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January 12, 2005
A Short Letter to Dan Rather"So I kind of resent your attitude toward your numerous critics who operate their own self-published sites on the Web. They were being more accurate than you were, much of the time. I don't speak for them, but I know my own archive." Plus: Lose the spokeswoman, Dan. Hire a blogger.Dear Dan Rather: “Lest anyone have any doubt,” you said in your statement yesterday, “I have read the report, I take it seriously, and I shall keep its lessons well in mind.” I still have my doubts. Perhaps these would be lessened if, for example, you had bothered to spell out which lessons you saw for yourself, and for CBS News in the review panel’s report.
We have had post-mortems that were published before, but not as detailed as this. What lessons are in the report for you, Dan Rather, will be established in public discussion, as the findings sink in. Today, for example, we are discussing, in rhythm with the news cycle, whether CBS News showed political bias in its mishandling of the Air National Guard story. Tomorrow it will be some further refinement. I would not go so far as to say that you, Dan Rather, need to write a blog. You don’t. But take the money you spend on the person who is sometimes called your spokeswoman, and hire yourself a skilled blogger, to do a Dan Rather Reports blog. Here you post additional source material, put tapes of your interviews, and also explain yourself, react to crtics and follow up on stories aired by 60 Minutes. Participating in debate around the blog and online journalism worlds could be as simple as lose the spokesperson and meet with your personal blogger for 20-30 minutes a day. He does the rest. Morning talks are turned into posts quoting you; your blogger gets the links to go with them and “runs” the blog, including comment sections. Whenever you want to write, you do. The blogger is a feedback loop and fail safe device. Part of what she does is monitor the online world for what is being said about Dan Rather and his reporting. Such a person, well connected to the discussion, would have been extremely valuable to you during the twelve-day period, Sep. 8-20, 2004. After six months of your blog, statements like this from Linda Mason, your new vice president for standards: “Dan does think he’s constantly attacked. If we backed off every story that was criticized, we wouldn’t be doing any stories.” would be rendered inoperative by reason of being inane. Noting the ups and downs in the news business, you said yesterday that you had seen CBS News “overcome adversity before.” Odd. I would think re-building a far better metaphor than overcoming at this date. Nonetheless, you said, overcoming the adversities facing CBS News “must be our focus and priority.” Now here’s the part that spoke: “And we can fulfill that objective by getting back to business and doing our jobs better than ever.” So perhaps you can see why I still have my doubts in the deep lessons department. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, does too. “I don’t think they’ve told what, if anything, they’ve really learned.” What are your lessons, Dan? Perfect subject for a first post at your blog. On Sep. 11th of this year, Day Three of your story’s slow-motion collapse, I wrote: “It completely elevates the episode and charges it with political and cultural tension that the anchorman, Dan Rather, presented the CBS report Wednesday Night accusing Bush of disappearing from Guard duty.” And I went on to explain that there were two crises happening at once. One was happening to the story, which was crumbling. And the other crisis was for the CBS network and its news division because your involvement, opposite the President’s, elevated the events and raised the price of failure at the very time the first signs of systemic failure were starting to show in the documents. Nobody at your shop had figured it out and told you, but here online we had a good sense of it. So I kind of resent your attitude toward your numerous critics who operate their own self-published sites on the Web. They were being more accurate than you were, much of the time. I don’t speak for them, but I know my own archive. Here’s what I said Friday night (the story aired on Wednesday): If Sixty Minutes had presented a damaging story of that kind at the height of an election campaign and it turned out to be based on forged documents, that would itself be a crisis. But it was Dan Rather on Sixty Minutes, and it is now Rather on the hook if the documents are fake. (Indeed, Rather told the Los Angeles Times, “I’m of the school, my name is on it, I’m responsible.”) That brings in Rather’s celebrity, the corporate iconography in which an anchorman is always involved, the succession drama at CBS News now that Rather is 72 years old, and the enormous venom out there for Rather, who is seen on the Right as a man of many political sins. Thus, PowerLine wrote: “This would appear to signal the end of Rather’s career. If the documents are ultimately accepted as forgeries, which seems inevitable to us, he can’t survive.” All of which means this is not just a scandal, but a cultural theatre for it, and that’s different. And it was the theatre of reputation—yours—we were in. That Friday night post was my way of alerting informed people at your network, or your friends, or someone within reach of both reason and you, to get you out of there, now. If the anchorman is on the hook, you don’t let him do the news from the hook position. You would have been way ahead if that kind of alert had been sounded in your own network, or among your friends. It wasn’t. But it was heard among your critics online, where, in your contemptuous view of the Internet, Rather’s adversaries roam unchecked by fact or reason. The opposite is closer to the truth. The fact checking happened online, and the fact free roaming was among your squad at CBS. Finally, Dan, everything I know about you as a journalist comes down to Dan Rather the determined, curious, tough, fair, and open-minded reporter, who still goes to foreign countries to report the big story himself because, though he anchors the evening news, he grounds his journalism, his reputation, not in news reading but in hard news, do-your-own, visit-the-scene reporting. That’s you, if I understand anything about you at all. But have you done that with the Internet, which to you is like a foreign country thrust into the news? My alert to your friends and bosses was published at 2:30 am Friday night, so it might have been some guy in his pajamas. Still the information was good. I respect very much