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CBS Cleans House In Wake of Erroneous Story
An independent review panel gave CBS News a scathing rebuke for its story last fall about President Bush's national guard service. The report noted that in a story that was neither fair nor accurate, and did a "disservice" to the American public, the CBS News staff had a "myopic zeal" to get the story first and gave a "rigid and blind defense" after it aired. The story's producer, Mary Mapes, was fired. Three other executives were asked to resign. The network, noting that he was scheduled for retirement from CBS Evening News in a couple of months, recommended no action be taken against Dan Rather.
Would it have been different had the election turned out different?
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
2004 was the Year Of The Blogger? Bringing down a shady and haphazard 'unbiased' report about a presidential candidate through fact-checking and plausibility is a powerful statement of the strength of the internets ...
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
Rather still stands by the story. The old coot has lost it. Sadly, he is just the poster child of what is wrong with the main stream media. They are used to watching others but sure shrivel up when the light is turned on them. Booyah to all the unwashed masses in their pajamas. I think that this year has shown a step forward for democracy and the citizenry taking back the country from the elites. Next target should be lifetime Congress Critters. Let's start with my state, and oust McCain.
Now when is /. going to start doing the same?
:)
Proudly awaiting my flamebait mods.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Rathergate neither proves, nor disproves, a pervasive liberal bias in the media, as the facts surrounding it are insufficient to such things. It's too small.
:-)
And I don't know how Myers, Greenfield, Glass, etc. disprove the liberal bias idea. They are liberals and they or their staffs did not get in trouble; doesn't that help PROVE the idea? And how does that tie into Rathergate anyway?
And yes, Kelley was worse than Blair, but who reads USA Today regularly? Who trusts it? Who had ever heard of any of the people involved? Sorry, it is necessarily a smaller story than what Blair did, because it was USA Today. Miller's another case, but what she did was -- journalistically -- not nearly as bad as what Blair did. Not even in the same universe.
Back to Rather, the problem is that never before has something like this hit someone so high up as him, and to compound matters, the network denied the truth for two weeks. Add to that the fact that it happened just before an election, and it was a powderkeg.
If that is really from Atrios, well, it's a good reason not to read his work.
That said, it's clear that Mapes herself was anti-Bush. There's no question of it. The story itself -- even assuming all her facts were correct -- is an entire non-story, and yet she was willing to lie to get it told. What did she try to prove? That Bush's ANG attendance record was, for a time, poor? We knew that. It didn't prove he was AWOL, it didn't prove anything more than what we already knew, at best. Why spend so much time and effort on what we already know? The contention was that it was a rush to get a new story, but even stipulating all the evidence as actual facts, it was not a new story.
Even worse than the forged documents, which few have discussed, is the deal with Barnes. What did he have to say, do you recall? That he spoke to an ANG official on Bush's behalf, but that no one asked him to do it, and that he did not know if this had any impact on Bush's entrance into the ANG. And Mapes had spoken to several ANG officials who denied Bush received any preferential treatment, but those quotes were excluded, and she instead framed Barnes' words to give the unmistakable and entirely unsubstantiated impression that Bush did get preferential treatment. Oh yeah, and she neglected to mention Barnes was campaigning heavily for John Kerry. Oops.
Again, even if he did get preferential treatment, I don't consider that significantly newsworthy, and question the bias of anyone who does. But that she not only had no evidence -- not even claims -- that he received preferential treatment, and in fact had only claims that he did not, and still framed it as though he did, is clear and unmistakable evidence of bias.
If all this doesn't prove bias on the part of Mapes, I don't know what possibly could.
I think it's obvious that the people who investigate and report the news are more on the left than on the right by far, and that this bias creeps into the news often. I don't think there's any liberal conspiracy in the media, and that the greatest bias in the media is to get a big story. But this was not Mapes' problem. Sure, there were other pressures, but it's entirely obvious that her goal was to prove her story against the President, and damn the facts, and she deserves to be fired as much as Blair and Kelley and Glass.
How about this: some of the documents were an insanely bad forgery. Humorously bad. They were easily recreated in Microsoft Word with the default settings. No settings need to be changed - the default margins, tab-stops, and font all matched up perfectly. Pixel-perfectly.
Some people have suggested that it might be possible to duplicate the memos on equipment available at the time. Well, it's 100% possible to duplicate the memos using Word without changing any settings, to a pixel-perfect degree. Which is more likely?
