as a result of the CBS panel investigative report authored by Dick Thornburgh and Lou Boccardi. Fox News has the entire report, as well as the scoop on the firings, here's a taste:
Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been let go for the parts they played in preparing the controversial "60 Minutes Wednesday" election-season story about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS announced Monday.
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, according to CBS.
The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated, the network said.
Longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who was the correspondent on the September segment, announced his departure as anchor of "CBS Evening News" late last year. His final show will be March 9.
and
The CBS probe team concluded in its report that the network news organization failed to follow basic journalistic principles in preparing, reporting and following the Bush piece.
CBS News then made matters worse with its "rigid and blind" defense of the "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment, the panel reported.
It found that the news organization should have set the record straight earlier.
"The panel finds that once serious questions were raised, the defense of the segment became more rigid and emphatic, and that virtually no attempt was made to determine whether the questions raised had merit," the report concluded.
However:
The panel stopped short of saying the CBS story arose out of any political bias on the part of the network or its news coverage.
Instead, the report concluded that the problematic National Guard segment was aired because of "myopic zeal" on the part of CBS to break the story first.
The report is inconsistent with this conclusion, showing bias on the part of CBS throughout. Michelle Malkin has a great analysis of this at her site today, including the specific example of the use of Col. Hackworth as a qualified expert to support the authenticity of the story in the Sept 8th segment. CBS relied on his conclusions despite his lack of connections to any of the players in the story. As Michelle observed, on pages 106-107 of the report, the panel states:
Mapes said that she asked Colonel Hackworth to “look at the back and forth” in the Killian documents because he had worked in the Pentagon and knew about Pentagon politics. Even though Colonel Hackworth was never in the TexANG, did not know Lieutenant Colonel Killian or any of the other relevant individuals, had no personal knowledge of President Bush’s service in the TexANG and had no personal knowledge regarding the Killian documents, he reached some highly critical conclusions in his interview regarding President Bush’s TexANG service based solely on the purported authenticity of the Killian documents and his general knowledge of the military.
First, Colonel Hackworth concluded that the documents were “genuine.” He reached this conclusion by relating his own experience at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War when he was running the “Army input system for . . . basic training.” Colonel Hackworth said that, while in that post, he received and refused requests by members of Congress and generals to assign certain men to particular units and wrote “cover my own butt” memoranda in many cases to document his refusals. Colonel Hackworth then concluded that Lieutenant Colonel Killian was “in the same kind of pickle that I found myself in” and proceeded to discuss what Lieutenant Colonel Killian was thinking at the time he wrote the memoranda.
Rather asked Colonel Hackworth whether there was any doubt in his mind that the documents were real, and Colonel Hackworth replied, “Having been down that road before I would say that these are genuine documents.”
Second, Colonel Hackworth concluded that, by not taking his physical, then-Lieutenant Bush was “insubordinate” and would have been treated more harshly had he been “an unconnected Lieutenant.”
Third, Colonel Hackworth stated repeatedly throughout his interview that then-Lieutenant Bush was “AWOL” and that a person would have to reach that conclusion when reviewing the documents “unless you’re the village idiot.” Colonel Hackworth appeared to be referring to the fact that he had seen no evidence that President Bush was “present for duty” once he left for Alabama in 1972, although he did not articulate clearly how he reached his conclusion. Finally, Colonel Hackworth concluded that “the bottom line here is – is the abuse of power.” He said that “[I]t’s how people up at the top can . . . lean on the little people.”
Rather thought Colonel Hackworth was a “strong and valuable expert witness.” Mapes also believed that Colonel Hackworth was important for the Segment and included excerpts of his interview in early drafts of the September 8 Segment script. These excerpts were ultimately cut from the final script by Heyward and West.
Continuing on, I read the following disturbing section regarding the use of the handwriting expert on the Sept 8th segment, and the gross discrepancy between the conclusions he actually drew from the documents, and the representation of his conclusions on the program. The report states, on pg 108:
Matley flew from San Francisco to New York on Monday, September 6 to be interviewed by Rather. While he was waiting for his flight, Matley created a one-page handwritten list of eight points regarding the Killian documents, which he revised later in the day as he received more Killian documents and information from Miller and Mapes. Matley arrived at the 60 Minutes Wednesday offices around 5 p.m. but was not interviewed until Rather had finished the CBS Evening News broadcast.
When Matley arrived, he was shown the four additional Killian documents that Smith had received from Lieutenant Colonel Burkett the previous day. Significantly, Matley was the only document examiner to be shown these additional documents prior to the airing of the September 8 Segment.
After reviewing the new documents, Matley met with Miller and Mapes in Miller’s office and reviewed his notes with them. Matley told the Panel that he informed Mapes and Miller that he could not authenticate the documents due to the fact that the documents were poor quality copies. Thus, he was obliged to assume that they were reliable copies of authentic documents.
Matley told Mapes and Miller that the preponderance of the available evidence suggested that all of the signatures on the documents he was asked to analyze appeared to have been written by the same person, which included two of the six documents that Mapes received from Lieutenant Colonel Burkett, only one of which was used in the September 8 Segment. The Panel notes that three of the six Killian documents did not contain any handwriting, and two of these were used in the September 8 Segment. Moreover, Matley explicitly said that he could not opine on the document that contained only initials, the August 1, 1972 memorandum, which was used in the September 8 Segment.
Matley, whose specialty is handwriting analysis, was invoked as the authority for the following statement in the September 8 Segment: “We consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.” The Panel finds this statement troubling given that of the four Killian documents relied on in the Segment:
Two had no handwriting at all on them;
One had only initials which Matley said he could not verify; and
One had a signature which Matley said matched, with qualifications, signatures in the official documents.
These points are all reflected in Matley’s handwritten notes that he prepared that day, which are attached as Exhibit 5. Matley said that Mapes and Miller did not make a copy of his notes. He recalled that Mapes said to him that they were “not interested in all the parameters” of his findings. As later reported in Chapter IX, Matley later had these notes typed up and faxed them to 60 Minutes Wednesday on Friday, September 10.
The producer of the segment was "not interested in the parameters of (Matley's) findings" - troubling indeed. There is so much more to this report, I am off to read it all. More on this to come. In the meantime, check out today's posts at Rathergate.com - excellent, ongoing analysis of the details included in this report. This story will only get more interesting.
In my HUMBLE opinion. . . CBS is the lowest of the low. I suppose they were too timid to hatchet Dan Rather. If I were Queen of CBS. . . I wouldn't care who he is or in this case, was, he'd be outta my organization. None of HIS dirt would soil my kingdom. . . But, I guess that's why I'm NOT the Queen of CBS or any other "news" org.
Call me The Cut-throat Chef, please.
Posted by: Chef Paulette | January 10, 2005 at 01:34 PM
Cutthroat, indeed, Chef.
Take small comfort in this: at least they actually fired Mapes, rather than allowing her to resign. And, as for Blather, er, Rather's pending retirement - good riddance, ciao, don't let the door hit ya on the way out the door, etc... It would have been oh-so-much nicer to see him get a swift kick in the keyster, I agree, but at least he's out. I'm sure that soon we'll hear Mapes has been appointed head of the ship at some yellow journalism tabloid somewhere.. The National Enquirer, perhaps? And maybe Dan, his daughter and his buddy Bill Burkett can cohost some Dem fundraising bbq's for Hillary in Texas, come 2008. Now there's a frightening thought.
Alex
Posted by: | January 10, 2005 at 02:28 PM