this portion of your statement: “Yet good can come from this process if CBS News, and the hundreds of able professionals who labor every day to fill an essential public service in an open society, emerge with a renewed dedication to journalism of the highest quality.” Well said. Good luck with the re-building. Good look with the renewal. Jay Rosen After Matter: Notes, reactions and links… Seth Finkelstein: CBS Report file has been modifed! Cut and Paste now prohibited! “Ernest Miller noticed that he could no longer cut-and-paste from the CBS report, and asked me to investigate. He’s right. The report PDF file has been modified since its release. This can be verifed by any tool which will display the internal information of a PDF file.” UPDATE: Sisyphus gets back a reply from CBS: “To allow copying of text to applications such as Word would allow anyone to create a modified or falsified report, which we cannot allow. The law firm hired by the Independent Panel insists that the report not be available in a format that can be altered, and we agree with that decision.” Jan. 17: The dispute—with quotes from Finkelstein and Miller—makes the New York Times: CBS News Draws Ire of Bloggers. Dan Gillmor: “I don’t think CBS is, today, institutionally capable of truly understanding the value of listening to its audience — of grasping how much help the audience can be in the journalistic process. The network’s offhanded dismissal of the grassroots continues even now. (I know there are individual people at CBS who do get it. But they are not running things.)” Van Gordon Sauter was president of CBS News in the early 1980s: At this stage, local television news, the most heavily researched news product in the nation, clings to the center, trusting that banality will trump opinion. Ultimately, if the networks can’t reform themselves, this country will end up with just that: a lot of scrupulously impartial (which is not necessarily to say good) news sources, managed by research-driven executives who find it a good marketing approach. Howard Fineman of Newsweek has finally written a great column. I am not a big fan of Fineman’s stuff. I think he is the embodiment of the “insider dopester” type that sociologist David Reisman wrote about. But I have to hand it to him. It was most clever to declare the American Mainstream Media a “political party” that is about to crash. At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president. But all that is ancient history. Joe Gandelman: “BOTTOM LINE: If Fineman is writing an obituary, the form of the mainstream media represented by the behavior of the CBS bigwigs — and Dan Rather — in the Memogate crisis deserves to die. It acted in a way that violated basic journalistic practices, dug in its heels and undermined its own credibility.”
Posted by Jay Rosen at January 12, 2005 2:59 PM
Comments
You know, most of us out here, somewhere 100 miles inland from the coast, couldn't care less about the NY Sun, or the NY whatever. We see the broadcast news, and our local paper, and cable. And we're starting to wonder about the whole damn contraption. We look at the web. Or we don't bother. We're not stupid. We're not morally myopic red-staters. We're the former readers/viewers/listeners. Treat us right, and we'll come back. Otherwise, we're outta here. Why Dan is the Man? Dan Rather during his time of trouble found the time to respond to one of my student's letters. This letter was authentic and it clearly showed why he will be able to redeem himself and use this as a learning experience. I can't believe we are a people who have never made a mistake. Give the guy a break.... Posted by: Amy Bowllan at January 12, 2005 9:53 PM | Permalink Let's see how Mr. Rather fares when he is 'on his own' as a producer of special reports for CBS. Firing Mapes, et al., has not solved the problem CBS has with the story they ran on Bush's TANG service. Most, if not all, of the salient questions about Bush's 'service' to his country remain unanswered even if the Rathergate documents were forged. Which apparently remains to be proven. Posted by: Jon R. Koppenhoefer at January 13, 2005 5:00 AM | Permalink They were being more accurate than you were, much of the time No, they weren't. Dan Rather used these documents as one part of his story, and the bloggers asserted things that were not true as well as things that were. What is going on here, Jay? You know this was a partisan hit job. You KNOW it. Why do you, and others in triumph new journalism land, refuse to take seriously the massive number of people PAID to do this stuff? This was not amateurs attacking a professional. This was professional political operatives hitting a large reactionary media company with a bias towards commercialism and getting it first, not right. How do you answer the question of political operatives masquerading as 'citizen journalists'? How do you deal with the consistent self-righteousness and lack of accountability on any of the bloggers who attacked Rather? The WMDs is a much more serious breach of journalistic ethics - I don't see a serious soul-searching among journalists for that. I don't see a rejection of the punditocracy. I get that this is your blog and your space, and that what I'm saying isn't very interesting. What I'm curious about is why those who fret about Rathergate ignore the massive elephant in the room - the manipulation of stories like this by paid partisan operatives pretending like they are journalists or citizens and refusing to hold themselves accountable. Posted by: Matt Stoller at January 13, 2005 9:35 AM | Permalink Rather et al. were indeed guilty of gross misjudgments (I'm withholding additional, potentially harsher, comment until I've actually READ the report), but one need not defend Rather to point out that, contrary to Mr. K's claim, Bush's failure to fulfill his military obligations has been adequately documented by records whose authenticity has NOT been questioned, over at http://glcq.com and http://awolbush.com. Just sayin'. A lot of people critiquing and commenting on the CBS Report have done so by cutting and pasting sentences and paragraphs from it. When you're writing blog postings, it is boon to be able to cut-n-paste from something. However, CBS has changed their report so that you cannot cut-n-paste from it. If you want to copy portions, you're going to have to re-type them. Why have they done this? I don't know, but it doesn't bode well for CBS wanting to be open and transparent. Seth Finkelstein has the proof: CBS Report file has been modifed! Cut and Paste now prohibited! Posted by: Ernest Miller at January 13, 2005 3:21 PM | Permalink