Well, there’s the story, and then there’s the story. To quite a few here, the story…the real story is the rampant liberal bias etc., etc. The report on all of this mishigas got the real story: the “scoop” syndrome, the urgent desire to get there firstest. Did they screw up? Big time! In spades, downtown.
But I gotta ask myself: if they had pictures of John Kerry in bed with a live boy or a dead woman, would they have rushed with that as well, if they thought they might lose thier “scooper” status? My guess is, yeah! These guys dont have political committments like many of us, they want to be top dog, numero uno, and that means being first.
As to Bush himself, the “story” was a pretty trivial footnote to a well-documented and largely accepted truth: GeeDubya was the recipient of extraordinary treatment from begining to the end of his “service”. He is owed an apology for what, exactly? Would Ted Bundy be owed an apology of the news media mispelled the name of one if his victims? The case against Bush was already well established, this was an embellishment.
I don’t think CBS is particularly liberal, certainly not in the way that Fox News is most assuredly, posolutely and abisitively an outlet for Bushivik propaganda. Heaven knows we could use one!
But, hey, don’t want to spoil yer party. Rock out, doesn’t look like you got much in the way of good news coming any time soon, so better get it while the gettings good.
Yeah. For instance, if a group of military officers including a rear admiral and the former JAG of the Navy went to CBS with claims that Kerry had lied about his war record, and had evidence that that was the case, I’m sure CBS would rush it to air to scoop everyone else, even if the evidence looked somewhat shaky.
Maybe CBS should have borrowed one of the following:
“We believed the evidence was true at the time we said it.”
“It has not yet been conclusively proven that the evidence does not exist.”
“The evidence may still be found.”
“Even if the evidence doesn’t exist and our story was wrong, we’ve other stories that were true and we’d rather focus on those.”
“The evidence might have smuggled into another country on the eve of our broadcast.”
Yeah, if someone had cut-and-pasted Kerry’s face onto a picture of two people in bed together, and Ann Coulter mailed it to CBS with a note about how she found it, they would have done the same thing they did with the Bush “memos”. Rush that sucker to press-- gotta get scoop the other networks, you know!
It’s not a question of either political bias or sloppy reporting. It’s more like political bias LEADING to sloppy reporting. I don’t necessarily see political bias at CBS as a whole, but Mapes sure looks guilty.
At any rate, the debate here is how much this issue will damage CBS, not whether or not Bush started the Iraq war or whether or not Bush served out his Nat’l Guard term with distinction.
Well, gee, Sam, guess we didn’t hear much about that. Must be because that ol’ debbil liberal media hushed it up, huh? Why, I hardly heard a word about it! Nary a peep!
Look can’t talk right now Hannity and His Bitch is giving us live coverage of Sean’s multiple orgasms with a back three and half sumersault. He’s pointing directly at the passage in the report the repudiates the notion of liberal bias, as proof positive of liberal bias. Can’t miss that.
Sure! Political loyalty ain’t squat to these people! They play to win, every day, all day. Besides which, if they did a story like that on Kerry, it would sure lend some credence to their non-partisan bona fides, no? Besides, your analogy is bogus. The story about Bush and the Guard had been long, long substantiated, this was little more than a footnote about one of his commanders (a story, I remind you, was backed up by his personal secretary as correctly representing his views…or did you forget that?). This didn’t come as a complete shock out of far right field, this was all well plowed ground. The story, it appears, was true, the documents were faked. A crucial difference.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut from time to time.
I agree with the above. I think there would have been a bit more hesitation, but ultimately they would have gone with being first before being sure.
I didn’t believe that before reading this report. I was convinced that partisan politics were in play. Having read the report, I now believe that political leaning was, if a factor at all, a very small one. They just wanted to be first.
Yada yada. If you’d actually read this whole thread, you’d have known that I was responding to the question of why CBS isn’t apologizing to Bush. You haven’t offered any reason he’s owed one; you’re still obsessed by a *network’s * truthfulness and sense of responsibility and not that of the President who you’ve so totally and gloatingly supported. This has been pointed out to you several times already. Sam, you said these officers had evidence? Where? Just their own say-so, you say? It’s contradicted by every known fact and every closer witness than that? Seems clear what a responsible, “fair and balanced” news organization should do - but they ran it anyway, and very heavily. And you’re complaining.
