CBS Archives

September 9, 2004

Who Forged Bush Records?

CBS News and 60 Minutes claims that it has documents from George Bush's TANG service that prove undue influence had been used to get Bush his excellent ratings. As one of the exhibits, CBS produced this internal memo, dated but unsigned and with no letterhead, stating: "Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding Bush's OETR and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it. Bush wasn't here during rating period and I don't have any feedback from 187th in Alabama either." As Power Line notes and Free Republic first saw, something is terribly amiss with this memo. Take a look at "187th". The suffix is represented in superscript, which in 1973 could only be accomplished with a typesetting device -- which in 1973 would have cost thousands of dollars, making it extremely...

Killian's Son Suspicious Of CBS Documents

The son of the officer who supposedly wrote memos in 1972 and 1973 describing political pressure to make George Bush look good in the TANG says that he has suspicions about the authenticity of the documents: The authenticity of newly unearthed memos stating that George W. Bush failed to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War was questioned Thursday by the son of the late officer who reportedly wrote the memos. ... Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said one of the memos, signed by his father, appeared legitimate. But he doubted his father would have written another, unsigned memo which said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's performance review. "It just wouldn't happen," he said. "The only thing that can happen when you keep secret files like that are bad things. ......

"Overwhelmed"

Stephen Hayes writes in a column just made public at the Weekly Standard that a group of independent document experts express serious doubts about the authenticity of the memos CBS used as proof of their allegations against the President. Hayes notes that one of the experts is a self-described Kerry supporter who nonetheless says he is "99% sure" that the memos were created well after their dating: DOCUMENTS CITED Wednesday by 60 Minutes in a widely-publicized expose of George W. Bush's National Guard Service are very likely forgeries, according to several experts on document authenticity and typography. The documents--four memos from Killian to himself or his files written in 1972 and 1973--appear to indicate that Bush refused or ignored orders to have a physical exam required to continue flying. CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported the segment and sourced the documents this way: "60 Minutes has obtained a number of...

More Indications That CBS Documents Are Fraudulent

As the documents from CBS get wider dissemination and the questions mount about the typefaces and fonts used, other eyes have noticed other discrepancies. A CQ reader who spent decades in the Air National Guard but who prefers to remain anonymous notices the following problems with the memo purportedly ordering Lt. Bush to submit for a medical exam: 1. The format used in this letter, dated 04 May 1972, which was allegedly prepared/published 16 months prior to Lieutenant Bushs request for discharge, is completely wrong, as the letter is formatted in a manner that was not used by the Air Force until the very late 1980s/early 1990s. 2. The terminology MEMORANDUM FOR was never used in the 1970s. 3. The abbreviations in this letter are incorrectly formatted, in that a period is used after military rank (1st Lt.). According to the Air Force style manual, periods are not used in...

Mainstream Media Notices The Fraud At CBS

Any hope that the mainstream media would protect its own and ignore the obvious forgeries coming from CBS dies on the pages of tomorrow's Washington Post. Michael Dobbs and Mike Allen report that several news agencies hired documents experts who concluded that the documents were likely faked: After doubts about the documents began circulating on the Internet yesterday morning, The Post contacted several independent experts who said they appeared to have been generated by a word processor. An examination of the documents by The Post shows that they are formatted differently from other Texas Air National Guard documents whose authenticity is not questioned. William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters...

Is Dan Rather Really Shell-Shocked?

Drudge reports that CBS has launched an internal investigation into the faked documents that 60 Minutes used to attempt a smear job on George Bush: CBS NEWS executives have launched an internal investigation into whether its premiere news program 60 MINUTES aired fabricated documents relating to Bush's National Guard service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. ... The source, who asked not to be named, described CBSNEWS anchor and 60 MINUTES correspondent Dan Rather as being privately "shell-shocked" by the increasingly likelihood that the documents in question were fraudulent. If true, CBS News still has not updated its web site to inform its readers that the documents may be unreliable. If The Dan was truly "shell-shocked", wouldn't he want to pull the story off the Tiffany Network's web site in order to keep a false story from spreading any further? Failing that, he could at least insist that some mention be...

September 10, 2004

Is The Chicago Tribune Cleansing Its Archives Of The CBS Scam?

NOTE: This post has been substantially updated -- see below. The blog Threshold -55 does some crack investigative work on the Chicago Tribune, which appears to be attempting to "disappear" the Killian-memo story from its archives. Beth and Terry explain how the ChiTrib (whose parent, I believe, also owns the LA Times) keys its archives to allow for searches and how that has been manipulated here: A Threshold -55 examination of the Chicago Tribune website reveals that the newspaper appears to have quietly removed all references to a September 10th front page article that called into question President Bush's military service during Vietnam. The article, "Questions Raised About Bush Guard Service" has been completely replaced with a new article titled, "Bush Piloted Guard Trainers Before He Quit". The new one tries to paint the President as a poor flyer who frequently required multiple approaches to land his jet. The removed...

CNN: Dan Rather Provided The Authentication

Power Line notes a rare Dan Rather appearance on CNN, where Rather personally vouched for the authenticity of the Killian memos despite all evidence of their fraudulent nature. He also told CNN viewers that there is no need for any investigation, apparently believing that his own personal credibility can make up for the fact that errors in both content and typography unequivocally demonstrate them to be fakes. No transcript is available as of yet, although hopefully CNN will provide one soon. However, it moves the question from "how did CBS allow such obvious and poor forgeries to form the heart of their story" to "how long has Dan Rather been able to bypass any editorial control at CBS"? Because Rather, it would seem from this new statement, forced the story on the air without doing any journalistic work to verify the facts, something that even bloggers routinely do before writing....

Rather's Source Says Documents Are A Fraud

Via Instapundit, the CBS meltdown continues. Just hours after Dan Rather told the nation that he personally vouched for the authenticity of the Killian memos due to the preponderance of supporting evidence surrounding them, the "preponderance" told ABC News that he thinks the documents are forged: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt." Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud". So now we find out that not only did CBS fail to show the documents to the one...

September 11, 2004

Washington Times: Killian Memo Signatures Forged

Rowan Scarborough at the Washington Times reports this morning that the signatures on the memos CBS produced to bolster its claim of preferential treatment for George Bush during his National Guard duty are forged: Eugene P. Hussey, a certified forensic document examiner in Washington state, said yesterday there is another flaw in the CBS memos. Mr. Hussey studied the known signatures of Col. Killian on Air Force documents, and two signatures on documents dated 1972 and 1973 that aired on "60 Minutes" Wednesday night. "It is my limited opinion that Killian did not sign those documents," Mr. Hussey told The Washington Times. He said he uses the phrase "limited opinion" because he does not have the original documents. He, like other experts interviewed by the press, relied on copies of originals first obtained by CBS. Dan Rather had earlier tried to pre-empt any debate about the documents by producing the...