Ernest, I noticed that too. Very annoying. But I wonder, why imply malice when incompetence will suffice? Seth points out the change was made to the encryption field in the pdf metadata. From: To: I sent the following to CBS online: The CBS report by the Independent Panel that is available online had been changed. See here: http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/000750.html I'll post whatever I hear back from them. From Matt Yglesias: Then the inspectors came back to Iraq and went searching around. They didn't find any WMD stockpiles or evidence of advanced WMD programs. They did find some banned missiles with ranges beyond what was permitted by the Gulf War cease-fire. Those missiles were duly destroyed. At that point, rational people began to think that the intelligence consensus was, perhaps, mistaken. It already became clear that several of the specific charges the Bush administration had raised were false, and that despite repeated statements from administration officials that they were sure Saddam had WMD, they couldn't provide the inspectors with any useful clues to their whereabouts. But the United States wasn't being governered by rational people, so they, along with their cheerleaders in the press, proclaimed that if inspections weren't finding the weapons, that wasn't because the weapons weren't there but because the inspectors were corrupt, incompetent, or something like that. Therefore, an invasion was necessary. The only paper chain that deserves credit for not falling for this is Knight Ridder. Yet how have they profited from being right? Instead, it's all about how blogs are awesome and transparent and wonderful and how that big bad meanie Dan Rather is just so defensive all the time. Knight Ridder = old media outlet This deserves analysis. It deserves public and transparent analysis. I don't see that happening, except by some of the tv networks you all vilify. Posted by: Matt Stoller at January 13, 2005 3:55 PM | Permalink Sysiphus, This wasn't inadvertant or a mistake. This was a deliberate change. As for whether it was with malice intended, I don't know, but it certainly is curious. Why would you not want people to be able to cut-n-paste? Posted by: Ernest Miller at January 13, 2005 4:05 PM | Permalink "So I kind of resent your attitude toward your numerous critics who operate their own self-published sites on the Web. They were being more accurate than you were, much of the time." Er, what? Let's line up Dan Rather's reporting next to that or Powerline or LGF and see what happens, eh? Look, Jay, nobody has proven anything yet, one way or the other. CBS shouldn't have run the story, for sure, but it isn't as if the blogs got it mostly right. They smelled a rat, threw a bunch of stuff out there and hoped it would stick. Dan Rather was only wrong once. How many times was Powerline wrong? Posted by: praktike at January 13, 2005 5:05 PM | Permalink Additionally, what Matt Stoller said. You're letting yourself be influenced by the Orwellians, Jay. Maybe you should lay off that stuff for a while. Posted by: praktike at January 13, 2005 5:06 PM | Permalink Jay, I don't quite get the "inane" remark. Certainly, there are people out there who are lurking for a chance to criticize Rather every time he opens his mouth. Certainly, part of his job is to distinguish legitimate critics from the crybabies. But if a guy who is as big a target as he is never learned to just ignore a lot of what is said about him, he would't be able to function at all. Unfortunately, that means he is likely to miss some things he really ought to hear. Posted by: David Crisp at January 13, 2005 6:02 PM | Permalink Matt Stoller, I hate the WMD v. Rather debate. Just hate it. It's mired in partisanship, fails to note the differences between the two and, worse, obfuscates the underlying similarities. So here I go ... d@mn! The WMD narrative took hold after Desert Storm in '91. It was reinforced and built upon by the Clinton administration and media all through the 90s. It was unquestionable conventional wisdom. Only the fringe dared question it. Remember, the conclusion is that Iraq didn't have WMD stockpiles since '91-92 and no meaningful programs since mid-90s. This was a long running meme that fed off of every rumor and weapons find, no matter how significant (i.e. the dozen or so mustard bombs discovered in '97). It also was fed by Saddam's contrarian relationship with UNSCOM and the US/UK during that time. Serious people were having doubts around January 2004. By that time they were swimming upstream against not only the media narrative, but the momentum for war. Blix hedged on whether Iraq was cooperating fully and Saddam took on the rhetorical equivalent of "Bring it on." The Bush National Guard narrative initially came to the fore nationally in 2000. It was looked at and dismissed by the media as an issue. Most still refer to the George Magazine investigation (see here for a Jan 2001 reference). It was resurrected again by Micheal Moore and Terry McAuliffe during the primary. It became a feeding frenzy of over-the-top campaign rhetoric, document releases, and missing documents. It raged in February 2004, took a summer vacation and came back way too strong in the Fall. When the evidence started becoming apparent that all those who believed Saddam had WMD were "all wrong", the media first criticized the administration then became introspective. But, unlike Memogate, there was not a public, weeks long, ad hominem attack by the media on those that believed Iraq did NOT have WMD. Judith Miller said something stupid about doing her job by being the government's stenographer, but nothing like the Rather, Klein, Heyward quotes about their pajama-clad partisan adversaries and the infallibility of CBS. Although there are lessons in both, the rhetoric of the current comparison is "hurting" the debate. As I wrote in It's STILL Bigger than Dan So, here I am. It's broken. They're all broken. It's Humpty Dumpty time. Shall all the King's horses and all the King's men figure out how to put Humpty together again? Seems to me we're just arguing over how he got broken and the size of the pieces. Sisyphus, that's just factually incorrect. Remember Scott Ritter, child molester? You know what the difference between this incredibly stupid "Rathergate" thing and the Iraq War is? NOBODY DIED OVER RATHERGATE. Posted by: praktike at January 13, 2005 6:52 PM | Permalink Matt: If the New York Times doesn't cover X, over time, you can safely conclude the editors aren't interested in X, or don't agree it's important. With PressThink, you can't. I am a one-person magazine. I do