CBS Proven Wrong, 4 Employees Fired

[seinfeldrules]

From INDC Journal. A self admitted bias site.

CBS Report: Anticipatory Ennui (Updated with Cautious Optimism)
I feel like a little Jewish kid on Christmas Eve.

UPDATE: Updated emotional status - cautiously optimistic:

Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush’s National Guard service. ... The panel said a "myopic zeal" to be the first news organization to broadcast a groundbreaking story about Mr. Bush’s National Guard service was a key factor in explaining why CBS News had produced a story that was neither fair nor accurate and did not meet the organization’s internal standards.
The report said at least four factors that some observers described as a journalistic “Perfect Storm” had contributed to the decision to broadcast a piece that was seriously flawed.

"The combination of a new 60 Minutes Wednesday management team, great deference given to a highly respected producer and the network’s news anchor, competitive pressures, and a zealous belief in the truth of the segment seem to have led many to disregard some fundamental journalistic principles," the report said.


But then there's this:

While the panel found that some actions taken by CBS News encouraged such suspicions, “the Panel cannot conclude that a political agenda at 60 Minutes Wednesday drove either the timing of the airing of the segment or its content.”
The idea that Mary Mapes and Dan Rather had no political agenda is simply ludicrous, but the media and its established analysts need to play the old "vee know nussing" game to maintain the grand illusion of ideological impartiality in journalism. Any admission of bias would be perceived to cross the big invisible line that devalues a news organization's currency of long-term credibility and neutrality. Such denials are similar to a prison inmate's requisite protestations of innocence while waiting on the results of eternal appeals: admit guilt and the game is up. Nevermind the fact that we have motive, multiple witnesses and a murder weapon. I suppose this dissonant finding is expected, if disappointing.

And then there is this crucial lowlight:

While the panel said it was not prepared to brand the Killian documents as an outright forgery, it raised serious questions about their authenticity and the way CBS News handled them.
The evidence for fraud is overwhelming, from the anachronistic non-employment of an individual referenced in the documents, to the invalidation of the possibility that a typewriter of the era created the font, to the convenient exact match in MS Word default settings. This non-conclusion surprises me: why didn't Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi convene a panel of forensics experts in order to reach a more definitive verdict on the documents? One exists.

On the bright side, the report seems to detail some of the relevant flaws and misconduct by CBS employees, though it would seem to repackage ideological malice as incompetence and carelessness spurred by competitive pressures. In addition, some heads have rolled. My initial verdict? The results are perhaps better than I thought they would be, though flawed.

I'll offer further commentary after a digestion period.

UPDATE: Rathergate is all over this, just keep scrolling.

Scylla & Charybdis:

My quick reaction after 30 minutes with the Report: It has substance, and some veteran CBS people are being fired. There is a mea culpa for the utter breakdown of journalism rules.
But the Report directly denies that "political bias" of the CBS department was behind the story, and deftly skirts other 30,000-feet issues: Legal wrongdoing; the smoking gun of the "personal files" claim; and the critical facts as to the pre-broadcast scheming to coordinate a 60-Minutes segment as the cornerpiece of an anti-Swift Boat political attack.

It's like a murderer confessing to drunk driving, speeding, carrying a concealed weapon and assault and battery. OK, per se ....but there's a dead body to account for.....


I'd submit that "involuntary manslaughter" substituted for "first-degree murder" is a better analogy.

UPDATE: QandO points to Leslie Moonves's response to the report (pdf), saying it's the real deal. Jon Henke's take:

In short, he lays out each person with a role in the story, the CBS conclusion about their complicity and errors, and the CBS resolution in each case. They are, in almost every case, appropriate. In fact, with respect to Mary Mapes, Moonves is positively brutal. If her career continues, it will have to do so at an outlet like Indymedia, or somewhere with similar journalistic standards.
UPDATE: Jim Geraghty is required reading, of course.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin highlights the section of the report detailing Mary Mapes collaboration with the Kerry Campaign:

While it is certainly proper to receive information from a variety of sources, this contact crossed the line as, at a minimum, it gave the appearance of a political bias and could have been perceived as a news organization’s assisting a campaign as opposed to reporting on a story.
UPDATE: The Raving Atheist leaves a comment:

