Posted on 01/10/2005 7:26:40 PM PST by Pikamax
NEWS ANALYSIS Post-Mortem of a Broadcast Disaster By BILL CARTER
lready under duress from years of budget cuts, poor ratings and reduced influence, CBS News suffered a crushing blow to its credibility yesterday because of a broadcast that has now been labeled as both factually discredited and unprofessionally produced.
"This should never have happened," said Leslie Moonves, the CBS chairman who announced the dismissals of four executives yesterday in the wake of an independent panel's report that found the "60 Minutes" program that dealt with President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard was unfair and misleading after being rushed to broadcast without proper vetting.
"This is a rude awakening for CBS News," Mr. Moonves said, "and the CBS News culture has to change."
What exactly that will mean is still uncertain, though several staff members reported the morale in the department to be devastatingly low. "We are all sad and miserable," said one CBS production staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect against criticism from superiors at the network.
One lingering question is how much accountability should be laid at the feet of Andrew Heyward, the president of the division. In several of the prominent journalism scandals that have surfaced recently - at USA Today and The New York Times - the top executives were eventually forced out.
The dissatisfaction of the news staffs played a role in both those developments.
Several CBS News staff members continued to question Mr. Heyward's level of responsibility yesterday. One said the feelings of the staff toward him were mixed, with some wondering how everyone under him could be blamed and not him, and others hoping he would survive because the news division could not take any more losses. Mr. Heyward declined to comment.
Mr. Moonves said he wanted to reinforce the leadership of Mr. Heyward and pointed to the panel's conclusions that he made an effort to question the authentication offered for the documents in the report.
"It still happened under his watch," Mr. Moonves said. "But I felt he did his job. He asked the questions that needed to be asked."
In the short term, the news staff will work under a new set of procedures, suggested by the panel and ordered by Mr. Moonves, that are aimed at preventing the kind of lax oversight that allowed the National Guard report to be broadcast in the state that it was.
Though Mr. Moonves said the news division "will not be hamstrung in any way" because of the additional restrictions, some news staff members were worried they could create impediments to aggressive reporting.
CBS already effectively censored itself when it withdrew another "60 Minutes" report - the one that the rushed National Guard story knocked off the air on Sept. 8 - that would have been critical of President Bush. That report, on the administration's rationale for going to war in Iraq, was shelved. CBS said it could not broadcast it during the election campaign.
Most significantly, CBS News faces the challenge of replacing its most prominent figure, Dan Rather, the evening news anchor who is also the face of the news division. He had already announced that he was stepping down, after almost 30 years, before yesterday's report, which did not implicate him directly in the mistakes.
But in comments yesterday, Mr. Moonves for the first time seemed to link Mr. Rather's decision to step down from the anchor position to his association with the discredited report.
In Mr. Moonves's official statement, he said, "Dan Rather has already apologized for the segment and taken responsibility for his part in the broadcast. He voluntarily moved to set a date to step down from the 'CBS Evening News' in March of 2005." He added, "We believe any further action would not be appropriate."
The panel's conclusions come at a time when CBS lags behind in almost every area of network news competition, having finished third in the evening newscast for years and third in the morning news competition for a generation. It almost always finishes third in live coverage of news events like elections and breaking stories.
Without a cable news partner, CBS News' ability to command public attention has faded.
Several observers pointed to the competitive pressure CBS now labors under as one possible reason the National Guard report escaped the scrutiny it needed.
"I think CBS was feeling it and Dan Rather was feeling it," said Alex Jones, the director of the Shorenstein Center on Press and Politics at Harvard University. "Dan had been in third place for a lot of years."
But thanks largely to the one person who was fired outright yesterday, the producer Mary Mapes, CBS News - with Mr. Rather doing the reporting - had grabbed the spotlight with two big exclusive reports in the preceding months. One was an interview with a woman who was the illegitimate daughter of Senator Strom Thurmond and a black maid. The other was one of the year's biggest stories, the first report and pictures of the abuses of prisoners by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison.
Those reports had made Ms. Mapes the most heralded - and best paid, according to several of her colleagues - producer at CBS News, and given her power that the independent panel said made it possible for her to push the National Guard story to broadcast with little of the usual vetting by higher executives.
Ms. Mapes, who lives in Texas, was also known inside CBS for her long-time aggressive coverage of President Bush, going back to his days as governor. Though Mr. Moonves and other CBS executives yesterday pointed to the panel's exoneration of the network on charges of political bias against the president, not everyone agreed that it played no role at all.
"It sounds like you had a star reporter here who fell in love with a story," Mr. Jones said. "Her previous work had given her a reputation sufficient to bowl over everyone else. It seems like it was a combination of competitive pressure, hubris and a little politics. I think it's foolish to separate this entirely from politics, no matter what the report says. All in all that's a witches' brew."
In alluding to the "perfect storm" elements of what took place, several CBS executives said that the National Guard report would not have progressed as quickly as it did had Ms. Mapes not produced the exclusives she had, or if the staff of "60 Minutes" had not turned over so soon beforehand. Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, who was asked to resign yesterday, had been on the job only six days.
But the central explanation for how CBS went wrong seemed to be a case of a star producer overruling the better judgments of an entire series of top news executives. One senior CBS executive said many staff members seemed to be more afraid of Ms. Mapes than of Mr. Heyward, which could help undermine his position with the staff.