feel I "cover" certain things, but they are like pieces I have bitten off from a whole that I make no attempt to survey. Greensboro, NC I am "covering" because it's interesting, important and I feel no one else would frame it as I would. If we asked Jeff Jarvis why he hasn't written much about it, he'd say: "Greensboro is interesting, important, on-topic for Buzzmachine and... Jay's doing that one, so I can point to him." I do the same with many subjects. There is an imaginary division of labor, I feel, among bloggers with the same force fields, er, subject matter. This extends, of course, to journalists who are on the beats the bloggers also pound. For example, Frank Rich's column for this week (sent to me by a PressThink reader) does a lot of what you're expecting from me and not getting: “I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth. . . . Go Frank. When your piece comes out, I will link to it: what he said. Williams and the quarter mil, which Rich gets into, is a big story, and there is an angle I am working on about it. And like Rich with Rather, I don't mean to minimize Armstong Williams, the surrender on WMD, Knight-Ridder shaming the rest of them, or the Bush Crowd's effective campaign to downgrade, disrespect and marginalize the press, which was described in PressThink in April 2004 and Newsweek this past week when Fineman confirmed it had worked, more or less. The Rather mess I have "covered" since the first few days, and I feel strongly about seeing it through. There's a principle of intellectual honesty just in that. Like you don't drop something when the news turns bad for your "your side." (Not that I see myself as on Rather's team, I don't.) When I am chasing a press story at PressThink and all the Left political and media bloggers are ignoring it, I know I have a good idea. There's always something to figure out that the Power Lines and Hewitts will miss. One of the best pieces I have ever done at PressThink came about this way: The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow. I didn't agree with the right that reporting from Iraq was relentlessly negative. I thought it was close to idiotic when it developed into, "and the news is negative because liberal journalists want us to lose to hurt Bush..." Good grief! On the other hand I didn't agree with the Left that the complaint, "the press is being too negative in Iraq" should be dismissed from the court of review, also called the blogosphere. Why? Because it was entirely plausible to me, knowing how Big Journalism works, that such things as "re-building" and "problem-soving" and "political progress" could be under-reported in vast ratios compared to violence and destruction, unexpected problem eruption (Murphy's law), political turmoil and political theatre, etc. That would produce a portrait that is too narrow-- an unfair picture. It was not only plausible, it was probable. That was a successful post. I did a version of it on the radio, for On the Media. The Orwellians are getting to me? That's not much of a clue as to who my influences are, praktike. Elvis Costello is one. Talking Heads. Steve Earle. Lucinda Williams... Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 13, 2005 7:04 PM | Permalink praktike: That's a nice chart. One correction I would make is the number of wars started over WMD in Iraq. For example, Desert Fox should probably be there. Plus, I'm not sure how you account for the numerous strikes on Iraqi positions enforcing the no-fly zones. Other than that, you're just reinforcing my point. Instead of focusing on the journalism, you obfuscate the issue by comparing a journalistic event (during an election) with a journalistic event (during the build up to and including the war). It's a dumb comparison. In fact, just for fun, you should have a line that includes incumbent Presidents defeated as a result of the two. Heck, that's probably a more comparable event than 90% of what's on your list. Jay: Thank you. I learned not only from your post, but your last comment. Amazing.... Correction to above post: Apologies to all. praktike, re: Scott Ritter I've posted my comment on my blog here. Call me a respectful commenter or a coward, either way, you're invited to comment further at Sisyphean Musings. Ok, that's fair. On second thought, I want to thank you for your consistently amazing capacity to answer very complicated questions and willingness to do so. I can only hope that I have such patience and ability one day. I guess it's frustrating because I see a big right-wing media/social ecosystem, and other people see a big TV tower staffed by a man named Dan Rather who I've never known and don't really care about and who represents nothing to me. And then they point at him and say in big letters 'BAD MAN' and you point at him in big letters and say 'BAD MAN' and it sounds the same, but it's not. And I know that. But I don't have anyone to point at, because those who are distorting enlightenment values are doing it in a way that creates an entirely parallel knowledge universe that is in fact a solipsistic defense of itself. And I want something to point at to describe the other side of the Rathergate story, those who equally distorted the issue by calling CBS partisan and liberal, instead of sloppy and unaccountable. But who is this other side? Blogs? No. I'm a blogger. It's the Right Wing Noise Machine. But that's not a term that I've ever heard you or anyone in your profession use. Jeff Jarvis doesn't. Dan Gillmore doesn't. Dave Weinberger doesn't. And no one has come up with a descriptive term that allows me to frame my argument in a way that doesn't seem to put me in the moonbat crowd. The language isn't there yet or if it is it isn't in popular acceptance. So I'm looking to you to frame this, well, big right-wing thing as something, the way you legitimized MSM in my eyes. Give me the words to describe what we all know is there. Maybe you can do that with the Williams story, help us to talk you so that Atrios gets invited to the next conference on journalistic ethics as a legitimate participant. This isn't partisan. It's a desire for the conversation to be bigger, to include my crowd as well as everyone else's. Posted by: Matt Stoller at January 13, 2005 10:14 PM | Permalink Matt: How about -- Shooting Fish in a Barrell? (And, There are always those out to make a buck who move the story along (Williams, the UN, etc). (It doesn't matter which side they're on -- or even if they are on a side.)) Same thing for the MSM, same thing for the blogosphere. They go after the easy kill, and live in an echo chamber that assures them they are correct. In-depth