Notably, its analysis of the authenicity is limited to how well the contents and format of the forgeries "mesh" with the known Bush 70's era documents. No real discussion of the forensic typographical disproof; the only mention of Newcomer's report is in connection with it being quoted in the Washington Post. Interestingly, the CBS notes that Emily Will basically did the LGF experiment and found that the Killian memos matched up to Microsoft Word, but just drops the matter after noting there was a dispute over whether she communicated her results to CBS. The only discussion of Bouffard's finding is in connection with his reported "recantation" regarding whether the documents could have been done on an IBM Selectric (the panel notes faults CBS for reporting this absent evidence that such a model was available at the TxANG).
One detail regarding any "recantation" by Bouffard - it was merely professional equivocation before conclusive analysis. His last word on the matter, sent to me during my dispute with the Boston Globe: "For your information, it appears that the Selectric Composer could not have created the memos."

In short, the document was an anachronistic impossibility based soley on font analysis. (UPDATE: Malkin points to an Appendix that seems more definitive about the inauthenticity, though the panel's equivocation in the main statement seems silly to me.)

UPDATE: Politburo Diktat: "Beigewash on Rathergate"

Reverse all the Leftie-Rightie labels on this story, and by now we'd have three Hollywood movies, updated versions of "All the President's Men."

http://www.indcjournal.com/

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/11/rather.cbs/index.html

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Veteran anchorman Dan Rather sent a memo to his CBS News colleagues Tuesday calling for "a renewed dedication to journalism of the highest quality."

Man Dan, maybe you should take your own advice.

 

[No Limit]

Wonderful! Amazing how fox, when it printed lies about Kerry, didn't fire anyone and said it was simply a joke. I didn't hear much about that deal and I'm sure many of you never even heard about it.

 

[Gray Fox]

is captain Stern the only reliable source of news these days.

 

[No Limit]

Something to read:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501120004

 

[CptStern]

is captain Stern the only reliable source of news these days.

dear god I hope not ...*all eyes turn to Stern ...who promptly runs away due to fear of responsibility*

 

[Sgt_Shellback]

dear god I hope not ...*all eyes turn to Stern ...who promptly runs away due to fear of responsibility*

Try not to be so Pre-Madonna when the lap dogs lick your peanut butter....

The Dude made up stories. No differnt than what you do here every day. Tell me another wopper Skipper.

 

[FictiousWill]

err... wtf?

edit: plz delete this post mods, thanks

 

[FictiousWill]

Try not to be so Pre-Madonna when the lap dogs lick your peanut butter....

The Dude made up stories. No differnt than what you do here every day. Tell me another wopper Skipper.

errr... wtf?

edit: (and apologies for double post, I thought I clicked edit.)

I'm not sure what you're driving at, but CptStern is one of the few level-headed people on these boards.


btw Dan Rather essentially was fired due to this issue. He was asked to leave and he will in a month or two. CBS just didn't want the bad press of firing it's main anchor outright. No Limit is absolutely right, FOX news would never in a thousand years fire even a studio minion for biased reporting (assuming it was biased the way fox wanted it).

The fact that CBS fired the people responsible shows they're willing to get back on track. Firing those responsible was the right thing to do. Don't get me started on Fox news though, holy damn, if they adhered to similar policies they wouldn't have an employee left!

 

[CptStern]

Try not to be so Pre-Madonna when the lap dogs lick your peanut butter....

hmmmm I was starting to think your gutless adherence to this philosophy was going to be permanent ..I was starting to get worried, you've just been so silent when the debate turns to facts and figures ... it's almost as if you have nothing to say

The Dude made up stories. No differnt than what you do here every day.

ummmmm I'm not responsible for the deaths of over 14,000+ iraqi civilians and 1000+ coalition soldiers ..so there's a bit of a difference between "The Dude" and I

Tell me another wopper Skipper

hmmm funny, with all the lies you've been spoonfed I have serious doubts you'd be able to recognize one when you see it


edit: thx FictiousWill ......mmmmmm peanut butter

 

[Mechagodzilla]

I find it odd that CBS is getting all this flack for not fact-checking forged documents and the guy who forged all the info in the first place is largely forgotten. I certainly wouldn't have thought to search out an expert who would know enough about 1972 typefaces to know that the 'th' in '111th' couldn't possibly be a superscript in the 70's or whatever. CBS was wrong to not give special attention to their special story, but it's not hard to imagine that plenty more documents and stories at any given network are equally unverified, but relatively unnoticed because of their relative unimportance. i.e.: fox news' manufactured kerry quotes.

