

And Mary Mapes understands it, too. "Indeed, in the end, all that the panel did conclude was that there were many red flags that counseled against going to air quickly . . ." she says now. "I am heartened to see that the panel found no political bias on my part, as indeed I have none."

Well, if the documents weren't forged and Mary Mapes acted with no political bias, then her firing would have been unjust and she really would be a scapegoat. But since there is abundant evidence that the documents were forgeries and that political attitudes were important in driving the story, the better conclusion is that the CBS Report is a whitewash.

Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard. He also runs the blog Galley Slaves.

And the beat goes on. We are supposed to believe all this self serving drivel that there was nothing political about the story. Remember, the story took place on the eve of the end of the ability to buy time as had been done in the past because of the new campaign laws. Remember, there would have been no way to stop the effect that the story tried to do if it had gone through unchallenged by bloggers, and talk radio. Now CBS tries to convince us that there was nothing amiss? They try to portray that 60 day period as if it was some regular timeperiod that was not the end of "regular" campaign spending time, as it was. Some of us have long enough memories to remember the Rather of the past. The Rather of Vietnam reporting who attempted to make our soldiers look to be losers and the war an illegal war.
Now, at the end of his career he goes out with the same infamy he conducted his beginning. He tried and so did Mapes to sink Bush, and they all got burned. YAHOOOOOO!!!
Not that it matters, who listens to them anyway. They did not get riled up because we would stop listening to them, they got riled up because other news folks spoke out against them.

From polipundit.com:

More Thoughts On Rathergate

My first thought on the Rathergate report, after listening to those on cable television repeat that the report found no political motivation on the part of CBS, and did not declare the memos forgeries, is that anyone who has any doubt that the documents were forged fakes that were accepted as authentic in an attempt to influence the election in Kerry’s favor, are either blinded by bias or as dumb as a brick.

There is another thing I keep hearing, however, that is driving me a bit mad. I have heard at least a dozen times on cable television that the question to ask to determine whether CBS was motivated by politics is “if there was a similar story about John Kerry, would they have reported it?” Hello, is anyone paying attention? There is no reason to ask such a “what if” question because it was answered last summer. There WAS a similar story. It was brought forward by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and not only did CBS fail to run with that story, but most in the media ignored it completely, in spite of the fact that the book written by the Swifties was a huge bestseller. When stories were done on the Swifties, the focus of the stories most frequently was about how horrible it was that John Kerry’s patriotism and his purple heart winning military experience was being questioned by Bush campaign collaborators.

Monday night, Keith Olbermann compared the Swift Boat Vet ads to the CBS TANG story by saying the statements in those Swiftie ads were demonstrably false, yet Fox News ran with them. In other words, Fox News is as bad as CBS. (He proably got that bright idea from someone at the Democratic Underground). I would love to know what in the Swifties’ ads was false, and I am sure that John Kerry would have loved to have known last summer, too, because he had no idea how to answer the allegations. For those not paying close attention, or those who may have forgotten, let’s just do a quick rundown comparing and contrasting the two stories. The following is off the top of my head so it is short on specifics, but those can be found in the Polipundit archives from around June through November of last year for anyone interested.

1. Newsworthiness. The subject of the CBS story was alleged misbehavior of President Bush of over 30 years ago while in the Texas Air National Guard, which the Bush campaign did not mention, much less rely on, as a qualification for re-election. The subject of the Swiftie’s ads and book was the behavior of John Kerry both during his service in Vietnam and after returning as a war protestor. Senator Kerry made his Vietnam service the centerpiece of the Democratic convention and both he and John Edwards cited that experience as his main qualification to be commander in chief. The Bush TANG story had been explored in some depth several times over the past dozen years, while the allegations relating to John Kerry’s service in Vietnam were largely unreported and had never been investigated by the press.

2. Strength of Sources. The CBS story relied on memos, that were shown to be fakes within 24 hours of appearing on the CBS website, which were given to them by a partisan Democrat who had tried to pitch anti-Bush stories for years. The Swifties’ claims were based on testimony of over 60 veterans (Republicans, Democrats and Independents, many highly decorated, including several former POWs) which was documented in a heavily footnoted book and was signed on to by over 250 veterans.

3. Media Response to Allegations. The response of many in the media to the Rathergate story was to believe the allegations were true even when it became evident that the supporting documents were not only forged, but fake. The response of the majority of the media to the Swifties’ story was first to ignore it, then to attack the Swifties personally as lying partisans and to attempt to disprove the various claims in their ads and book.

4. Coordination With Campaigns. The CBS producers had contact with some in the Kerry campaign when working on the story and put the main source of the story in contact with those in the Kerry campaign, yet maintained their story was devoid of politics. The Swift Boat Vets were never shown to have any coordination with the Bush campaign and vowed to keep speaking out even over objections by the Bush campaign, yet they were frequently described by those in the media as working on behalf of the Bush campaign.

5. The Messengers. Bill Burkett was an outspoken Democrat partisan, but was considered a reliable source. John O’Neill was a registered Democrat who had voted for Perot twice and most recently voted for Al Gore, but was continually described as a Bush partisan working in cahoots with the White House.

6. Pattern of Reporting During Election Year. 60 Minutes ran the Bush TANG memos story after a year of running stories featuring opponents of President Bush attacking the administration and assisting them in selling their anti-Bush books. The Swift Boat Veterans were largely ignored by the mainstream media, including CBS and 60 Minutes in spite of a best selling book.

7. Facing the Facts. Even after the release of the report citing extensive evidence, CBS will not state that the memos they relied on are fake or forged. Even after many of the allegations made in the Swifties’ book have been either proved or admitted to (Christmas in Cambodia, etc.), many reporters in the media (and many liberal commentators including Chris Matthews, who didn’t read the book, and Keith Olbermann, who reads DU) refer to the Swifties’ allegations as scurrilous and untrue accusations.

I could go on like this for quite a while, but I am sure Polipundit readers will pick up on some comparisons and contrasts that I have not listed yet.

-- Lorie Byrd

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