Even if the documents were true, they were so obviously fake that there's just no way any journalist with integrity could possibly accept them as legit. They may indeed be copies of real reports, but they were obviously not originals.
And when this was pointed out (because it was so freaking obvious), CBS refused to back down on the story, insisting that the documents were real primary sources. Well - they weren't. And now CBS is paying the price for admitting that they made a mistake.
Yeah, it is kinda sad that it took this long for CBS to finally take action on that story. But even if you do support the Democrats, there's no way you should be able to support CBS's action. Nothing Fox News has done has come anywhere near this. There's a difference between being biased in reporting (which both arguably are) and using obviously false sources as primary sources.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I wonder how much exactly did Dan Rather have to do with the story? I mean, is his job literally just to read whatever the behind the scenes people write? Or does he actually have some input into writing the stories and doing the research, etc. While he's "retiring" and they're not doing anything to him its a tremendously transparent cop out. But I wonder if its justified. If his job is really to just read whatever they tell him to, then he should be completely absolved of all fault.
Besides, a little house cleaning couldn't hurt. The news can stand to lie a little less.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I thought taking risks by trusting sources is something journalists did regularly. Woodward and Bernstein did this and happened to be right. Now we treat them and their investigative reporting as ideals of the fourth estate. I just hope the backlash from this incident doesn't make journalists too cautious when reporting the news for fear of being wrong, or worse, being labeled as biased.
Be careful about the Slashdot story. It does not say what you might imagine it says. Below are quotes from a video of a CBS newscast, CBS Panel's Conclusions:
"The story wasn't ready." "The panel did not conclude the documents were forgeries." "We didn't find any actual [political] bias." "Mary Mapes said she still believes the documents were well corroborated."
NOTE: CBS has recently begun offering videos of its most important newscasts online, mostly without commercials. The videos display only in Internet Explorer, not the latest versions of Mozilla or Firefox. CBS uses Javascript in poor ways, there are problems with its video servers, and some videos have been edited incorrectly for transmission. I get different results at different times. I complained to CBS about this about two weeks ago in connection with another story, and did not receive a reply. They seem to be working on the problems, since delivery has changed and improved in the last two weeks. Ignore messages that say, "Could not connect to remote server." I could not play the videos with the latest version of Opera, which is quite compatible with IE-specific coding, but that may have been because of my specific installation.
Note that the quotes from the CBS newscast don't say that CBS has decided the story was false. CBS only fully accepts its responsibility for sloppiness in the preparation of the story.
Also, the CBS focus was misleading. The real story was that George W. Bush disappeared from Air National Guard records in exactly the same month that the ANG instituted drug testing.
Lt. Bush's reported behavior was consistent with the known behavior of alcoholics, and Bush has admitted to being an alcoholic. Alcoholics often use other drugs to heighten the desired effects of alcohol and to try to diminish the undesired effects.
I served in the U.S. Air Force in the years around the time that Lt. Bush served, and I was stationed at a base that had the aircraft he flew. The CBS documents were consistent with the operation of the Air Force at that time, which was remarkably tolerant of alcoholism. The entire U.S. culture at the time was tolerant of alcoholism, but the USAF as I experienced it was even more so.
I have specific, detailed knowledge that the Air Force was far more corrupt than has been reported in stories I've seen. For example, F-106 aircraft, the successors to the F-102 aircraft that Lt. Bush flew, had severe defects in their inertial guidance systems that meant that F-106s were often not available to perform their mission. This was not a conscious conspiracy; they could not get the systems to work properly, and apparently all USAF departments tended to cover up failures rather than report them sufficiently. Remember that this was a time when people had far less technical knowledge than people generally have today.
At the time, no one would have found it remarkable that a pilot was an alcoholic, or that someone received special treatment because of political pressure. That was just the way things worked. This is so important that maybe I should repeat it: That's just the way things worked back then. Back then few adults had parents who had attended college. The accepted educational level was far less in a way that cannot be measured by the number of college years someone had.
I know about the failure in F-106s because I fixed the problem. I found that some of the amplifiers used in the inertial guidance system had parasitic oscillations because of solder joints of amazingly poor quality. At the time, I was familiar with all base operations that involved electronics repair, and I very much doubt there was anyone else on base who had enough technical knowledge to know what parasitic oscillations were. Mostly they just kept replacing things until they found that the symptom of the problem had gone away. We Slashdot readers take technical knowledge for granted, but widespread te
I remember Whitewater. Remember that? The media had a field day with that. The Clintons didn't do a damn thing wrong there. They lost money on that. That dragged on for years. The media just repeated whatever the Republicans said. (To be fair, they would then immediately go and repeat what the Democrats said. But the media is not supposed to be a fucking megaphone.) The investigation was quietly closed in 2000 with no evidence of wrongdoing on their part.