And geez shellback, if you've got some sort of proof that Stern 'makes up stories everyday,' even that wouldn't belong in this thread.
Keep your little tiff to yourself, or at least somewhere where it has relevance.
Otherwise it's called spam. Of particularilly flaming assholish variety, I might add.

Edit: And why did SR include blog entries from random people in his post?

 

[FictiousWill]

How about some more news for today:

Bush administration stops looking for WMD, and admits that Iraq never had any! Why did we go to war now? How about we ask Bush? Barbara Walters asked him that on the news tonight! His reply? (I love this bit) :
bush: "I don't know, to remove saddam from power." This reply is either 1) a circular response, to which the continuation is "...because he had WMD", or 2) an affirmation that Bush lied to the planet so he could get back for daddy bush. The whole thing sickens me. But what sickens me the MOST is that so many people don't seem to mind. What makes me so WORRIED is how so many people seem to eat up Bush's bullshit like there's no tomorrow.

 

[seinfeldrules]

I certainly wouldn't have thought to search out an expert who would know enough about 1972 typefaces to know that the 'th' in '111th' couldn't possibly be a superscript in the 70's or whatever.

The thing is, their own experts told them this. CBS ignored it because it wouldnt have ruined their wonderful attempt to destroy Bush's re-election campaign. If they had run a piece on Kerry's questionable service record following the piece on Bush, then I wouldnt raise that point. Furthermore, it couldnt have been that unnoticeable if bloggers discovered the forgeries mere hours after the story ran.

 

[FictiousWill]

The point is that CBS fired those responsible! It's the self-regulating meda in action folks! Welcome to working democracy!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002HDXTQ/104-0411257-0919169?v=glance

 

[seinfeldrules]

The point is that CBS fired those responsible! It's the self-regulating meda in action folks! Welcome to working democracy!

If nobody had bothered to point out the false documents, would you have questioned the story's integrity? The media didnt govern themselves, bloggers did it for them.

 

[FictiousWill]

Yeah, but they fired the people, that's the point. And they went so far as to give Dan Rather just a few months notice back in november! If that's not an immediate turnaround, I don't know what is. You'd never expect a response like that from shit like fox.

 

[seinfeldrules]

Yeah, but they fired the people, that's the point. And they went so far as to give Dan Rather just a few months notice back in november! If that's not an immediate turnaround, I don't know what is. You'd never expect a response like that from shit like fox.

It took them over a week to dig their heads out of their asses and admit the documents were false. Hardly an immediate turnaround.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

The thing is, their own experts told them this.

Where did it say that in the story? All I can see mentioned officially is that the authenticity of the documents is 'unverifiable', not that there was any intentional coverup of knowledge at CBS prior to the airing.

Edit:

It took them over a week to dig their heads out of their asses and admit the documents were false. Hardly an immediate turnaround.

Not to further bash the point in, but i think he's continuing the basic comparison to fox. meaning, CBS's week-long wait is more of an immediate turnaround than fox's never turning around.

 

[seinfeldrules]

http://wizbangblog.com/archives/004760.php

Much as been made, over the fact that Times New Roman was created in the 1930's and that superscript "th"s and proportional spacing were all available in some form in the 1970s.

What many of the Rather apologists ignore is that for you to claim is was possible to create these documents in the 1970s you can't set about proving that 4 different features were available on 4 different machines. You must prove that ALL the typesetting features used in the memos were available on the SAME machine.

It is hardly believable that the Col. Killian would have typed the proportional spaced parts of the memos on one typewriter then taken the paper out and made the "th"s on another.

CBS had a world renowned typewriter expert, Peter Tytell, try to tell them the documents were bogus for this exact reason, but they ignored him. In the words of Mary Mape, "Enough about the [expletive] 'th'."

Tytell was so well known in his field that CBS had already interviewed him twice in the past. In fact Andy Roony interviewed him in 2000 and called him a "famous typewriter detective." Tytell gave CBS enough evidence that the fact the memos were forged really should not have been in doubt. He, like many others, concluded the typeface was Times New Roman and it was done on a computer.