coverage is hard. It takes knowledge, footwork, and dedication. It takes the ability to summarize and tell a story well. These are not easy things, and even if you get it right, there is no guarantee that there will be an audience for the story. The blogosphere certainly doesn't lend itself to IN-DEPTH *anything* -- how fast do your eyes glaze over when confronted with a post of more than a few paragraphs? In short, there is no easy solution. Posted by: cj at January 14, 2005 2:03 AM | Permalink Dan Rather was only wrong once. How many times was Powerline wrong? Dan Rather was wrong only once. Good thing I wasn't drinking any Coke when I read that or my nostrils would be burning right about now. The Thornburgh report documents a few dozen times when Rather was wrong -- on this one story. How many times was Powerline wrong? I dunno. Why don't you tell us? You could even provide links. That would be more convincing than suggesting they were constantly wrong, without providing a shred of evidence. Posted by: Patterico at January 14, 2005 2:43 AM | Permalink CBS's mistake was in doing good journalism badly instead of doing bad journalism well. Imagine if, instead of using documents, CBS had gotten Burkett to say he had seen such documents, and gotten Knox (Killian's secretary) to say she had typed such documents. Throw in a few "Bush received an honorable discharge" comments from Dan Bartlett, and you have a perfectly "balanced" story that, in terms of current journalistic standards, would have been bulletproof. (no one is in trouble for giving credence to John O'Neill and the Swift Boat Vets, are they?) ***************** The fact is that CBS had "the story" long before it had "the documents". But the way that television news works, a story is only as good as its visuals---and the story has to be easy to explain in sound bites consisting of words of less than three syllables. A story about how Bush was guilty of dereliction of duty that relied upon what appears to be lines of gibberish at the bottom of the payroll records (but which, in fact, consisted of the coded data used to generate the payroll itself) is never going to see the light of day on television. The real story behind "Memogate" is how professional, highly regarded journalists were brought down by their inability to adapt to the relentless dumbing down of television journalism. ****************** And the lesson from the Memogate report is even more frightening---that regardless of what the truth is, if someone disputes a fact associated even marginally with that truth, the truth cannot be told, or the dispute must be aired. The report endorses "he said/she said" journalism at its worst. case in point---CBS was criticized for airing the Strong interview which suggested that Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard to avoid Vietnam. The report's basis for the criticism was the (entirely dubious and undocumented) claim that two years after enlisting, Bush volunteered for Vietnam. (In fact, Bush supposedly volunteered for a program that, at one point, did sent F-102 pilots to Vietnam, but by December 1969 there were no F-102s anywhere in Southeast Asia--let alone deployed to Vietnam, and the only pilots in the program were stationed in Europe.) The Memogate panel never bothered to check the story of Bush's supposed "volunteering" for Vietnam, but more importantly, never considered that Bush had spent nearly two full years in a military environment training to be a pilot---and that its entirely likely that someone who volunteered to avoid VietNam might just have a different point of view after two years in the military. In other words, not only is the "volunteered for Vietnam" story highly dubious when compared with the facts, its also irrelevant to the question of why Bush entered the Guard in the first place. But it is on the existence of the "volunteered for Vietnam" story that "the Panel" cfriticize the inclusion of references to Bush avoidance of Vietnam. This is a demand for "he said/she said" journalism at its absolute worst, and if this is the standard that CBS News will be employing in the future, Sumner Redstone might as well dissolve CBSNews and replace it with reruns of Green Acres. (And it is this "he said/she said" standard that is employed by the panel itself---no attempt was made to ascertain the credibility or veracity of Bush partisans like Hodges and Staudt by comparing their statements to the facts surrounding Bush's military records.) Its obvious that Rosen and company haven't bothered to actually read the report within the context of all the facts concerning Bush's military records, because if you know what those records mean, the Memogate panel's report is very frightening. Rosen (and the overwhelming majority of media blowhards) concentrated solely on the "gossip" aspect of the report, because they lack the knowledge to evaluate the report properly. Oh, but don't pay any attention to me. According to the report, I'm just some blogger (a lie, by the way, I don't blog) who writes "disparaging analyses of President Bush's military service." Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 14, 2005 2:56 AM | Permalink You'll love this one, Matt. Tom Watson: "To sum up: Dan Rather is still irrelevant. And George Bush still went missing sometime in the 60s during his Guard tour. So what?" Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 14, 2005 3:28 AM | Permalink Patterico: point taken, but I don't really care enough to spend the time on this one. Tant pis. Additionally, what Paul Lukasiak said, who does care. So, Jay, are you a Menshevik or a Bolshevik? Posted by: praktike at January 14, 2005 10:21 AM | Permalink Just wondering whether you had any ready examples at hand when you made the statement. It doesn't sound like you did. Did you take the time to read the report? If you did, you'd know Rather got it wrong many, many times on this story alone. You think this is the only story where CBS News downplayed or omitted the parts that didn't fit its storyline? You think CBS News is the only organization that has done that? Posted by: Patterico at January 14, 2005 10:39 AM | Permalink On third thought, Jay, I'm not quite satisfied with your explanation. Part of the story you're covering has to do with political operatives attacking for partisan purposes a major TV personality. Your narrative is incomplete without that featured in some capacity that is more than a throw-away subtle qualifyer. p. lukasiask's comment resonates with me. Posted by: Matt Stoller at January 14, 2005 11:04 AM | Permalink OK, here's one to whet your appetite: "Well, CBS certainly wouldn't