60 Minutes Trolling For Left-Wing Political Groups

CBS has not yet learned its lesson from the Killian forgery debacle, according to CQ reader Retired Military. RM saw the following notice in the Killeen Daily Herald's on-line user forums, which is the newspaper for the community near Fort Hood. Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson are scouting for 60 Minutes producers, who want to hear any stories they can find that cast the military in a bad light: Dear Military Families, We received the email below from Leslie Cockburn, a producer for CBS's 60 Minutes. She is looking into the lack of supplies, equipment, maintenance of vehicles/equipment, etc. in Iraq. If you are interested in contacting her, her email is LCCockburn@aol.com and her phone number in Washington DC is 202 342 9488. In Peace and Solidarity, Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson, for Military Families Speak Out www.mfso.org www.bringthemhomenow.org According to this post, Cockburn's objective approach to CBS News investigations...

CBS Voted Against Ben Barnes Before They Voted For Him

Dan Rather interviewed former Texas legislator and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes in order to establish that Barnes used undue influence to get George Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. Rather didn't mention the fact that Barnes has been a major contributor to the Democrats and to the Kerry campaign; over the past five years, he has generated almost a half-million dollars for the DNC and John Kerry, as I reported earlier. Rather treated Barnes as a reluctant witness instead of the partisan he is. However, CBS News did not always treat Barnes with such kid gloves. New Jersey blogger Just Dan notes that as late as June, CBS looked at Barnes more critically as a potential beneficiary of a John Kerry victory: The Kerry campaign has begun tracking major fundraisers using a Trustee Leader Board, CBS News has learned. While keeping tabs on fundraisers is nothing new, the twist...

September 13, 2004

Dan Rather: Lower-Case 'L' Means We Win

Ratherbiased.com has an instant transcript of Dan Rather's latest evasion of the charges that he used forgeries in a crude attempt to smear George Bush. After noting, finally, that not all of the critics of the documents are "political partisans", Rather latches onto a very arcane defense in order to establish their authenticity: Rather: Richard katz, a software designer found other indications in the documents. He noticed the lower case l is used in documents instead of the actual numeral one. That would be difficult to reproduce on the computer today. If you were doing this a week ago or a month ago on a normal laser jet printer, it wouldn't work. The font wouldn't be available to you. Really? I could also note that the Selectric had a number 1 as well as the lower-case l, unlike some other typewriters of the time. If you think that authenticates the...

Washington Post: CBS Is Toast

Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz continue the Washington Post's tough look at the Killian forgeries promoted by CBS and Dan Rather as "authentic", even as late as today, as both their typography and their content clearly show them to be fraudulent. Now their expert witness has recanted his support, leaving Rather twisting in the wind: The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves. "There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals. That makes two "experts" cited by CBS and Rather who have backpedaled furiously in the face...

September 14, 2004

ABC: CBS Ignored Experts It Hired On Documents

ABC Evening News continues to chase down its competitor, CBS, on the Killian forgeries. Tonight, they broadcast an expose that alleges that CBS ignored the advice of several document experts who tried to warn them that the Killian memos were faked: ABC's Brian Ross interviewed the two experts who CBS hired to validate the National Guard documents and reports they ignored concerns they raised prior to the CBS News broadcast. "I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Emily Will told Ross. "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did," Linda James told Ross. Ross reports 2 experts told ABC News today that even the most advanced typewriter available in 1972 could not have produced the documents. Up to now, we assumed that CBS ran with the forgeries not out of malice as much as avarice and ignorance....

September 15, 2004

CBS Reporter: We Have The Burden Of Proof

Drudge links to a Sioux City (IA) Journal interview with Bob Schieffer, host of the CBS show Face the Nation and their longtime Washington correspondent. Schieffer distances himself from both Rather and his network by acknowledging that CBS has to either prove the memos are genuine or withdraw their story: CBS News' Bob Schieffer said Tuesday he hopes the network does more reporting to definitively prove the authenticity of memos 60 Minutes II received about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard. "I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries," Schieffer, CBS' chief Washington correspondent and host of the network's "Face the Nation," said at a news conference in Sioux City. "I don't know how we're going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources." I believe this is the first attributed source within the Tiffany Network to acknowledge on...

CBS Lays An Egg

Fox News reported that CBS would be making a statement today at noon ET regarding the forgery fiasco that Dan Rather brought upon the Tiffany Network. If this is their response to the demands for accountability coming from new media and old, then CBS has more problems than just Dan Rather. CBS continues to insist that the memos are genuine, laughably both relying on and disputing the same statement by the octogenarian former secretary of Jerry Killian to authenticate the documents: CBS News continued to defend the legitimacy of its recent story about President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard, even as two experts it hired to examine records CBS used told ABC they could not vouch for their veracity. Meanwhile, a former secretary in the guard said Tuesday she believed the documents in question were fake, although they accurately reflected the thoughts of one of Mr....

The Promised CBS Update At 5 PM EDT

UPDATE, 6:15 ET: UPDATE, 6:30 ET: UPDATE, 6:40 ET: Okay, CBS didn't release this on their own website, but Drudge got it instead, from CBS News division President Andrew Heyward: We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television. There was a great deal of coroborating [sic] evidence from people in a position to know. Having said that, given all the questions about them, we believe we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that's what we are doing. As Instapundit and Kerryspot have both noted, Heyward not only misspelled "corroborated" (and they sat on this for six-and-a-half hours?), but they pronounce the memos "accurate" and not "authentic". The message: We presented America with fraudulent materials, for which Dan Rather personally vouched. Having spent the past four days desperately seeking anyone to back us up, we've now given...

September 16, 2004

Burkett: I 'Reassembled' Bush Guard Files

Bill Burkett, the man suspected to be the source of the forged Killian memos, wrote a scathing editorial piece for Online Journal as an open letter to George Bush, explicitly calling him a "liar" several times. More to the point of the recent controversy, Burkett made a startling assertion in the body of this op-ed piece: George W. Bush, you may be the president [sic]. But I know that you lied. I know from your files that we have now reassembled, the fact that you did not fulfill your oath, taken when you were commissioned to "obey the orders of the officers appointed over you". I know that you not only lied to the American people in 1994, but have lied consistently since then. Mr. Bush, not every serviceman except you is incompetent. When you failed to show up as ordered for duty, they simply recorded the truth. And the...

September 17, 2004

Houston Chronicle: Burkett A Well-Known Crank

In an article sure to raise blood pressure among CBS and Viacom executives, the Houston Chronicle reports that Bill Burkett -- the main suspect in the forgery scam that CBS propogated -- has a long history of false accusations against George Bush: Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard. But Burkett's allegations have changed over the years, and have been dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators and others. Even Burkett has admitted some of his allegations are false. If that last sentence isn't bad enough, Michael Hedges provides the background on those charges which Burkett has yet to acknowledge as false: In an article Burkett wrote for the Internet last year he compared Bush to Hitler and Napoleon as one of "the...