Tytell a real expert with a resume a mile long. (included at the end of this post) He provided them concrete evidence, he just didn't do a search on myfonts.com

Tytell told the Panel that he watched the broadcast that evening and determined "within 5 seconds" that the superscript "th" on the Superscript Exemplar [real document -ed] had been produced by an Olympia manual typewriter, and that it was materially different from the superscript "th" on the May 4, 1972 Killian document that had been shown on the September 8 Segment. The "th" on the Superscript Exemplar did not rise above the adjacent number and was underlined, while the superscript "th" in the May 4, 1972 Killian document rose well above the adjacent number and was not underlined. The May 4, 1972 Killian document is Exhibit 2B to

 

[seinfeldrules]

Not to further bash the point in, but i think he's continuing the basic comparison to fox. meaning, CBS's week-long wait is more of an immediate turnaround than fox's never turning around.

If you want to talk about FOX, make your own topic. I dont see FOX being mentioned at all in this topic by anyone except liberals attempting to shift blame away from their own blatant media bias.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

In that case, I guess this Mape person did fudge things royally, but it still reeks to me of just not believing that one person when he said an underline shouldn't be there. I mean, a line the size of this dash - was the only big evidence of a false document.

Mape still deserved to get canned, but I don't see how her irrational action deserves to tarnish the reputation of an entire network now that she's gone. I don't see any sign this has happened before, and there's plenty of indication that it's not going to happen again.

I guess I just can't get worked up over this when - is compared to the fake 'Kerry calls himself a metrosexual' quotes. Maybe I'm too trusting, but it really seems more that it was more failure of the system than intentional malice.

And I'm sorry that fox is brought into this, but as the closest analogy to this situation, it's difficult not to draw comparisons. You need something to compare to in order to determine the state of something. It's just that Most Networks > CBS > Fox, in this case.

 

[seinfeldrules]

In that case, I guess this Mape person did fudge things royally, but it still reeks to me of just not believing that one person when he said an underline shouldn't be there. I mean, a line the size of this dash - was the only big evidence of a false document

Were you expecting bolded letters on the header proclaiming THIS DOCUMENT IS FALSE?

Mape still deserved to get canned, but I don't see how her actions deserve to tarnish the reputation of an entire network now that she's gone.

Why would the network air such a firey piece mere weeks before the election? That is why the network is tarnished, this was a gigantic story that was backed up by false documents and testimony by a strongly anti-Bush citizen.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Were you expecting bolded letters on the header proclaiming THIS DOCUMENT IS FALSE?

I wasn't. I was just saying that that was the bad decision that Mape made, and that it seemed more like the product of irrationality on her part than outright deception on the part of the network.

Why would the network air such a firey piece mere weeks before the election? That is why the network is tarnished, this was a gigantic story that was backed up by false documents and testimony by a strongly anti-Bush citizen.

Well, obviously it was topical to the election atmosphere, but I don't see why they would wait for the story to lose relevance.

And again, unless the network had known that Mape screwed up her fact-checking, I don't see why they wouldn't air a story that appeared genuine to them. As far as anyone can tell, Rather was just reporting what he thought were relevant facts. At least as relevant as the whole swift-boat controversy and whatnot.

(I personally don't think either Bush or Kerry's thirty-year-old records should have been considered at all relevant, but apparently network's target audiences eat this stuff up like the Scott Peterson trial, making such reports par for the course.)

So, the basic gist is that Mape dismissed the expert for reasons we may never know, everyone else trusted Mape, and a fairly standard story became a massive debacle.
I just don't see any justification for CBS being forever haunted by one inept (and promptly terminated) employee.

 

[Bodacious]

It's just that Most Networks > CBS > Fox, in this case.

If that is the case why is Fox news the most watched cable news network?

 

[^Ben]

Most watched does not mean best.

 

[SunHawk]

If nobody had bothered to point out the false documents, would you have questioned the story's integrity? The media didnt govern themselves, bloggers did it for them.

Precisely.

They jumped on the bash President Bush bandwagon(oh by the way, in future, it's considered correct to refer to him as PRESIDENT Bush. he is the President of the United States and dont you forget it) and they got their tails kicked.

They lied, they got fired for it.

Tough cookies.