Posted on 09/20/2004 10:47:19 AM PDT by Charles Henrickson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a blow to its credibility, CBS News said on Monday it had been misled over the authenticity of documents it aired in a story challenging President Bush's military service and announced it was mounting an internal investigation.
"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in a report," CBS News said in a statement.
"We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."
The announcement marked a dramatic and embarrassing reversal by the network that just five days ago said it was satisfied with the accuracy of the documents first aired earlier this month in a "60 Minutes II" segment.
In a separate statement, the network's top anchor, Dan Rather, apologized for what he called a "mistake in judgment" and said CBS News had been misled on the key question of how its source for the documents had obtained the papers.
The four memos, purportedly written and signed by the late Air National Guard Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, said that he was under pressure from his superiors to "sugar coat" Bush's service record after Bush, then a Guard pilot, was grounded for his failure to perform to standards or to take a physical.
Immediately after the report was aired on Sept. 8, Bush supporters and competing news organizations challenged the authenticity of the documents.
They said that comparisons of the Killian memos with other documents from Bush's National Guard service revealed inconsistencies in terminology and word processing techniques.
"cBS was misled..." Right! cBS and RATHERnotreportthenews WANTED to be misled!
A crime.
CBS should now offer a formal apology to President Bush and the American public!
Exactly. Someone needs to investigate Burkett.
Since a forgery has already been perpetrated and since Burkett obviously knows who did it, what is to stop a criminal investigation from going forward in which he is compelled to reveal his source? He is by no stretch of the imagination a journalist and therefore has neither a first amendment nor a fifth amendment reason not to reveal his source.
Let's see... now apologize to Bush, Cheney, viewers, all bloggers who were told it was impossible to think those "geeks" could see what the Great and Grand SeeBS couldn't see.
We are certain that Burkett has passed forged documents. He says he passed them, and since they are not authentic, then someone had to forge Killian's name on them.
I agree. Burkett should have no immunity.
Notice they never really say the docs are fake? ust that they can't verify they are real, as thoughthere is still doubt. That way they don't have to come clean about the source, though it's now obvious.
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