want to influence the election by revealing how its news department conspired with the Democratic National Committee to slander the President and his commanding officers in the Texas Air National Guard in hopes of influencing the election." True or false? False. Never updated. "the fact that the Vets had the goods on Kerry." Er, not actually a fact. The chrges were never proven, and in fact many of them were substantially disproven by the documentary record. "Kerry was deferring to the French." Link to BS intelligence reports, since debunked by the Duelfer report and this week's subsequent denouement. Shall I continue? Posted by: praktike at January 14, 2005 11:21 AM | Permalink The comment line here is interesting, as it is occasional on other of Jay's posts. IS it "attacking a major journalist" (TV personality, etc.) for political purposes? Or is it something different? In conversations, left and right, conservative and liberal, dem and repub, there is often the use code words, phrases, underlying assumptions that their belief systems have internalized. The other side doesn't share some of those inherent beliefs. These belief systems are often set up, not because they are factually correct, but simply because they have been repeated so often that they are taken as truth (little t.) In conversations, a serious attempt to communicate would involve challenging these underlying assumptions. In the press, such a challenge involves attacking the (excuse the word) bias of the presenter as well as the purported fact. Open dialog in the press cannot exist without the ability and the everyday occurance of challenges to the underlying assumptions, which includes those inherent in the presenters worldview. It may appear a partisan attack, and probably is, but that does not demean the challenge (inherently.) Posted by: John Lynch at January 14, 2005 11:59 AM | Permalink The joke about all this is that Suicide Bomber Mary blew CBS up for... a story that probably wouldn't have changed one vote. That Bush was an irresponsible rich boy in the 70s is processed information, filed and decided upon. The challenger runs on his whole life, which is new info, and on the promise of what he might do, which is inevitably cast in the rosiest terms. The incumbent runs on the last four years, period, nothing else counts. Nobody brought up Checkers in '72 because nobody thought it was relevant to Nixon versus McGovern. Chasing so desperately a story about something 30 years ago shows that Mapes, Rather, et al. don't understand that simple rule about our politics-- or suppressed in a desperate hunt for one more straw to grasp. Posted by: Mike G at January 14, 2005 1:37 PM | Permalink The MSM and Viacom in particular continue to insult the intelligence of Americans with the "no proof of bias" B---S---. Until the MSM treats Americans in general as people who can think and reason their market will be gobbled up by alternatives such as talk radio and blogs. Posted by: Rod Stanton at January 14, 2005 1:49 PM | Permalink Was Powerline accurate? It's an uninteresting question because they make no claim to objectivity or to journalistic principles. Dan and CBS News do make (ambitious) claims to upholding journalistic principles and integrity. They were exposed making an agregious error in judgement and should be denounced for it. Like it or not, the blogosphere has profoundly changed the landscape of the profession. Arguing with it is as uninteresting as questioning the accuracy of Powerline or Kos, for that matter. What Dan Rather and CBS News illustrated more profoundly and dramatically than ever before was that if those in the profession don't start advocating change in their own organizations they will suffer a similar fate...they will be made irrelevent. Some enterprising organization (like the Greensboro News & Record) will take Jay's advice and, with luck and a lot of hard work, will fuse journalistic principles with an open source delivery and will find themselves on the vanguard of what I hope will be the next stage in the profession's evolution. Posted by: Foosh at January 14, 2005 2:17 PM | Permalink CBS replied to my query on why they switched the files after two days. "Was Powerline accurate? It's an uninteresting question because they make no claim to objectivity or to journalistic principles. Dan and CBS News do make (ambitious) claims to upholding journalistic principles and integrity. They were exposed making an agregious error in judgement and should be denounced for it." I don't think you get to play that game. Practice what you preach or stfu. Posted by: praktike at January 14, 2005 3:29 PM | Permalink I am hopeful. In spite of the thickness of CBS's reply. Considering what is in the news, here's a grand unification theory that suggests a comprehensive framework to integrate Rathergate, the 2004 campaign, the circus of the United Nations, and education while offering reason for optimism. See: The currency that counts. btw, if anyone want a copy of the memogate report that they can copy and past from, let me know. I have the "alterable" text, and will make it available for download by those who request it by email (I don't want to make it available to the whole wide world by announcing the url in public.) Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 14, 2005 4:17 PM | Permalink SBW, Bad link in your post. Real link here: Posted by: Ernest Miller at January 14, 2005 4:25 PM | Permalink Dang. Ernest, thanks for cleaning up my mess. It would be kind if Jay could fix it. On another subject related to CBS's strangeness, boingboing.net quotes this indication of a serious problem with digital rights management : Bias is inevitable. There isn't a man among us who is completely unbiased. And bias leads to errors in judgement. It clouds decision-making. The worst sort of bias is unacknowledged bias, because then you think you are impartial, when you are not. I think one of the main problems with the Panel's Report is that they dismiss the issue of bias so cavalierly. They essentially accept that there is no bias at CBS. With such a judgement, the Panel has done CBS no favors. Of course there is bias at CBS, how can there not be? What those biases are may be a subject of debate, but they do exist. However, unless you acknowledge that there is a problem, you won't be able to find a solution. More on this by me, here: CBS Report Panel Endorses "View From Nowhere"Email This Entry Posted by: Ernest Miller at January 14, 2005 4:51 PM | Permalink bias had nothing to do with why Mapes failed to heed the warning signs and use the Killian memos on the air. That was based on Mapes knowing