Why don’t we just throw out all semblance of decency, common sense, and law and order? Let’s all go stark raving insane, scream obscenities, and throw our feces against the wall. And when we are arrested for disturbing the public we’ll say “There are no rules because in my opinion one man messed up and never admitted it, so obviously we can all do whatever we want whenever we want with no regard to the accepted social norms of behavior.”
Personally, I think that Mapes just having scooped the Abu Grahib story was pretty much the star of the moment at CBS.
Doubtless, there was much hubris and when she went after this story nobody wanted to get in her way or ask hard questions, after all, she just broke the Abu Grahib story and her star was in ascent.
Mapes, I think committed the great classic liberal mistake. That is, when you get get something right you start beleiving your own press releases about how great you are. Once that happens the BIG MISTAKE THAT WILL BRING YOU DOWN is imminent.
Now some of you may claim that that is a partisan statemtent that I have just made. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is wholly bipartisan. You see, a liberal reading the above must concede that since conservatives are never right, they never have the opportunity to make that mistake.
Say, how’s that Valerie Plame investigation going? I realize that the horrors of falling for a bogus memo about Bush far outstrip merely outing a covert CIA agent for cheap political revenge, and that Robert Novak probably deserves nothing more than a mild “attaboy” for his role in it, but still, I’m curious.
CBS owes Bush an apology for their sake, not for his. He could care less, they’ve already suffered all the bad publicity they can from this debacle so Bush gains nothing even in “spite” if they make the apology.
The reason they should do it is journalists (at least the one I dated and all the ones who’s books I’ve read) like to pride themselves on credibility. Sure, they’ll be pompous asses, invade your privacy, dig through your garbage, throw your life out for the world to see but they like to maintain that they are reporting the facts, that they are telling a true story to people who are interested in hearing it. When they start reporting lies or frauds it hits at the very core of what several generations of journalistic integrity classes in college have been designed eliminate.
Just as “Fighting Ignorance” is the banner of this website that too could be a pretty damn good war call for journalists as a whole, so when they pull something like this they should feel deep shame and admit they were wrong, say they are sorry, and make every effort to make themselves legitimate again.
The scope of the double standard coming from the conservative side is simply breathtaking. CBS investigates its staff being all too easily gulled for partisan purposes, fires one person, asks for the resignations of four others, Rather resigns on his own, and STILL the bastids want more. Meanwhile, Robert Novak’s career continues unabated, Ann Coulter calls Democrats treasonous, Fox News continues to spew lies right and right, and hate radio is untainted by truth – without any negative consequences for any of them.
CBS has done all it needs to, and more, to demonstrate their commitment to good journalism. You conservatives better clean out your own houses of journalism before you criticize anybody – they stink to high heaven.
Ah, I see. And how, precisely, does the Great Classic Liberal Mistake differ from the Great Classic Republican Mistake or the Great Classic Tory Mistake or the Great Classic Federalist Mistake or the Great Classic Christian Democrat Mistake or the Great Classic Human Being Mistake?
What relevenace does this have to CBS reporting a forgery as a fact?
They still owe Bush an apology. They presented a forgery as a fact in essence they lied and the person whom you are lying about deserves and apology.
You Liberals certianly seem to have taken a page out of the GOP’s play book in this thread. When you are wrong and you know it throw enough shit around about irrelevent topics to try and distract attention from the issue at hand.
I agree. Now will you join me in demanding an apology from Bush for using his daddy’s influence to avoid the draft and shamelessly shirking the last two years of the National Guard duties he assumed in order to evade the draft?
I mean, as long as we’re obsessed with pointless platitudes and all.
I don’t really know that much about what Bush did during Vietnam nor do I really care. I know I would have dodged the draft to the best of my ability and if he was able to by his fathers influence bully for him.
But like I said keep throwing shit around to distract from the issue.