But the production staff member said the staff at CBS did not feel powerful enough to bring about change. "We have no juice," the staff member said. "We're a dying business, and this didn't help us. Some people feel like CBS News could be out of business in five years."
That is not a position Mr. Moonves agrees with. He said he intended to make the changes necessary to restore the network's glory.
His next move - choosing a successor for Mr. Rather - will be intensely watched both inside and outside CBS. Mr. Moonves said, "I'm no closer to a decision on that than I was when Dan made the announcement in November that he was stepping down." Mr. Rather will leave the anchor chair in March.
Blow that smoke! Not a single occurance of "fraud" either. The old gay lady's still got her kneepads.
"Make sure that any more forged documents are created with the appropriate historical hardware."
What disaster?
Thornburg & company couldn't even say the docs were forged.
Couldn't even speculate that bias may have been involved.
Couldn't pin anything on Rather.
Rather skates.
CBS's report rings hollow. The responsibility for the "get W and prevent his re-election" 60 Minutes-II hit piece goes up at least to Heyward and maybe even to Moonvies. Rather should have been fired outright. The next step is for Mr Moonvies to make a public apology for CBS to President Bush.
When is the NY Times going to write about their own sorry role in this episode? "Never" would be my guess.
The idea that CBS rushed this story to beat the competition is crap. This wasn't about competing with the other networks...it was about trying to knock the Swift Boat Veterans out of the spotlight!
I wonder if reporting news is involved here somehow.
Gee, no mention by the NY Slimes of the numerous federal laws that were broken.
Counterfeiting military orders (e.g. report for your physical examination, Lt Bush).
Forging signatures (e.g. Colonel Killian's signature and initials).
Passing off fake documents as real (i.e. fraud).
Broadcasting forged signatures and fake documents and counterfeit military orders over state lines (i.e. wire fraud).
...And lets also not forget:
Libel.
Slander.
"I think it's foolish to separate this entirely from politics, no matter what the report says."
Of course it was a political hit job. Has she ever done a story on a 'rat?
bttt
Plus wire and mail fraud, and consumer fraud, in addition to the standard fraud. Should be good for 10+ years each for Mapes, Rather, Heyward, and the other people running the show.
Where's the prosecutor?
True enough. But ya gotta admit, it's nice that even the 'Slimes are writing about this, especially after Bush's victory. The MSM is being forced to take their cod liver oil whether they like it or not.
True enough. But ya gotta admit, it's nice that even the 'Slimes are writing about this, especially after Bush's victory. The MSM is being forced to take their cod liver oil whether they like it or not.
bump
Oh let's also not forget the litany of election law violations that are evident in this... illegal contributions, collaboration, etc.
bttt
"It sounds like you had a star reporter here who fell in love with a story," Mr. Jones said. "Her previous work had given her a reputation sufficient to bowl over everyone else. It seems like it was a combination of competitive pressure, hubris and a little politics. I think it's foolish to separate this entirely from politics, no matter what the report says. All in all that's a witches' brew."
I agree. Politics, while I don't think it was the ultimate role here, played a definite part...getting a Republican.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/fkeys/seebee-ess3.gif In preblogger years Rather would have gotten a Pulitzer Prize for this report..
I believe this episode came about to overthrow a duely elected government.
I'm sure you didn't mean to offend prostitutes, but really... that is at least an *honest* profession. :-)
Yes, the whores are circling the wagon, but the circle widens with enlistment of Thornburg. I can't believe he fell in with this crowd. This is a secondary coverup which need to be thoroughly exposed.
FYI: Thornburg is a 1.) Lawyer 2.) Politician
Publicly sacking four people, including a Senior Vice President, is no small deal. In addition, Moonves seemed to go out of his way to make it clear that had Rather not moved to accelerate his retirement, that would have been done for him. It can truly be said here that "heads rolled." There is a chance here that Moonves is going to do what a businessman — as opposed to an ideologue — would have done to CBS News a long time ago. When you're last in the ratings, and you can't dig out, and then this crap hits, it's time to clean house and try something new. There's no better time. New, conservative blood at CBS News? I'd do it if I were him. It sure worked for Murdoch. |
How can he? They're at the mercy of the local stations whose local news broadcasts precede the evening news. In my area the NBC affiliate totally dominates the local news market which in turn makes NBC Nightly News number one among the big three.
Give the man a cigar.
Libel, slander, and forgery. Plus aiding and abetting and conspiracy to commit....
Anyone lawyer with half a brain could bring the RICO statutes into play.
Oh what a tangled web we weave....
L
The New York Times is saying, in effect, "when we screwed up, heads rolled at the very top; not because we intended to do the right thing, but because our staff forced it; so it seems only fair that CBS suffer the same fate." It will be interesting to see if CBS's reportedly demoralized staff can force out Heyward and Moonves. I'm rooting for them to do so.
The NYT ought to consider that it reported the same fraudulent story, conducted no investigation, and has not even retracted the story. This is like the pot calling the kettle black. They should be concerned about their own credibility.
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Moonves might surprise us. For internal reasons he has to parrot the lawyerly conclusion from the report that political bias can't be proved. But that doesn't mean he has to be an idiot and believe it himself. He knows what happened here; everybody does.