Critics Question No-Bias Finding By CBS Panel
If there is one line in the 224-page report on CBS News that has set critics aflame, it is that there is no "basis" for concluding that Dan Rather and his colleagues had a "political bias" in pursuing their badly botched story about President Bush's National Guard service.
What, they say? No evidence?
"In any fair-minded assessment of how CBS performed and why they so badly butchered their own standards, that has to be part of the explanation," said former New York Times reporter Steve Roberts, now a professor at George Washington University. "It's not just that they wanted to be first, they wanted to be first with a story that was critical of the president."
The investigators hired by CBS "lay out a bunch of evidence of political bias, and very little exculpatory evidence, and then throw their hands in the air," said Weekly Standard writer Jonathan Last. "Rather is sitting here maintaining, despite everything, that the memos don't actually matter, that the story is right."
The investigation commissioned by CBS determined
that producer Mary Mapes, shown in Afghanistan
in 2001, and news anchor Dan Rather had pursued the story of President Bush's National Guard service for five years but said there was no basis for concluding the two had a "political bias."