ABC News Drives New Nail In CBS' Coffin

ABC News finally located retired National Guard colonel Walter Staudt and interviewed him this afternoon. Andrew Heyward will wish that Dan Rather and the CBS News crew had taken the time to do the same before running with the Killian forgeries: The man cited in media reports as having allegedly pressured others in the Texas Air National Guard to help George W. Bush is speaking out, telling ABC News in an exclusive interview that he never sought special treatment for Bush. Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was brigadier general of Bush's unit in Texas, interviewed Bush for the Guard position and retired in March 1972. He was mentioned in one of the memos allegedly written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian as having pressured Killian to assist Bush, though Bush supposedly was not meeting Guard standards. "I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to," Staudt told...

The Cleland-Burkett-Kerry Campaign Connection?

Michael Dobbs pushes the Rathergate story even farther forward in tomorrow's Washington Post, in the first indication that the Kerry campaign may have been explicitly involved in the Killian forgeries: The former Texas National Guard officer suspected of providing CBS News with possibly forged records on President Bush's military service called on Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks" in a series of Internet postings in which he also used phrases similar to several employed in the disputed documents. ... In e-mail messages to a Yahoo discussion group for Texas Democrats over the past few months, Burkett laid out a rationale for using what he termed "down and dirty" tactics against Bush. He said he had passed his ideas to the Democratic National Committee but that the DNC seemed "afraid to do what I suggest." In another message, dated Sept. 4, Burkett hinted he might have had advance...

September 18, 2004

Another Burkett-Kerry Connection?

As Dan Rather might put it, a strong preponderance of evidence points to Bill Burkett as the culprit behind the forgeries that CBS used to smear George Bush. His lawyer, David Van Os, turns out to be a powerful man in the Texas Democratic Party, as Power Line shows us this morning. Here's a partial list of Van Os' accomplishments from his resume: * Travis County Democratic Precinct Chairman * Travis County Democratic Party Chairman * Bexar County Democratic Precinct Chairman Another interesting item on Van Os' CV is the final entry, where he notes his assistance in Palm Beach County, Florida, in Democratic efforts for the recounts in the 2000 Presidential election. No doubt that Van Os is well-known for his 30-year party-building work, and as he has now run for the Texas Supreme Court twice (including his current campaign), he has built a strong level of support within...

"I Gave It To Them"

Bill Burkett made an admission even further than that of his op-ed piece on August 25th, when he stated that he had "reassembled" the files he claimed were destroyed in 1997. The AP reports that four days before that publication, Burkett sent an e-mail to his Yahoo group that describes his contact with the Democratic campaign: The retired Guard official, Bill Burkett, said in an Aug. 21 e-mail to a list of Texas Democrats that after getting through "seven layers of bureaucratic kids" in the Democrat's campaign, he talked with former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland about information that would counter criticism of Kerry's Vietnam War service. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the e-mail Saturday. "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. (Cleland) said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with," Burkett wrote....

September 19, 2004

Is CBS Setting Up Mapes As The Scapegoat?

As the preponderance of evidence in the Killian forgeries turns into a tsunami that threatens to overwhelm CBS news, the Washington Post reports on the string of events that led to the publication of the forgeries. It looks like the hunt is on for the scapegoat. In fact, one of the people that CBS attempts to hold responsible demonstrates their desperation: In the early-morning hours of Sept. 8, Dan Rather was preparing to fly to Washington for a crucial interview in the Old Executive Office Building, but torrential rain kept him in New York. White House communications director Dan Bartlett had agreed to talk to "60 Minutes," but only on condition that the CBS program provide copies of what were being billed as newly unearthed memos indicating that President Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard. The papers were hand-delivered at 7:45 a.m. CBS correspondent John Roberts, filling...

Rather Contacted Burkett, Offered Solidarity: Newsweek

In an intriguing detail to the Killian forgeries, Newsweek reports today that Dan Rather called Bill Burkett offering his continued support the day after CBS ran the discredited story on George Bush's TANG service: Three days before the broadcast, Burkett e-mailed a friend that there was "a real heavy situation regarding Bush's records" about to break. "He was having a lot of fun with this," said the friend, Dennis Adams. Burkett told a visitor that after the story ran, Rather phoned him and expressed his and the network's "full support." Newsweek's source is the friend, of course, and that's based on the oddball testimony of Burkett himself. Burkett's mention of the conversation preceded his outing as a suspect in the forgeries, however, and at least confirms that Burkett sees himself as a primary source for the CBS story. Burkett claims now that someone has killed his dog since he became...

September 20, 2004

NYT: CBS To Admit The Obvious

According to the New York Times' Jim Rutenberg, CBS management has finally taken the ball away from CBS News and is prepared to admit that the Killian memos were forgeries. They also appear prepared to burn Bill Burkett as their source: The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air. Had CBS News been more interested in reporting the news than creating it, they could have saved themselves long days of agony and...

CBS Apology Is Not Nearly Good Enough

In two separate statements, CBS and Dan Rather apologized for using documents that they failed to authenticate in their George Bush-TANG investigation: CBS News said Monday it cannot prove the authenticity of documents used in a 60 Minutes story about President Bush's National Guard service and that airing the story was a "mistake" that CBS regretted. ... In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source." CBS still cannot bring itself to use the word "forgeries," preferring to stick to the less-egregious assertion that they should have worked harder to authenticate the documents before going to air. They now acknowledge that their "unimpeachable" source was lunatic-fringe ranter...

September 21, 2004

This Is What CBS Considers An "Unimpeachable" Source?

USA Today conducted a remarkable interview with the CBS source for the Killiam forgeries, longtime Bush-hater Bill Burkett, which must be read to be disbelieved. Burkett convulses, Burkett claims he's a patsy, Burkett admits to lying to everyone, and in the same breath says he's still talking to "save his name", which by any standard is a ship that's long since sailed. Burkett agreed to go on the record with USA Today after being outed by CBS as its source, and offered a fantastic explanation of the Killian memos' origin: Burkett's emotions varied widely in the interviews. One session ended when Burkett suffered a violent seizure and collapsed in his chair. Earlier, he said he was coming forward now to explain what he had done and why to try to salvage his reputation. In the past week, Burkett was named by many news reports as the probable source of the...

September 23, 2004

Didn't We Just Laugh CBS Off The Air For Using Burkett?

I've received a number of e-mails from CQ readers pointing me towards this story in tomorrow's San Jose Mercury News, a reputable if small central California paper, in which disgraced news source Bill Burkett claims that senior Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart repeatedly asked for the Killian memos: During a single phone conversation with Lockhart, Burkett said he suggested a "couple of concepts on what I thought (Kerry) had to do" to beat Bush. In return, he said, Lockhart tried to "convince me as to why I should give them the documents." Bill at INDC Journal was the first to look into this story, as far as I can tell. I think he takes a pragmatic view -- he wants to watch as the media shreds this previously "unimpeachable" source in order to save Lockhart's (and Kerry's) hide. Bill, as always, plays it smart by not buying into the story. Let's...

September 30, 2004

Did CBS Commit A Crime?