that the memos represented an indisputable truth, and her failure to completely distinguish between the representation of a truth, and the truth itself. But "bias" probably did play a role in the decision to do an "AWOL" story in the first place. The fact is that there is no objective criteria for what is "newsworthy", and all decision regarding what stories to cover, and how extensively to cover them, are based on subjective judgements (i.e. "bias"). Personally, I don't think the fact that Bush received favorable treatment to get into the Guard, and then failed to fulfill his duty is not all that newsworthy--basically, the story was gossip. What is, however, newsworthy is that Bush continued to lie about his past in order to sustain a myth about his character. And that is what made the story important, and worth reporting. What is most appalling is the double standard being applied here. Mapes, Rather, and CBS are being raked over the coals for using these memos, but NO ONE is mentioning Fox's wall to wall Swift Boat Vets reporting---a story with literally NO documentary evidence to back it up, told by people KNOWN to have partisan motives (or, as the report would have it, KNOWN to be controversial.) The real bias in the media clearly isn't liberal---if it were, no one would know who Mary Mapes is, and the entire Fox staff would be out of work. Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 14, 2005 5:31 PM | Permalink Ernest: I think the panel made no serious attempt to deal with the bias question, and chose instead to punt. When it says about bias "we found none" it means: that's not where we put our efforts. The panel did not discover no bias at CBS. It declined to go into discovery mode on the matter. This I see as a political decision, just as declaring, "CBS, you were biased" would have been. As any regular reader of this blog knows, I am not a fan of the media bias discourse. I have said before that the longer your stay within its terms, the dumber you get about the news and journalists. But at the same time, I think equally dumb the journalist's claim not to have any politics, which means you don't need political judgment because you don't make "political" decisions, only news-related ones. But going after the Texas Air National Guard Story was a political move for CBS, and it involved political judgment--indeed, political risk--at the network, in addition to news judgment at Sixty Minutes. That's why I liked this comment from Mike G. so much: The challenger runs on his whole life, which is new info, and on the promise of what he might do, which is inevitably cast in the rosiest terms. The incumbent runs on the last four years, period, nothing else counts. Nobody brought up Checkers in '72 because nobody thought it was relevant to Nixon versus McGovern. Chasing so desperately a story about something 30 years ago shows that Mapes, Rather, et al. don't understand that simple rule about our politics-- or suppressed in a desperate hunt for one more straw to grasp. I don't think the story would have made much of a difference. My word for what Mapes and crew suffered from is "fantasy," not bias. (But I expect to persuade no one away from bias, which is too beloved.) It's the fantasy of the big score. Bush is the biggest. Of course, the same big score was felt to have been gotten by bloggers in the take down of CBS. That's kind of a fantasy too. Here again, the panel declined seriously to inquire into what the bloggers and the online arena generally did that advanced these events. It left a misleading impression with remarks on blogs so sketchy and prejudiced they contribute nothing to our understanding. That wasn't a punt. It was a whiff. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 14, 2005 5:42 PM | Permalink However, unless you acknowledge that there is a problem, you won't be able to find a solution. as noted above, bias had noting to do with the errors made in memo-gate. I do, however, agree that "the Panel" (among its many failings) failed to make a convincing case for lack of bias -- and the reason it failed is that it refused to confront the facts that led Mapes to make the mistakes she did. The BASIS of the story was unimpeachable---Bush didn't fulfill his duty--- had there been any question of that, Mapes would never have acted so cavalierly. That is the real argument for the lack of bias---but "the Panel" chose (for political reasons) not to go there. One other point I haven't seem made elsewhere. CBS obviously did not feel that it could simply present the facts that showed Bush failed to fulfill his duty---they basically hid behind Jerry Killian, having him say what they knew to be true. (Even Albert Lloyd now admits that Bush did not fulfill his requirements.) CBS was afraid to say "Here is what the laws and policies said Bush was required to do. Here is what he did. As you can see, he didn't do what he was required to do." So they let Jerry do the talking for them. Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 14, 2005 5:51 PM | Permalink as to whether the Air National Guard story was important enough to report.... lets not forget that when Michael Moore called Bush a "deserter" all hell broke loose in the media. Now, I find it difficult to believe that what Michael Moore has to say about Bush is important enough for the media gasbags to pontificant about endlessly, but whether what Moore has to say is true or not is unworthy of coverage. your mileage may vary. Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 14, 2005 5:56 PM | Permalink Jay, I don't disagree. I'm not a fan of the bias discourse either. However, I am an enemy of the "view from nowhere." I agree that the Panel punted the issue, but I believe they did so in a way that presumptively endorsed the "view from nowhere." That is where I see the problem. Perhaps I didn't make my point clear enough. I know it is unrealistic, but it would have been nice for the Panel to confront the "view from nowhere," especially given the radical statements of Rather and Mapes that they brought no political bias to the story. Note also that I don't say what the biases are ... that is debatable. Whether it was "fantasy" or not (which is almost certainly part of it), it is still bias. You solve bias with transparency and real dialogue (among other things). But many in the MSM still don't get it - certainly not CBS and the Panel. I agree with you with regard to the blogs as well. Posted by: Ernest Miller at January 14, 2005 5:59 PM | Permalink I would say that Power Line makes no pretense of objectivity (neither do I), but they believe that they follow (other) journalistic principles -- primarily that of telling the truth. CBS was documented in the Thornburgh-Boccardi report to have repeatedly falsified information that it had in its possession. praktike responds by citing numerous examples of opinion by Power Line. Most of the Power Line opinions cited are ones with which I agree, and with which praktike disagrees. praktike apparently argues that, because he disagrees, Power Line got it wrong. For example:
