CBS Releases Report; Four Axed
The long-awaited report from CBS is now out and available in PDF file here. A CBS news story announcing the results is here.
"Report of the Independent Review Panel," by Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi, runs to 234 pages (including front matter; 224 for the report only) in PDF, so it's going to take a bit of time for the blogosphere and other media outlets to study it. It's dated January 5, 2005, so we're getting a look at it (supposedly) five days after it was delivered to CBS.
The news story reports: Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated.
The correspondent on the story, CBS News anchor Dan Rather, is stepping down as anchor of CBS Evening News.
I've taken a very preliminary look at the report and found the following paragraphs, which appear on pages 21 and 22. If they set the tone for the remainder of the report, it might be a harder-hitting look at CBS News's efforts to influence the election than many of us had expected.
The Panel finds a number of deficiencies with the September 10 CBS Evening News report. First, while an official Bush record did include a superscript “th,” it is far different in appearance from the superscript “th” in the May 4, 1972 and August 18, 1973 memoranda. Second, while Times New Roman typeface may have been available since 1931, the Panel understands that it was only available in typeset machines and not in typewriters during the period the Killian documents were allegedly written. Third, neither Matley nor Lieutenant Strong ever authenticated the documents or said that they were “real.” Fourth, no one asked Lieutenant Strong after the Segment aired and before the September 10 report whether he was “standing by his judgment.”
Friday, September 10, should have been a watershed day in dealing with the growing controversy about the Segment. First, CBS News President Heyward, concerned about mainstream media’s increasingly critical reporting about the Segment, directed Betsy West early that morning to investigate the details of the examiners’ opinions and confidential sources that allegedly supported the Segment. No such investigation was done at that time. Had this directive been followed promptly, the Panel does not believe that 60 Minutes Wednesday would have publicly defended the Segment for another 10 days.
Second, during the day, three events took place that should have alerted CBS News management that the reporting for the Segment may have been flawed. First, the CBS News strategy to get 60 Minutes Wednesday’s document examiners to defend the Segment was not followed, as only Matley made an appearance. As noted above, Matley did not attest to the authenticity of the documents. Second, a respected typewriter expert, Peter Tytell, contacted Miller and Howard and explained in detail why he believed the Killian documents were likely fakes. His views were not pursued or analyzed in part because 60 Minutes Wednesday was searching only for experts who would defend the September 8 Segment. Third, Major General Hodges contacted Mapes and Rather and told them that Mapes had misquoted him about his alleged confirmation of the Killian documents and now that he had had the opportunity to review them, he believed that the documents were not authentic. Neither Mapes nor Rather asked Major General Hodges to explain why he believed the documents were not authentic and the Panel finds no discussion of this conversation with others at CBS News at the time.
Thus, within two days following the airing of the September 8 Segment, 60 Minutes Wednesday ignored significant opportunities to take a fresh look at the reporting that allegedly supported the Segment. This was especially unfortunate because the criticisms of 60 Minutes Wednesday thereafter only continued to mount.
In addition to more complete commentary here and elsewhere, also be on the lookout for attempts to whitewash the Report, especially if it does turn out to be highly critical of CBS.
Update: It's 11:33 am EST, and thus far Google News returns only one item, the CBS News story itself, on the report's release. "Rathergate" returns two stories: from CNS and NewsMax.
Update II: Michelle Malkin calls attention to pages 26 - 28, which deal with Joe Lockhart's role in going public with the story of the contacts between producer Mary Mapes (now fired) and the Kerry campaign. Michelle calls attention to one of my posts from September, where I speculated on Lockhart's motives for repaying Mapes's favor of contacting him on the emerging 60 Minutes story by going public with their call. I wrote: Most likely, it's a textbook case of the Clinton damage control machine -- the world's most experienced -- kicking back into full gear. . . . This covers his backside as the story unfolds -- it's called "getting out in front of the story" -- and allows him to frame it in a way most flattering, or least damaging, to himself and his kin. And, as Michelle's excerpt shows, Lockhart's still at it.
| Jan. 10, 2005 | 11:22 AM