Mary Mapes, the producer of the piece, was terminated. Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy, Executive Producer Josh Howard and Senior Vice President Betsy West were asked to resign. Dan Rather accelerated his retirement from the anchor chair earlier, and Mr. Moto is dancing like a munchkin when the wicked witch got creamed by a house.
Some will say that the report made no judgements about the actual validity of the documents. I believe this was for legal reasons, so that CBS could be shown as not complicit in a felony. The report’s appendices show pretty clearly that the forgeries were indeed forgeries.
Now, CBS is taking steps to reinforce their vetting process in addition to letting all of these folks go. Will this be enough to restore trust, or is CBS News a permanently damaged brand now?
Bit of a false dichotomy there. The fact is, network news has been on a ratings decline for years as cable news gets a bigger and bigger share of the pie. This is just another hit for network news, but it’s an exageration to think that one problematic story is going to sink the whole network (or the others as well).
These things tend to be self-correcting over time, as the networks learn how better to compete with the cable companies. You’ll probably predict things incorrectly whenever you make a straight-line extrapolation about the future in these types of circumstances.
Interesting point. Maybe one of our resident lawyers can comment on whether a formal apology might imply that Bush would have some legal recourse to sue for libel or something.
So CBS acknowledged it had made a serious mistake and fired the persons who were responsible? Yes, I think there’s an example here that some other institutions should learn from.
That’s the right question to ask if you’re exploring whether the President has grounds to sue.
That’s not the right question to ask if you’re an organization that claims to have “… a reputation for journalism of the highest quality and unimpeachable integrity.” If that is the goal, as the independent panel found, then it’s not a matter of asking if Mr. Bush can prove the charges are not true, It’s a matter of assuring the audience that they ARE true. In other words, an organization with a reputation for journalism of the highest quality and unimpeachable integrity does not merely make a claim and demand that the subject prove it false… THEY prove it true.
The panel concluded that CBS was unable to do so in this case, and fault CBS for it.
Are you suggesting that the well-established First Amendment principles regarding public officials and defamation–e.g., the actual malice standard and the burden of proof w/r/t falsity–do not apply here?
No, no, not remotely. I agree that if we’re talking about legal liability, then “Was it false” and “Did CBS know it was false, or act with actual malice?” are the only relevant questions.
But the independent panel was not created to address legal liability. They were created to help CBS mend the broken processes which caused an organization supposed devoted to the highest journalistic standards to cock up so badly.
CBS could well premise an apology to the President not because they breached a legal duty, but because they breached their own, internal, self-imposed standards. That’s all. From a legal liability standpoint, it appears that they acted recklessly but not with deliberate malice (if the report is to be believed). And since the President is clearly a public figure, he’s got no legal leg to stand on.
(Frankly, I thought Mapes’ conversations with Lockhart might be found to tip the scales into actual malice territory, but the Panel thinks otherwise, and given the evident care they’ve taken on their findings, I’m prepared to accept their version of events and motivations).
I did a little digging, and the news stories at the time reportd that Knox claims there were memos ordering Bush to report for his physical, but I can’t find where she says real memos supported the other significant claim of the “fake docs”-- that her boss was getting pressure from above to give Bush preferential treatment. I’ll have to read the latest report to see how Bricker’s quote fits in context.
You guys really gotta open more threads on this titanic story! And then maybe a parade of Tighty Righty Munchkins singing “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead!”
Hell, they haven’t even conceded the election yet! Way too soon for such a foot-dragging organization to do the right thing when doing the right thing flies in the face of its own ideology.
As opposed to a bunch of losey lefties with their: nothing to see here folks, move along. After all, this story is only the lead story on MSNBC right now, was one of the key sepgments on the PBS New Hour today, and will surely be front page news on every major paper tomorrow. Yeah, nothing to see here…
You gotta point, there, John. At the very least, an abject apology is in order. Perhaps they could use that digified, statesmanlike speech GeeDubya gave when apologizing for leading us into a shitstorm under false pretenses. If you have that handy, maybe you could forward it to them…
CBS reported that a document that they knew (or at least should have known) was a forgery that contained damaging information about a person. They should apologize to that person whether it be Bush, Kerry, Steve from down the street or even Jesus H. Christ himself.