I can see how the same isn't being done to Bush for the insane claptrap he's been spewing since he got into office. I'm not even talking about the election crap he pulled, and the media should have called him on. (They did the same uncritical megaphone crap during the election, though.)
I'm talking about Iraq, mostly, here. Where are the hard questions? Where were the hard questions about the lack of WMDs? Are they too afraid of losing their white house press pass or something?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"The panel did not conclude the documents were forgeries."
But their document expert concluded, categorically, that the documents were produced on a computer after the 1970s. That's pretty close to saying "forgery". The only reservations against declaring them a forgery, that I can think of, is that they were copies, that time travel could be at play here, or the remote possibility that they were indeed TANG documents about ANOTHER Lt. Bush from the 1990s misdated to the 1970s.
"We didn't find any actual [political] bias."
To do that Mapes & Co would have to admit it, or submit to polygraphs or whatever. But Mapes' emails show how she was trying to get the documents from Bill Burkett by connecting him with the DNC, and by getting him a book deal. Something about affecting the momentum of the campaign.
But is bias onlyt a clearly stated policy of working for one of the candidates, which she came pretty close to doing, or is bias also letting yourself be affected by wishing that the story is true?
Something rather unimportant to our world today turned into quite farce. But aren't anybody going to look at WHO actually made the documents? It's illegal to forge military documents, and some states have laws against trying to influence elections with false documents.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
... but little attention has been paid to the communications between CBS news and the Kerry campaign.
Let me back up a bit.
When the entire 'memogate' deal started, I held out. I kept saying, "I trust Rather. I trust CBS". Sure Rather is biased. It's fairly obvious to anyone to takes a look. But he has a great history behind him. That history was hard to ignore. It took me a few days to see the memos for what they really were. And when I did, I was upset. And when Rather continued to defend them, in spite of CBS's own document experts coming forward saying they NEVER validated the documents, I got pissed.
When it came out that there was at least SOME communication between CBS and the Kerry campaign and the story aired the same flippin' time the "Fortunate Son" BS started from the Kerry camp, I became livid.
Mapes claimed at the time that the only communication she had with the Kerry camp was when she put Burkett in touch with them. That, it turns out, was a lie. It appears Chad Clanton tells a story a bit different than Mapes.
As the report states, there is no evidence that the CBS piece was politically biased. Yet there is certainly quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that the driving force of this piece, Mapes, WAS politically motivated. No. Obsessed would be a better word. The apparent collusion between CBS news and the Kerry campaign was not addressed to my satisfaction. Her outright lies that the documents had a clear chain of custody, came from an 'unimpeachable' source and continued insistence of their accuracy -- it's just appalling. Add to this the links to the Kerry campaign and coincedental "Fortunate Son" ads, any reasonable person should suspect Mapes of being out to "get" Bush.
And that is what I suspect. I believe Rather stuck with story so long out of trust of Mapes. And I believe Mapes had an agenda that those around her refused to see. I'm glad Mapes was fired. I don't think she'll ever have a name in her field again. I have little doubt she'll write a book, make a bundle and retire. But she will no longer be working.
In the wake of these troubles, Dan Rather plans to turn to other matters after he retires in March. According to unnamed sources, Rather claims to have located Jack Ruby's Blackberry. He is going to use the information in it to reveal amazing breaththroughs in the JFK assassination.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The CJR article has been as throroughly debunked as the original memos were. I really like you highlight his attacks on the bloggers but not any actual *evidence* that his charges were true.
Clear, Dark Skies
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And while you're checking those magazines, be sure to look for ads featuring typewriters that produce the same typeface.
Pity that you won't find any though.
Clear, Dark Skies
I'm cribbing from Jonah Goldberg here, but he nailed it this morning at NR...
"First, the CBS report was supposed to do many things, two of them were: 1) Authenticate/explain the origin of those documents and, 2) address the issue that the Memo story was politically motivated. The report punts on both. They can tell us that the blogs were politically motivated from a conservative perspective, but on the biases that caused this entire scandal, we get silence."
