CBS 'Eye' Blinks; Network Apologizes -- but Not to Bush
by Chad Groening, Bill Fancher, and Jody Brown
September 21, 2004
(AgapePress) - A media watchdog believes CBS is trying to blame its source of a controversial memo on President Bush's National Guard service for misleading them into thinking it was authentic. But the Virginia-based organization doesn't think the network can use that excuse for producing a fraudulent story.On Monday CBS admitted that it could not be sure that documents provided by former Texas Air National Guard official Bill Burkett were the real thing. In a statement released by longtime CBS anchorman Dan Rather, who reported the story almost two weeks ago during a Wednesday segment of 60 Minutes, the TV journalist said:
"[A]fter extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in the public and in the press, leads me to a point where -- if I knew then what I know now -- I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question."
Continuing, Rather said the network was wrong to air a story that it could not substantiate. "But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."
Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center says CBS is trying to paint itself as a victim. "CBS does not say that the documents are forgeries; they say they simply cannot prove that they're authentic," he points out. "They may be parsing words, but they don't want to go so far as to say that they know for sure they [were forged].
"Their statement seems to put all the onus on Burkett -- that he misled a producer and that CBS is really more the victim here."
According to Noyes, the network should have known before it went on the air that there was reason to doubt the authenticity of the documents.
"First of all, Bill Burkett -- who CBS now acknowledges is their source -- is somebody with a very, very shady past in terms of peddling false stories about George W. Bush in the [Texas Air] National Guard," the MRC spokesman says. "He's been discredited by the Boston Globe, he's got an axe to grind against the Bush family -- I mean he is the kind of source that -- maybe his information is true, maybe it's not, but you've got to check him out and you've got to treat him skeptically."
Noyes contends that CBS deliberately ignored normal vetting procedures in order to get a story on the air. That, he says, is some good news agencies do not do.
"Good news organizations find a way to keep the information that the public gets from being tainted by frauds," he says. "This is one [situation] where they seem to embrace the fraud and then stand by it even after common sense should have told them they should have been much more skeptical and much more humble in front of their critics."
Noyes says CBS must take steps to assure the public that this sort of thing does not happen again -- otherwise, he says, there will be a big question mark hanging over the network.
Questions for Investigation
Former presidential candidate and pro-family activist Gary Bauer says any investigation into the circumstances surrounding the broadcast of the story needs to answer several questions.
"What was behind this? Was there political motivation? Was it linked in any way to anyone else's campaign?" Bauer asks. "That would be the logical and the appropriate thing to do under these circumstances."
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Gary Bauer |
Critics are skeptical that any investigation can be trusted. Bauer points out, for example, the lack of effort that has been expended to identify who produced the papers. "I have noticed that there's very little effort to do that," he says, "and incredibly, the little effort that has been made is coming from the left and suggesting that [White House advisor] Karl Rove was the ultimate source in an effort to discredit CBS and to discredit these charges against the president."The man who provided the memos to CBS did have a conversation with Joe Lockhart, a senior advisor to the Kerry campaign. But Lockhart says it was a three-minute phone conversation, and that the memos were not discussed.
Bauer believes CBS is now in a battle to salvage its professional reputation, pointing out that CBS News president Andrew Heyward admits his team failed to apply "the only acceptable journalistic standard" that would justify using the documents. Bauer also is critical of the tone of both of the official CBS statements.
"Interestingly, neither Rather nor Heyward could muster the humility to apologize to President Bush," he says, adding that CBS also "owes it to the American people to do more than issue a few nebulous statements."
