Which Way Is Up? - NO POLITICAL BIAS?

weeklystandard.com ^ | 01/14/2005 | Terry Eastland

[crushelits]

NO POLITICAL BIAS--none at all.

Is CBS wise to insist that there was no political bias involved?

So says the independent panel that CBS News asked to find out what went wrong with its infamous Sixty Minutes Wednesday broadcast concerning George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. "The panel," says its 224-page report, "cannot conclude that a political agenda at 60 Minutes drove the . . . segment."

Why not? Certainly the panel could have drawn that conclusion had it uncovered "smoking gun" evidence--such as an anti-Bush or pro-John Kerry email written by, say, the producer, Mary Mapes. Or if it had found evidence of an agenda in her "long pursuit" of the story, or the fact that it relied on many anti-Bush sources, or the fact that Ms. Mapes made at the least an unwise contact with the Kerry campaign.

Certainly, too, the panel could have declared the existence of bias had Mapes or the correspondent, Dan Rather, confessed to it. Which of course neither did. "Absolutely, unequivocally untrue," Rather said.

The panel's no-bias conclusion has brought sighs of relief inside CBS. It shouldn't. The problem for CBS is that the panel failed to take seriously whether the many flaws it found might, when taken together, be evidence of bias. After all, in certain legal contexts, bias that is "absolutely, unequivocally" denied can nonetheless be inferred from actions that depart from normal practices and procedures. Not incidentally, CBS maintains that the segment was just such an aberration from its tradition of journalistic excellence.

How bad, then, was the segment, how gross the departures from ostensibly normal practices and procedures?

The piece began with Rather's interview of Ben Barnes, the Democrat and former Lieutenant Governor of Texas, in which he said that Bush received his help in getting into the Guard. But left out of the on-air interview was Barnes's admission that he didn't know whether his call had any effect. Nor, the panel says, was information contrary to what Barnes said--statements by a general and other ex-Guardsmen that no strings were pulled--even discussed during the "vetting" process.

The second part of the segment highlighted four documents allegedly taken from the personal files of the commander of Bush's unit. The documents suggested Bush was a Guardsman who shirked his duties.

But, says the panel: 60 Minutes failed to establish a basis for saying the documents were taken from the commander's files. It made a false statement in representing that "an expert had authenticated the . . . documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the segment." Indeed, it failed to "obtain clear authentication" of any of the documents from any document examiner. It also failed to "develop adequate corroboration to support the statements" in the documents and to discover "notable inconsistencies in content and format" between the documents and official Guard records. And it failed to interview former Guardsmen holding "different perspectives about the documents."

Moreover, again according to the panel, 60 Minutes failed to scrutinize "a sometimes controversial source with a partisan [anti-Bush] agenda"--the man who gave CBS the documents--and to find the individual he said gave him the documents.

[sgtbono2002]

CBS can claim anything it likes. The American people have a way of knowing what political bias looks like, and CBS stands out.NBC is right up there at the top too.

[randita]

CBS could have avoided much of this fiasco had it merely presented the story in a balanced fashion --and conceded immediately that the memos were forgeries.

After the fact, we learned that CBS was in posession of mountains of evidence wich disputed the implications made in the forged documents. Information they gleaned from interviews with Killian's family members and other guardsmen was ignored in their account. CBS also knew that Bush HAD volunteered to be considered for overseas service, but was not needed. They did not air one bit of that evidence to balance their allegations against Bush.

There are two sides to bias -- the side you show and the side you ignore.

[leprechaun9]

If it looks currupt, if it smells corrupt, then it probably is corrupt!

[Hold DiMayo]

Lets take a different look at this. WHY aren't all the so called journalist knocking down the door at CBS to question Rather? This is one of the biggest stories of the year. How about all the investigator reporters at FOX, where are they?
It seems to me that their all going to let Rather off the hook.