While CBS is doing the right thing in at least admitting that the whole mess is their fault, they're still trying to stonewall on the all important issue of bias. As the note above said, they didn't hesitate to ascribe a political motive to the bloggers that called foul on Rather's report, but refuse to shine the same harsh light on themselves. One of the four execs that were chopped was closely involved with the Kerry Campaign throughout the whole story, and the source of the forged documents themselves was desperately trying to GET into the Kerry Campaign. So this wasn't a simple case of a mistake in the haste to break a story. Long after a long line of experts testified that the docs looked faked (and badly faked, at that), Dan Rather and his team stonewalled and held fast to the position that the story was true, the documents were real, their source was, in Rather's words, "unimpeachable", and that complaints were simply right wing anger, nothing more. That's not a simple matter of "haste"; that's partisan warfare, sorry Dan, but calling it like it is here.
Rather, because of his star status, was allowed to gracefully step down from the anchor position. But his team got sacked. Sounds to me like they took one for the boss...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It seems that there is always some uninformed person who posts comments to stories like this who doesn't realize that both U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney were both active alcoholics. So, here are some of their arrest records:
Bush and Cheney are the most arrested U.S. president and vice-president in history. George W. Bush was arrested once for the crime of DUI and Dick Cheney twice:
George W. Bush DUI, 1st record of arrest
George W. Bush DUI, 2nd record of arrest
George W. Bush was arrested 2 other times in his life, also, for stunts that were not something a sober person would find interesting.
Dick Cheney DUI, record of 1st arrest
Dick Cheney DUI, record of 2nd arrest
Careful readers would realize I did not insist any such thing. I insisted that the journalists fall more on the left than the right, not that this results in significant journalistic bias. There's a big difference.
And this is a classic right-wing propaganda technique. If you can muddy an argument that is not winnable on your side so that it becomes a draw, then you deny the other side a victory, which is just as important as winning it in the first place.
Saying that "more journalists fall on the left than right" is implying that since the majority of journalists are 'liberals', then the media at large must also be 'liberal'. Have you ever considered that these journalists who have been polled and said they "vote Democrat" did so because they know that Republicans love to take away free speech protections? Just look at USA-PATRIOT and "Free Speech Zones". They are two more links in the chain of American Fascism.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Nothing Fox News has done has come anywhere near this. There's a difference between being biased in reporting (which both arguably are) and using obviously false sources as primary sources.
Bill O'Reilly routinely uses false sources, such as when he quoted the 'Paris Review' (he made it up -- it doesn't exist). In fact long lists of his fabrications are listed on numerous websites.
The conservatives keep shouting 'Where is the outrage!??'.
Well, I'm hearing the outrage in the media loud and clear, but I'm not hearing any outrage about the adimistration's lies about WMD, NCLB, tax cuts, social security. Where is the patriotic outrage about Bush cutting money to veteran's benefits, hospitals etc? These guys are pathetically hypocritical, and they are milking this for all it's worth, ignoring all the non-memo evidence that still persuasively indicates Bush being AWOL.
If it does not have an impact (translation: the politics of the individual journalists does not result in a "liberal media") then it is not "stupid" to ignore it.
Your quote of my post:
... The former of which has never resulted in anyone losing their right to free speech, ...
Saying that "more journalists fall on the left than right" is implying that since the majority of journalists are 'liberals'
What I actually said:
Saying that "more journalists fall on the left than right" is implying that since the majority of journalists are 'liberals', then the media at large must also be 'liberal'.
This falls into the same propaganda technique I stated earlier, a part of which is misquoting people to make their arguments sound ridiculous. The way in which you quoted me combined with the quick scanning most people do of forum comments would, of course, make me look "sad", which seems to be how you want anyone who disagrees with you to look. Here is what I should have said (hopefully this removes all those pesky shades of gray that you seem to not be able to handle):
Saying that "more journalists fall on the left than right" implies that the media at large has a liberal bias.
---
(Referring to the USA PATRIOT Act)
Saying that the PATRIOT Act has not silenced free speech ignores this: anyone locked up in prison (normally) can still communicate to the outside world, and their Constitutional rights are still intact. I doubt you have met anyone who was kidnapped by a provision of the PATRIOT Act and lived to tell about it. The people locked up in the name of "terror" may very well be ones who chose to speak out for/against something. This would seem to be a curtailing of free speech rights.
---
You, sir, are sad.
And here we have a classic example of an ad hominem attack.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?