CBS Apologizes to Missouri Paper for TV Fakery (Fake but Accurate Alert)

Editor & Publisher ^ | Feb 23, 2006 | Staff

[abb]

NEW YORK Susan Zirinsky, executive producer of CBS’ "48 Hours Mystery, has apologized for airing an altered image of the front page of the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune in an episode about a local murder trial that aired Saturday.

The paper’s managing editor, Jim Robertson, had complained to CBS in an e-mail. Zirinsky said she didn’t know the image of the front page covering Ryan Ferguson’s sentencing had been drastically manipulated.

Ferguson had been convicted last October of killing the newpaper’s sports editor, Kent Heitholt, whose body was found in the Tribune’s parking lot in November 2001.

"It was an egregious oversight for us not to know it," Zirinsky said, according to the Tribune. "It was a graphic, and we don’t feel it changed the editorial value of the story, per se."

She did not mention whether CBS would inform viewers on the air or on its Web site.

The CBS show, which raised questions about Ferguson’s guilt, showed several front pages from the Tribune during its "Dream Killer" program. A graphic of the Tribune’s Dec. 5 front page for some reason showed a photograph of Ferguson in a suit and tie at his sentencing. The original photograph showed Ferguson in a bright orange jail uniform.

Zirinsky blamed the fakery on a freelancer hired by CBS, according to the Tribune.

Ferguson, 21, was found guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree robbery in the slaying of Heitholt, who was bludgeoned and strangled. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

[highlander_UW]

The altered picture reinforces their story template - the guy is innocent. If CBS used the pic of him in a prison jumpsuit, it wouldn't fit the story they were trying to sell

So they blanked out the orange jumpsuit and photo-shopped in an Armani suit?

[litehaus]

SEE BS
..............For that you need a subscription to the St. Pete Times in Flori-DUH?

[abb]

I don't know if that's how they did it. What they did do is misrepresent what the Columbia Tribune put on their front page. Where the pic of him in the suit came from, the story doesn't say...

[MeanWestTexan]

"The altered picture reinforces their story template - the guy is innocent. If CBS used the pic of him in a prison jumpsuit, it wouldn't fit the story they were trying to sell."

WE HAVE A WINNER!

It's like those Protest Warriors that Time cropped to make look like real Ann Coulter protestors --- that fit Time's agenda.

[daivid]

The culture of deception is prevalent in CBS, even the newly hired interns know the score.

[MOgirl]

Hello,

I saw this show, although I did not follow the story as it happened. I came away with lots of questions about the guilt of the two young men, based entirely upon the 48 Hours show. Well, they may be guilty and they may not be, but based on this revelation, I would have to start from scratch on learning about the crime. Geez....

Glad to be here, MOgirl

[Dan(9698)]

Zirinsky blamed the fakery on a freelancer hired by CBS

Mary Mapes?

[abb]

Well there you go. Do you believe CBS news or the jury that convicted him?

[abb]

Looks like Bender 2's work to me...

[Dan(9698)]

Looks like Bender 2's work to me...

Maybe Mary Mapes subcontracted it to him?

[MOgirl]

Hello,

Based on the show, I believed neither one. I did have questions regarding some of the evidence that did not get addressed by CBS. I do understand that CBS is OK with presenting only things (real or fake) that back up their agenda. I would need input from other sources to determine what I believe in this case. Glad to be here, MOgirl

[cpanter]

I watched the show and told my wife that this was one of the most blatant one-sided stories ever. They wanted this kid to be innocent.

Why? I don't know. But this reinforces it.

[Bender2]

Gad! Whoa! Here I work my fingers to the bone... Pull all nighters... Work through breakfast, lunch and dinner... All to get you guys future editions of the Slimes and you two suggest I lower myself to do work for CBS!

Harry, fresh meat for you!

So... You two think my very, very good friend #2 is shilling for CBS, eh? Plutarch? abb? You've got to ask yourselves a very important question... Do ya' feel lucky? Well... Do ya' punks?

Ka-BOOM! Ka-BOOM!

Plutarch? You and abb are luck to just get off with being shot! If it was up to me, I'd have been really hard on you two!

[Rte66]

Exactly right. I watched it, too. The big, sad, puppy-dog eyes of the defendant and his sister's matching ones were quite prominent.

All the way through, they did what they always do--never show the background behind the person of interest, always leading the viewer to believe that the person of interest is now a private citizen--that he or she was exonerated.

I didn't believe all of the testimony of the drinking buddy, but I was quite aware of being manipulated by the show itself, so I bristled and paid more attention to what wasn't being said. (Like some of the bad stuff about the sister, for example, who we were supposed to think was a saint.)

If I were a drinker, I would've made it a drinking game as to all the times I tried to glimpse some telltale orange on the guy when they talked to him, or something "industrial" behind him.

Even as late as 5 minutes before the end of the show, I felt that, even though *I* thought he was guilty, that the jury *must have* found him not guilty and he *must have* gotten off, after hearing the whole slant of the show. I was shocked when the jury came back "guilty".

This is the new thing in trial courtrooms now, though--the defense attorney filing to have the defendant appear in court in street clothes (remember Scott Peterson's Armani's and others, which his mom and family brought to prison for him to wear?), so the jury won't be prejudiced towards the "jailbird" on trial.

I guarantee you CBS told the free-lancer to lose the jumpsuit and substitute a still shot from one of their suit-and-tie interviews or one of the days in early 2004 before he was arrested. Not sure if maybe his defense attorney didn't plead the "suit-and-tie in courtroom" deal for him, too.