Attorney and Pace University law instructor Matt Hayes writes an opinion piece today for Fox asserting that Bill Burkett and CBS broke Texas and federal laws in their publication of the Killian fakes: In Texas, the state in which Burkett concedes the false National Guard memos originated, it is a felony to make or present two or more documents with knowledge of their falsity and with intent that they be taken as a genuine governmental record. Under the U.S. Code, use of an interstate telephone wire, such as the one used to transmit an image of the forged documents from Texas to CBS headquarters, triggers federal jurisdiction. ... CBS has cause for concern, too. The documents were not just forged; they were obviously forged to the generation over age 40, which has used both a typewriter and a computer to write; CBS did not have to be misled about the...

October 1, 2004

Don Hewitt: No Such Thing As Anti-War War Hero

Don Hewitt, the creator of the original 60 Minutes who recently got pushed out by CBS, spoke out in a South Dakota radio interview on Rathergate and the election: The creator of "60 Minutes," Don Hewitt, said Thursday he would not have done the story on President Bush's National Guard service that got CBS anchor Dan Rather in so much hot water. ... "I never would have done the story," said Hewitt, who retired in June as the show's executive producer after 36 years. "I would have been very wary injecting myself into a campaign. You've got to be very careful that you're not perceived as doing the job that one of the two candidates should be doing himself." Hewitt told the audience that the problem with running a gotcha story like that during an election is that it has to be perfect to be successful; one mistake, and "you're...

October 26, 2004

Black Rock Dodges A Bullet This Time

In a story rich with irony, the Los Angeles Times reported last night -- before NBC made the Al-Qaqaa story moot -- that CBS had the story first but couldn't nail it down before the New York Times published it: CBS News' "60 Minutes" landed a major story last week: the disappearance in Iraq of a large cache of explosives supposed to be under guard by the U.S. military. But the network nevertheless found itself in the journalistically awkward position of playing catch-up when it wasn't able to get the piece on the air as soon as its reporting partner, the New York Times, which made the report its lead story Monday. Breaking the story would have been a welcome coup for CBS News as it seeks to emerge from the cloud cast by its use of unverified documents in reporting on President Bush's 1970s military service. Unnoticed in all...

CBS Reported Suspicious Powder At Al Qaqaa In April 2003

Alert CQ reader Samuel Silver sent me this article from the archives of CBS News -- the same organization that helped prepped NYTrogate with the New York Times -- which shows that the Third Infantry Division had reached Al Qaqaa and discovered thousands of vials of a mysterious powdered explosive by April 3, 2003 (coincidentally, my birthday): U.S. troops found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. But a senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the materials were believed to be explosives. Col. John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said the materials were found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad. ... The facility is part of a larger complex known as the Latifiyah Explosives and Ammunition Plant al Qa Qaa [emph...

November 23, 2004

Rather Resigned

CBS has announced Dan Rather's resignation from the anchor and managing editor positions for CBS Evening News. CBS calls it "retirement," even though in the same breath they announce that Rather will continue to work for 60 Minutes as an investigative reporter: Dan Rather, embattled anchor of the "CBS Evening News," announced Tuesday that he will step down in March, on the 24th anniversary of taking over the job from Walter Cronkite. The veteran anchor has been under fire in recent months for his role in a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story that questioned President Bush's service in the National Guard, which turned out to based on allegedly forged documents. Rather, 73, said he will continue to work for CBS, as a correspondent for both editions of "60 Minutes." Two years ago, this announcement would have been a blockbuster. By this point, the reaction will mostly focus on why CBS waited...

November 29, 2004

O'Reilly Spins For Rather

Bill O'Reilly issues a scathing editorial on all those who dared to criticize Dan Rather over the forgeries used in the 60 Minutes story on George Bush's Air National Guard service. According to O'Reilly, Rather's torment at the hands of critics using (gasp!) the First Amendment to speak out against him shows that the American system of innocent until proven guilty has been utterly discarded. What a load of horse puckey. The ordeal of Dan Rather goes far beyond the man himself. It speaks to the presumption of guilt that now rules the day in America. Because of a ruthless and callow media, no citizen, much less one who achieves fame, is given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations or personal attacks. The smearing of America is in full bloom. The presumption of innocence relates to criminal proceedings, Bill, not media criticism. Criticism doesn't equate to...

December 9, 2004

CBS Has Seen The Enemy, And It Is Us

CBS News, reeling under the assault on its integrity, has decided to switch to offense ahead of its report on the fraudulent memos published by its 60 Minutes unit. Tonight, CBS reports on bloggers and their supposed lack of credibility and neutrality, a laughable nit to have picked by a news organization that couldn't be bothered to listen to its own document experts: While many are must-reads for political junkies, are some Internet blogs also being used as proxies for campaigns? In the nations hottest Senate race, this past year, the answer was yes. Little over a month ago, the first Senate party leader in 52 years was ousted when South Dakota Republican John Thune defeated top Senate Democrat Tom Daschle. While more than $40 million was spent in the race, saturating the airwaves with advertising, a potentially more intriguing front was also opened. The two leading South Dakota blogs...

January 10, 2005

CBS Coughs Up The Report

CBS has produced its long-awaited report on the TANG/Killian documents fiasco it started in September last year, when its news program 60 Minutes Wednesday published four memos purporting to document preferential treatment for George Bush. The hammer fell on four CBS employees as well -- three executives and producer Mary Mapes: Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bushs National Guard service. The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with rigid and blind defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report. Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard;...

More On The CBS Report (Updated)

I would encourage everyone to make sure they read the entire report coming from the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel on the Killian memos. I have read a number of comments on my earlier post, and most of you see the report as a whitewash. I agree in part with this analysis, mostly on the question of motivation. The report gives way too much credence to the notion that the only motivating factor involved in Mapes' and CBS' decision to run a story without ever checking its central "evidence" was competitive pressure to air their expos first. CBS and Thornburgh-Boccardi never discuss in any detail Mapes' five-year quest on Bush's National Guard service, nor does competitive pressure explain how so many safeguards and direct orders from management were ignored, both before and after the segment aired. (See also this excellent piece of reporting by Michelle Malkin.) However, on the question of authentication, the...

The Buck Stops ... Back There

One last thought on the CBS response to the Killian memo debacle, prompted by CQ reader Jim in Chicago. After seeing its storied news division humiliated and its credibility destroyed from its false reporting and the subsequent lies and stonewalling that its team produced, what did CBS do to correct the situation? They fired the producer of the segment, demanded the resignations of a senior VP and two executive producers of the news show. Last I looked, Andrew Heyward runs CBS News and Dan Rather is its managing editor. Neither one took any positive action to contain the damage or to uncover the fraud. Yet Les Moonves left both men employed with CBS News -- Rather in a new, prominent position and Heyward in place as its president. Are we to conclude that both men are empty suits with no real function, and therefore no responsibility? Or is CBS just...

The Perils Of Advocacy Journalism And The Case For CBS' Bias

The Thornburgh-Boccardi report on the CBS debacle avoided casting the Killian memo story as definitively caused by political bias in its conclusions. Some of their reluctance, I think, has resulted from a legalistic mindset that pushed the panel to only state what they felt could be proven in a lawsuit. However, if one reads the entire report, the actions of Mary Mapes leaves little room for any other conclusion, and that CBS tolerated or even encouraged it also seems beyond any doubt. Mapes denies it, but she quite obviously used her position as a CBS News producer to pursue stories which interested her. No one at CBS assigned Mapes to pursue "intermittently" the TexANG story. As far back as 1999, Mapes was opining on internal e-mails to CBS management and Dan Rather that in his military career, Bush was truly born on third base. She believed that Bush had received...

January 11, 2005

Heyward Not Out Of The Woods Yet: NYT

The fallout from the Thornburgh-Boccardi report continues today with a moderately critical analysis from the New York Times' Bill Carter. Carter notes that the once-glorious CBS News division now suffers from a badly-damaged morale, with people questioning why division president Andrew Heyward avoided any disciplinary action whatsoever. Carter notes that staff discontent has caused other executives to make unplanned departures and wonders what the future has in store for Heyward: 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...

NY Sun: How Did Heyward And Rather Escape?

While the New York Times writes its moderate critique of CBS News' response to the Thornburgh-Boccardi report, another New York paper presents a devastating look at the network's decision to keep and protect the two people who should have taken responsibility for allowing the Killian memo segment to air. David Blum writes in the New York Sun that both men should have resigned in the wake of the scandal, and specifically their responses to it: [W]e are supposed to accept Mr. Moonves's contention, in his statement that accompanied the report's release yesterday, that Mr. Heyward deserves to keep his job because "he issued direct instructions to investigate the sourcing of the story" and "pressed for his staff to come up with new and substantive information." But the report itself makes clear that Mr. Heyward (who personally screened the piece in advance of air) wrote his first significant questioning e-mail after...

WaPo: Thornburgh-Boccardi Findings A Blow To MSM

Howard Kurtz and Dana Milbank collaborate on an analysis of the CBS debacle for the Washington Post, determining that the damage done by Mapes & Co. goes far beyond the gates of Black Rock. They surmise, correctly, that the overall credibility of American mainstream media has taken a body blow, and that their audiences may never give them the authority they once had. Unfortunately, and for Milbank unsurprisingly, the two couch that analysis within a deeply partisan slant: President Bush was reelected, and Dan Rather wasn't. That, in a nutshell, is the outcome of a bitter four-month struggle between the White House, which insisted there was no basis for the "60 Minutes" report casting doubt on the president's National Guard service, and a major network whose controversial anchor chose to give up his job before the release of the outside panel's report that sharply criticized him yesterday. Many Republicans couldn't...

Weekly Standard: Whitewash

Jonathan Last writes an excellent (and blessedly brief, if you've been reading my posts) on the CBS report. I highly recommend that everyone read "Whitewash", even though it isn't exactly complimentary to my initial analysis. I still think that the CBS report does a lot more damage than Last and Hugh Hewitt think, but they are absolutely correct that the result whitewashes the political-bias angle at CBS. Keep scrolling down here at CQ for much more detailed analysis on that score. NOTE: For those of you who think we're still taking this too easily, I did do a rather extensive analysis of the bias evident in the report. It had to wait until I could get home from work and read the panel report in detail. It's very long (4200 words), but I think it captures the pre-publication decision points that clearly demonstrate a political bias from Mapes and from...

The Mainstream Media Whitewash

Twenty-four hours after the other shoe dropped at CBS and their long-awaited independent report was released, the mainstream media and their cousins in the blogosphere have analyzed and debated its meaning. Some bloggers see some small victories in the otherwise tepid and timid conclusions reached by the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel. Others, especially Hugh Hewitt and Jonathan Last, understandably call the entire exercise a whitewash for failing to reach the obvious conclusion that producer Mary Mapes and CBS allowed Memogate to occur because of their deep political biases. Some, oddly, have hardly bothered to comment at all. The mainstream media has analyzed and opined on the report all morning. Every major news outlet has its own take on the situation, although as Hugh notes, they mostly want to declare the war over and look towards a new era of accountability with a jaundiced eye. Given their proximity to the same pressures and...

More Inconsistencies On Rather

The survival of Dan Rather and Andrew Heyward has become one of the more puzzling and infuriating developments to come out of CBS' response to its internal investigation into the Killian memo scandal. In a USA Today report, CBS staffers also question how four medium-level people got kicked out of Black Rock but the division president and its managing editor kept their jobs. One of the more prominent names at CBS spoke for the record: "It's a sad day" is all Wallace would say of the fallout from the 60 Minutes "Memogate" story that questioned President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. So it was left to Andy Rooney, the 85-year-old 60 Minutes commentator, to weigh in. "The people on the front lines got fired while the people most instrumental in getting the broadcast on escaped," Rooney said He was referring to the firing of producer Mary Mapes...

January 12, 2005

The Paranoia At The Top Of CBS News

Howard Kurtz continues his reporting on the CBS scandal and Thornburgh-Boccardi aftermath this morning, to his credit; most of his industry colleagues have busied themselves with other work and pretending that the controversy has passed. In today's lengthy look at the post-report reaction, Kurtz addresses the inconclusiveness of the report on the question of bias: If there is one line in the 224-page report on CBS News that has set critics aflame, it is that there is no "basis" for concluding that Dan Rather and his colleagues had a "political bias" in pursuing their badly botched story about President Bush's National Guard service. What, they say? No evidence? "In any fair-minded assessment of how CBS performed and why they so badly butchered their own standards, that has to be part of the explanation," said former New York Times reporter Steve Roberts, now a professor at George Washington University. "It's not...

How Thornburgh-Boccardi Shirked Their Responsibility

In a column appropriately titled "It's Worse Than You Thought," Jonathan Last at the Weekly Standard takes a close look at Appendix 4 of the CBS panel report. The Thornburgh-Boccardi investigation declined to make any firm conclusion on the authenticity of the Killian memos at the heart of the scandal, allowing Mary Mapes and Dan Rather enough cover to claim that their story still had not been repudiated. As Last points out, however, their own expert definitively concluded otherwise: On September 12, 2004, Newcomer, one of the fathers of modern electronic typesetting, published a 7,000 word essay about the fraudulent documents used by CBS. Newcomer's conclusion was simple and unequivocal. "These documents," he said after much explanation, "are modern forgeries." So why did the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel turn their back on Newcomer and the rest of the body of expert opinion? What caused them to suspect that the documents might indeed...

January 13, 2005

CBS Legend Decries Its Lefty Bias

A familiar voice weighs in on the bias that Richard Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi couldn't find at CBS News. Van Gordon Sauter, the onetime chief of the Tiffany Network's news division, writes in today's Los Angeles Times that an "unremitting liberal orientation" at the Unblinking Eye has made its news programs unwatchable: What's the big problem at CBS News? Well, for one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no long-term emblematic anchorperson and no cohesive management structure. Outside of those annoyances, it shouldn't be that hard to fix. Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News, even though I was unceremoniously shown to the door there nearly 20 years ago in a tumultuous change of corporate management. But I stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me. I still check in, but less and less frequently. I...