[Chode]

HA ha...
and the RATS take another one in the...

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

CBS. Hmmm Isn't this the same station that aired a movie about the Atlanta child murders and came to the conclusion that the man convicted might be innocent? Even though the murders ceased with his imprisonment!

c-B-S in action!

[abb]

Here's a column in the Columbia (MO) Daily Tribune in re this story...

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/Feb/20060223Feat001.asp

TRIBUNE COLUMN
Real life can’t be boiled down to television reality show clichés

By TONY MESSENGER
Published Thursday, February 23, 2006

I’ve been voted off the island.

That’s my conclusion after four days of answering e-mails and phone calls from armchair lawyers who watched the CBS News-produced "48 Hours" segment Saturday night about the murder of Tribune Sports Editor Kent Heitholt.

Folks who have never met me, who didn’t know Heitholt and who have never been to Columbia have passed judgment on my opinion that the jurors got it right. The jurors convicted Ryan Ferguson of murder. His partner in crime, Chuck Erickson, convicted himself. Since I’m the dope they showed at the end of the show who was willing to say what I thought at the time and still think, I’ve incurred the wrath of couch potatoes everywhere who skipped the Olympics to watch a good mystery.

Never mind that the show was more slanted than Lindsey Jacobellis on a snowboard. Ignore the omissions, such as how Prosecuting Attorney Kevin Crane destroyed memory expert Elizabeth Loftus on the stand and the lack of any questions whatsoever about the great American family who let their kid stay out drinking all night on a school night. Forget the errors: This was not the city’s only unsolved murder, and I’m a columnist who happens to have a radio show, not the other way around.

For Mr. and Mrs. Smith who plan their lives around various shows beginning with "CSI," watching a one-hour synopsis of a murder case that took more than three years to solve gave them all the ammunition they needed.

Forget the jury. Forget the weeklong trial.

"Free Ryan Ferguson," they scream.

That’s what the retired private investigator from Montreal, Canada, told me when he called. That’s what so many e-mailers from places far and wide suggested when they told me I obviously don’t know jack.

"I investigated this article and I have determined that Chuck Erickson is a fruit cake," wrote a man named Al Osborn who goes on to say he knows who the real killer is. "I have done this enough that I know what I am doing. I’m going to put the ball in your corner."

"Robbers do not usually strangle their victims, people with personal issues do," wrote Troy Axtens before asking whether I could help him peruse Heitholt’s old columns so he could find the real answers.

"I am completely disgusted in how you reported this case, and I hope your conscience is giving you no rest!" wrote Elizabeth Arnett after screaming in all caps and giving me a headache throughout her e-mail.

Finally, Richard Cohen got it right. He thinks the "48 Hours" story showed him the way, also, but he at least said one thing that rang true:

"This is all very sad."

Yes, it is.

It’s sad that our culture has diminished to the point where our opinions are shaped by the reality-television world in which we live. It’s a world defined by clearly delineated conflict with heroes and villains. It’s not truth so much that we seek, but the right kind of celebrity - the next "American Idol" or the person who is so untalented that we can make fun of them.

We revel almost as much in the misery of others - see the Jacobellis reference or the Olympic conflict between speed-skaters Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick - as we do any story that has a message of truth.

The truth of the Ferguson murder trial is that it was a maddening case, and for most of us who sat through it, it remains so. You can’t find somebody in Columbia who doesn’t have an opinion on innocence or guilt, and most of those opinions are derived from some combination of biases that our system of justice tries to strip from jurors.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been e-mailing one of the jurors from Lincoln County who decided Ferguson’s guilt. Like so many of us who lived with this case for so many days or months, he continues to be haunted by it. He thinks he did the right thing. He hopes he did the right thing. He knows, after having sat in the jury box and listened to the judge, that the concept of "reasonable doubt" in real life means something a whole lot different than what it means in a quick sound bite on television.

Real life, this juror knows, doesn’t fit into the nice little box that tries to turn complicated messages into black and white. That might be the lasting message of the "48 Hours" piece on a tragic murder case that can’t be whittled down to a single headline or television show. As the Tribune reports today, "48 Hours" producers were so intent on making Ferguson look good that they committed an unforgivable journalistic sin, editing out a Tribune photo of Ferguson in an orange jailhouse jumpsuit and replacing it with one in which he wore a jacket and tie.

CBS News didn’t want a mystery, and it didn’t want the truth. It wanted a reality show, because that’s what viewers want. Those viewers are playing the game to perfection by passing judgment in a fraction of the time it took 12 jurors to send a young man to jail for most of the rest of his life.

I agreed to play a role in that reality show, so make no mistake, I deserve whatever comes my way. But if that’s the island we live on today, you can forget kicking me off.

I’m already swimming away.

Tony Messenger is a columnist at the Tribune. His column appears on Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday. He can be reached at 815-1728 or by e-mail at tmessenger@tribmail.com.

[School of Rational Thought]

more fake documents from CBS. Clearly losing Rather and that other hump, hasn't solved their ethical problems.

[Rte66]

Hmmm, the columnist obviously doesn't read crime forums online, lol. Those "reasonable doubt" "holdout" "oppositional syndrome" people are prolific and vociferous there.

He doesn't say whether the Tribune is going to do anything past asking CBS for an apology. They really should slap something on them, as much as I hate to say those words. If I hadn't known any better, I would have just assumed when I saw this that the Tribune was complicit in the fakery.

[Mrs Zip]

ping