The History Of The CBS Memogate Scandal

I created a new category for the CBS Memogate scandal and re-categorized by posts on the subject in order to allow readers to easily read through CQ archives. Most of the commentary comes from the first couple of weeks after the September 8 airdate (the rest over this week), and has details which I'd forgotten. I hope you find it helpful. UPDATE: Charles at LGF and Instapundit note that CBS and the Thornburgh-Boccardi site at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP have modified the CBS report file to keep bloggers from copying and pasting from the report. I just tested it myself and found the same thing. All I know is that I copied the first edition, which is how I was able to excerpt so much of it and use it in my blog posts. Now you can too....

January 14, 2005

Moonves Tips His Hand

Dan Rather escaped punishment for the Killian memo fraud he helped foist on CBS' viewing public, as well as his part in the cover-up afterwards -- or at least we thought he did. Now CBS chairman Les Moonves, the man who supposedly saved Rather, reveals that Rather's next safe haven might wind up being nothing more than the exit door: As much as he would like to recover from the blows his reputation has suffered recently, Dan Rather may not have a chance to work very long on the program that he expected would be his next professional address. The future of CBS's "60 Minutes Wednesday" - the program that broadcast Mr. Rather's report, now discredited, about President Bush's National Guard record - is in doubt, both the top CBS executive and the program's new executive producer acknowledged yesterday. Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS and co-president of the network's...

Fallout For CBS Continues

In a sure sign that the Thornburgh-Boccardi report and Les Moonves' following announcement has backfired, a groundswell of criticism continues to grow against CBS News and Moonves for its half-hearted corrective actions and its refusal to admit to the bias at the heart of the scandal. Yesterday, Van Gordon Sauter slammed CBS for its "unremitting liberal orientation" that makes its news shows "unwatchable." Today, two new front-line essays reject the whitewash. Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today, calls out CBS for its inaction: Rather absented himself from the newscast Monday evening, the day the independent investigators' report and Moonves' response were made public. Then on Tuesday he was back in his usual role, after issuing a statement to CBS News colleagues that concluded: "I have seen us overcome adversity before. I am convinced we can do it again." No apology. No acknowledgement that the buck stopped with him. Rather has...

Did Thornburgh-Boccardi Cave In To Bill Burkett?

CQ reader Ken Stepanek sent a link to a message board for the Yahoo group Texas Democrats with a message purportedly from Bill Burkett's wife Nicki. The message alerted Texas Democrats to the Cory Pein article from the Columbia Journalism Review that turned out to be incorrect on most of the points the panel's report addressed. According to this January 3rd message, the Burketts believed they had frightened the CBS panel into a change of course: This past week, we may have scared the Devil out of senior folks at CBS and throughout the journalistic World. We are now negotiating with the VIACOM panel for an in-depth interview to explore the facts and documentation of the story; the roles of CBS, ABC, the Associated Press, New York TImes, USA Today and numerous others who actively sought Bill out as a source on the story and their backlash after the story...

January 18, 2005

CBS: The Chicago Cubs Of Network News

CBS chief Les Moonves told reporters today that he's leaning towards using a rotating series of talking heads, reading news reports from various cities, as a replacement plan for Dan Rather's position as anchorman. He inadvertently nails the problem that CBS News created while essentially surrendering to its effects: CBS will probably replace Dan Rather on the evening news with a multi-anchor, perhaps multi-city format that changes the "antiquated" way of reporting the day's top stories, CBS chief Leslie Moonves said Tuesday. Moonves, who will ultimately select Rather's replacement, said he believes many young viewers are turned off by a single "voice of God" anchor in the Internet age. ... "Those days are over when you have that guy sitting behind the desk who everyone believes to the `nth' degree," Moonves told reporters. "It's sort of an antiquated way of news telling and maybe there's a new way of doing...

Broadcasting & Cable: 5 Questions The CBS Report Raises

Mark Lasswell at Broadcasting & Cable got no satisfaction from the Thornburgh-Boccardi report regarding Memogate at CBS News. He asks five questions of CBS that their panel report creates rather than answers: Last week, the tortured saga of the bogus documents came to a close. Or at least the major issues were settled of how CBS News came to rely onand then adamantly defenddubious records of President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s. As the investigative panel chosen by CBS, former Associated Press CEO Louis Boccardi and former U.S. attorney general Dick Thornburgh, reported in exhaustive detail, 60 Minutes Wednesday aired a segment on Sept. 8 that was tainted in almost every regard. But the report doesn't resolve all the questions that spring from the story of how producer Mary Mapes, with a barely engaged Dan Rather as her correspondent, rushed the story onto...

January 19, 2005

How Does CBS Recover Its Crediblity?

Hugh Hewitt has a great show tonight, discussing Les Moonves' oddball ideas about revolutionizing CBS News with measures that appear to do nothing but throw a bit more window dressing on the disgrace. He's asking his listeners to call in with their ideas, just as if Les Moonves was sitting in Hugh's booth and taking notes. After a calling in and losing my cell signal, and getting locked out of the full bank of calls Hugh draws, I sent Hugh an e-mail instead: My suggestion for CBS was going to be to quit rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I don't care if you have one anchor or fifteen. CBS News needs to clean house and hire people who didn't grow up kissing Dan Rather's rear end. Fire Heyward and everyone who thinks like him, and retire the fossils across the board. Get a managing editor who actually knows...

January 24, 2005

Did Andy Rooney Confirm Rather Bias?

Howard Kurtz reports in his Media Notes column that veteran CBS correspondent Tom Fenton pulls few punches in his upcoming book Bad News, including shots across the bow of Dan Rather himself: The book's instant headlines will probably come from "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney, who tells Fenton there is "no question" the media are liberal and takes a swipe at Rather: "I think Dan has been -- I don't know why; he may not be as smart as they think -- but he has been so blatantly one-sided. . . . He uses little words that are absolute clues, giveaways to his political opinions. Like saying 'Bush,' instead of 'President Bush' or 'Mr. Bush.' . . . A couple of years ago I heard him refer to 'Bush's cronies.' Well, Jesus, 'cronies' -- oh dear!" That's more than the CBS investigative panel ever said about Memogate's root cause. I...

January 26, 2005

CBS Documents Expert Outraged At "Defamation"

Expect to see this potential explosion of embarrassment settled out of court. Marcel Matley, the documents examiner that CBS dragged in front of them as a human shield in the days following the Memogate report, claims that the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel report defames him and has caused him professional damage: Marcel Matley, one of four document experts consulted by CBS News while reporting its Sept. 8, 2004, report on Bush, is demanding a slew of corrections in the report, which was issued earlier this month. In an interview with E&P, he referred to the report's treatment of him as "defamation." ... In an e-mail to Thornburgh's office on Jan. 13, obtained by E&P, Matley criticized the report as containing "certain incorrect statements affecting me and which are derogatory and/or damaging to me professionally." He also asks that the panel issue corrections for each of the errors he contends are in the...

January 27, 2005

Memogate Three Still At CBS

The New York Post notes that the three people asked to resign in the wake of the Thornburgh-Boccardi investigation into Memogate still have yet to comply: THE three CBS News execs asked to resign earlier this month over the embarrassing Memogate scandal still haven't quit. Instead, they've hired lawyers. Unlike veteran producer Mary Mapes who was fired outright for using bogus documents in a George Bush-bashing Dan Rather report on "60 Minutes" the three were asked for their resignations. CBS is still waiting. According to the Post's blurb, their lawyers are still negotiating their exit from the network or laying the groundwork for wrongful-termination lawsuits -- probably both. CBS cannot afford to go to court over Memogate and have their internal probe and documents fully revealed, and so we can expect that either the request for resignations gets withdrawn or the three will have the means to live...

January 31, 2005

Inside Black Rock: A Look At The Memogate Fiasco From Within

New York Magazine has a fascinating look at the Memogate fiasco from people on the inside at CBS News. David Blum reports from CBS sources about the inside manuevering that led to the dismissal of four underlings while Andrew Heyward managed to hold onto his job, and sheds a bit more light on the involvement of Dan Rather before and after the story aired: [After her dismissal, Betsy] West went back to her Upper West Side apartment after her session with Heyward. But [Josh] Howard chose instead to dodge the traffic on West 57th Street and return to the nondescript office building across the street that has housed 60 Minutes since the seventies. At 10:30 a.m., once the public announcement had been made, Howard addressed the 60 Minutes Wednesday staff outside his ninth-floor office. Heyward agreed to cross West 57th Street himself to join Howard; and so, after Howards brief,...

February 16, 2005

CBS News Faces Legal Nightmare

The New York Observer reports this morning that CBS may be facing the nightmare it hoped most to avoid. Three of the four people pushed out the door as a result of the fraudulent TexANG documents used by CBS in an attempt to smear George Bush and tilt the presidential election have not only not resigned from the news division, but at least one of them has threatened a lawsuit, complete with subpoenas and full discovery. The prospect clearly has CBS rattled and stuck in limbo while they try desperately to negotiate the trio's exits: Five weeks later, the crisis is not yet behind Mr. Moonves. And far from resolving the problem of the networks credibility, the independent report commissioned by CBS appears instead to be leading to a confrontation, with defenders of both the ousted CBS staffers involved in the debacle and top CBS management asserting two different truths...

March 4, 2005

Letterman Sucks Up To CBS, Rather

I recall the movie made by HBO about the late-night television war set off by Johnny Carson's Retirement, The Late Shift, in which Kathy Bates played Jay Leno's voracious and self-destructive agent/manager. One criticism of Leno -- one he later acknowledged as valid -- was that he made no mention of Carson or his support of Leno over the years on Leno's first broadcast as Carson's replacement. In the movie, Bates tells the head of NBC that she refuses to let Jay thank or even mention Johnny, telling him, "That's suck-up. Jay doesn't do suck-up." Well, now we know David Letterman does suck-up, and he sells out pretty easily too. Last night, Letterman hosted Dan Rather on Rather's farewell tour from the CBS Evening News, and tossed softball after softball to allow Rather to misrepresent the Memogate fiasco that cost four of Rather's colleagues their jobs. Les Moonves had to...

March 8, 2005

Walter Cronkite Damns Rather With Faint Defense

Walter Cronkite had an opportunity to defend Dan Rather on CNN last night in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, and mostly took a pass. While Uncle Walter made some unenthusiastic attempts at excusemaking, but declined the laughable assertion that the Killian memos still hadn't been established as forgeries, and made his distaste for Dan Rather clear. Here's Walter on Memogate: BLITZER: Well, he's leaving under a cloud, as you well know, the circumstances surrounding that "60 Minutes" report. It's unfortunate for him, given his career. But, looking back, there were lots of sloppy mistakes that were made. CRONKITE: Well, you're speaking of this particular episode, of course. And that was most unfortunate. He hung on too long [with the story due] to his faith in his staff. They had provided this material. And he trusted them implicitly in all things and insisted that the information was correct for a whole...

March 11, 2005

Danny Rather Boy

I have mostly avoided the Dan Rather retirement, as I wanted to give him as much recognition as I think he deserves -- ie, none. However, my good friend and CQ reader Kia has written a valediction to Rather intended to be sung to the tune of Danny Boy, one of my favorites. Since Kia beautifully sings Irish tunes by trade, perhaps I could get an MP3 of her personal rendition later, but for now I'll just post the lyrics for your enjoyment: Danny Rather Boy Oh Danny boy, the blogosphere is calling, From comp to comp across the countryside. They call to say, Old Media is falling, Tis you, tis you must go and we must bide, But come ye back when you can check your sources, Or when it is the truth you want to know. You might want to take some journalism courses, Oh Danny boy, oh...

March 29, 2005

Boy Howdy, Dan's Happier Than A Dog With Two Bones

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Gail Shister catches up with Dan Rather, who keeps himself busy nowadays trying to rescue 60 Minutes Wednesday and what's left of his career. Shister finds Rather in an exceptionally good mood -- so good, in fact, that The Dan can't resist trotting out that Texas homeboy facade that he uses to disarm critics: Rather, 73, who had an unprecedented 24-year run as anchor, was also surprised at how easy it was to relocate from the CBS Broadcast Center across 57th Street to 60 Wednesday and mother ship 60 Minutes. "I moved from the 'hard-news' side of the street to what we called the 'carpet-making, basket-weaving' side of the street. It turns out it's not basket-weaving at all. That was vastly overstated." Though he's juggling several pieces with his usual intensity, Rather sounds almost, well, laid-back on his new voice-mail message. It begins, "Howdy, this is Dan...

May 17, 2005

Rather & Mapes, Together Again

The Peabody Awards luncheon yesterday provided a stage for the reunion of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, who were honored for their journalistic prowess in revealing the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that had already been addressed by the Pentagon before CBS ever found out about it -- and both of whom later disgraced themselves in one of the worst breaches of journalistic ethics ever revealed in broadcast history. In comments that reflected the cluelessness of the Peabody voters, Mary Mapes continued to insist that the story she presented on CBS' 60 Minutes II was factually true and that CBS covered it up for "corporate" reasons: After the ceremony, Mapes, who is writing a book, said she never believed that CBS News investigated whether the disputed facts behind the National Guard story, were in fact true. They made a corporate decision, not a journalistic one, she said. She also defended the...

June 3, 2005

Still Rather Clueless

Dan Rather appeared on Larry King Live last night to discuss the outing of Mark Felt as Deep Throat. King couldn't resist the urge to compare the Watergate story to that of the disgraced 60 Minutes II report on George Bush's TexANG service, and Rather couldn't resist the urge to once again claim that no one had proven the Killian memos as fraudulent: KING: Well, I don't know another word. You might still believe the story, by the way. RATHER: Well, without getting into that because the panel, this panel that was chosen by CBS to look into it, they issued their report. CBS adopted the report. I said at the time and I say now, I read the report. I absorbed it. I carried forward in my work. Anybody wants to know the panel's version of what happened should read the report. The situation that we had and still...

August 1, 2005

Dan Rather Tells Us What He's Learned (Not Much)

One would think that the past year has provided many life lessons to former CBS anchor Dan Rather, who lost most of his credibility by presenting faked memos in a smear job on President Bush at a critical moment of the election, and then continued to insist that the documents were authentic (or not proven inauthentic, depending on which day he spoke). Perhaps chief among those lessons would be to authenticate the documents, recheck your sources for their biases, learn how to apologize and admit error ... most people would learn those sorts of lessons from Rather's experience. Rather gives quite a different list to Esquire Magazine, however. In a strange and utterly superficial bit of fluff, the man who insists that his role as a journalist takes precedence over any other assignment instead channels Larry King in this guest column. Some of his pearls of wisdom amount to little...

March 13, 2006

Ask No Questions Of Your Superstar Journalists

Jim Walsh of the Courier Post learned an important lesson last week, one he relates to his readers in his column today. After listening to former CBS anchorman Dan Rather speak to a Cherry Hill audience about the need for improvement in reporting, Walsh took an opportunity to ask Rather to talk about a specific instance where media failed -- and wound up censored for his efforts: Here's the scene: Former CBS anchorman Dan Rather is in Cherry Hill, giving a speech about the need for journalists to do better. "What's gone out of fashion is the tough question and the follow-up," he tells an admiring audience of about 600 people at Cherry Hill's Star Forum. So how can I, the guy covering Rather's remarks, just sit there? When he finishes, I hurry to a floor mike to ask Rather about an issue that will be part of my story....

September 19, 2007

Courage!

Dan Rather has had three years to mull over his options after his disastrous participation in Memogate, and he has reached the conclusion that the most wronged person in the debacle was ... Dan Rather. After spending the last three years insisting that the obviously fraudulent memos he broadcast as senior editor of CBS Nightly News have not been proven fakes, he now will sue CBS for $70 million for not participating in his fantasies: Dan Rather, whose career at CBS News ground to an inglorious end 15 months ago over his role in an unsubstantiated report questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service, filed a lawsuit this afternoon against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors. Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS...

September 20, 2007

Former CBS Producer Rips Rather

Forget the O.J. Simpson trial. The court case with the highest bitchiness quota in years will be the lawsuit that Dan Rather filed against CBS yesterday. Howard Kurtz tracked down Josh Howard, the executive producer of 60 Minutes II that resigned after the airing of the infamous National Guard segment, and Howard thinks Rather has lost his mind: CBS management "coerced" the veteran news anchor "into publicly apologizing and taking personal blame for alleged journalistic errors in the broadcast," says the $70 million suit, which also names Sumner Redstone, chief executive of the network's then-parent company, Viacom; CBS Chairman Les Moonves; and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward. Several former colleagues said they were baffled by the move. "I think he's gone off the deep end," said Josh Howard, who was forced to resign as executive producer of "60 Minutes II" after CBS retracted the story. "He seems to be...

Rather On King: Incoherent

Dan Rather appeared on Larry King Live tonight, and the most charitable description one can give Rather is incoherent. He could barely complete a sentence, and when he could, he sputtered about grand conspiracies among "Big Corporations" to undermine independent journalism. Declaring that "this is the right fight at the right time," he couldn't explain why he told Larry King that he and CBS made a mistake in running the story, only eight months after the collapse of the CBS story. It's almost breathtaking in its excruciating wonder. He says that he's the only man who bring out the truth about what happened at CBS, when he could stammer out a coherent thought at all. Bear in mind that the truth-seeking Rather still thinks that his source (Bill Burkett) has never been impeached, that the type-set memos still haven't been proven impossible to produce on the Texas Air National Guard's...

September 21, 2007

The Bully Boys Of The Internet

The Dan Rather lawsuit has given more of the TANG story figures a new lease on life, even if animated by the former CBS anchor's strange brand of conspiracy thinking. The woman who had the most responsibility for the airing of the 60 Minutes II segment, Mary Mapes, hit the Huffington Post last night to deliver a tirade against the "bully boys" who had the temerity to question authority: It has been three years since we aired our much-maligned story on President Bush's National Guard service and reaped a whirlwind of right-wing outrage and talk radio retaliation. That part of the assault on our story was not unexpected. In September 2004, anyone who had the audacity to even ask impertinent questions about the president was certain to be figuratively kicked in the head by the usual suspects. What was different in our case was the brand new and bruising power...

September 22, 2007

Dan Rather's Colleagues Must Be Part Of The Conspiracy

Dan Rather's lawsuit at CBS achieved its first purpose; it's put Dan Rather back in the spotlight. After having disappeared into the black hole of HDNet, Rather once again has become noteworthy enough to get an invitation on Larry King Live and the rest of the talkshows. However, if he had hoped to resurrect his reputation with the lawsuit, his colleagues have not been impressed (via QandO): Rather’s former colleagues at CBS have something to say. Take, for example, Don Hewitt, the legendary producer of “60 Minutes.” “Any news organization, print or broadcast, has the right to protect its reputation by divesting itself of a reporter, irrespective of who he or she is, who it feels reported as fact something that reflected his or her biases more than the facts bear,” he said in a NEWSWEEK interview. “And if the reporter’s defense is that he or she had been ‘had,’...

September 24, 2007

Rather A Laughingstock

Dan Rather's lawsuit has certainly brought about a change in his fortunes. He has managed to get his colleagues in the news media to shift their opinion about him almost overnight. Once regarded as a respected journalist who just got one story wrong and refused to admit it, the lawsuit has generated an outright antagonism among journalists that never existed before. Charles Lane of the Washington Post's editorial page staff writes a hilarious and pointed attack on Rather's vanished credibility by declaring the lawsuit a "fake": I have obtained new documentary evidence regarding Dan Rather's relationship with his former bosses at CBS News. Obviously, I cannot identify my source. But he told me during a collect call from Sofia, Bulgaria, that he has access to Rather's "personal files" and that his typewriter was built after 1966. To authenticate the document, I showed it to some of my kids' friends, and...

February 26, 2008

CBS Polling Still As Good As Ever

CBS and the New York Times have a new poll out that looks at the Democratic primary race and at the general election. In the former, it uses a rather small sample, but in the latter the sample gets weighted -- as usual -- in favor of Democratic voters. Barack Obama has taken a lead in the national numbers for the primary, not exactly breaking news: A new CBS News/New York Times poll finds Barack Obama with a 16-point lead over rival Hillary Clinton among Democratic primary voters nationwide. Obama, coming off 11 straight primary and caucus victories, had the support of 54 percent of Democratic primary voters nationally. Clinton had 38 percent support. In a CBS News poll taken three weeks ago, shortly before Super Tuesday, Obama and Clinton were tied at 41 percent. Clinton led by 15 points nationally in January. The former first lady has lost her...