or:
You contention that the Swift Vets' charges "were never proven, and in fact many of them were substantially disproven by the documentary record" is similarly vague. Which charges? The Swifties made a lot of charges. Which charges were false? The Vets' claim that Kerry used medals obtained for minor wounds to shave about 8 months off the expected length of his tour of duty? Their claim that Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" story was fiction? Weak. Etc. Then praktike equates this with CBS's repeated deliberate misstatements of facts and evidence in its possession. In fact, praktike says Power Line is worse, and CBS only got it wrong once, ever. Sorry, praktike. I think you have decent points at times, but this time I think your argument is laughable. Posted by: Patterico at January 14, 2005 6:01 PM | Permalink Thinking about the matter a little more, this from Linda Mason stands out: "That for us was the big headline: That there was no political agenda, because that would have been terrible." I think she blurted the truth out. The reason there was found to be no political agenda was because that would have been "too" terrible for a news division reputation built of the grandeur of the view from nowhere and the glory of agenda-less journalism. To be convicted of an agenda is system crashing for CBS News. It's worse than a breach of Journalism ethics. Political innocence must be purchased at all costs. Thus: "That for us was the big headline..." No bias! You can see why a superifical investigation was chosen, then. My sense is that Boccardi would signal to Thornburgh and his minions early on that he would go to the mat against a "finding" of bias at CBS. The rest is easy from there. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 14, 2005 6:03 PM | Permalink p.lukasiak There are a number of unsupportable statements in your diatribe. bias had nothing to do with why Mapes failed to heed the warning signs and use the Killian memos on the air. That was based on Mapes knowing that the memos represented an indisputable truth, and her failure to completely distinguish between the representation of a truth, and the truth itself. The issues presented by Mapes have been proven factually wrong. Her key allegation, what made this story newer than the rehashed boy-of-privilege story, is that there were waiting lists for pilots and that he was ordered to take a physical and failed to deal with it. Both have been proven via documentation, cited in the Thornberg report to be incorrect. Her story was factually incorrect, she knew it (also documented in the report,) and she obsessed with this "story" for five years. To a reasonable person that would be a slavering partisanship aka bias. But "bias" probably did play a role in the decision to do an "AWOL" story in the first place. The fact is that there is no objective criteria for what is "newsworthy", and all decision regarding what stories to cover, and how extensively to cover them, are based on subjective judgments (i.e. "bias"). This is essentially the "there is no objective truth" argument. Perhaps. Personally, I don't think the fact that Bush received favorable treatment to get into the Guard, and then failed to fulfill his duty is not all that newsworthy--basically, the story was gossip. What is, however, newsworthy is that Bush continued to lie about his past in order to sustain a myth about his character. And that is what made the story important, and worth reporting. Having just covered the no-objective-truth subjectivity, how can one argue the point-of-view that someone who receives an honorable discharge and therefore was not AWOL is not a valid subjective reality? Therefore there Is no lie. You’ve made an assertion based on a belief or yours, not a fact. What is most appalling is the double standard being applied here. Mapes, Rather, and CBS are being raked over the coals for using these memos, but NO ONE is mentioning Fox's wall to wall Swift Boat Vets reporting---a story with literally NO documentary evidence to back it up, told by people KNOWN to have partisan motives (or, as the report would have it, KNOWN to be controversial.) The Swift Boat coverage included real people, still living, providing real testimony - a standard substantially higher than Mapes and CBS. As for documentation, have Kerry sign form 180 so that records are available. Failing that, testimony form Kerry's entire chain-of-command will have to do, and is newsworthy as you so ably argued in an earlier paragraph. The real bias in the media clearly isn't liberal---if it were, no one would know who Mary Mapes is, and the entire Fox staff would be out of workAs stated by a better wit than I, Ruppert Murdoch found a niche market in reporting coverage: the 50-60% that don't subscribe to the inherent beliefs of the rest of the media. Call it bias, call it liberal, or call it elitist, it remains a series of points-of-view not universally subscribed to, or supported by, readers, viewers, or voters. Posted by: John Lynch at January 14, 2005 6:08 PM | Permalink "Power Line's opinion that the CBS 'conspired with the Democratic National Committee to slander the President.' If anything, the Thornburgh-Boccardi report provides even more evidence to support this opinion." Er, that's not an opinion. Either they did conspire with the DNC or they did not. According to the report, Mapes probably conspired with Lockhart, and then lied about it. But he was with the Kerry campaign, not the DNC. Etc. Posted by: praktike at January 14, 2005 6:13 PM | Permalink "Having just covered the no-objective-truth subjectivity, how can one argue the point-of-view that someone who receives an honorable discharge and therefore was not AWOL is not a valid subjective reality?" He pulled strings to get the honorable discharge. The memos we have on record say as much. "What will we do with George? Are you really that slow? Does anyone here actually refutre this claim? Posted by: Zig at January 14, 2005 7:30 PM | Permalink At this point you have to wonder if there is any limit to Jay Rosen's monstrous, compensatory pride. "My alert to your friends and bosses was published at 2:30 am Friday night, so it might have been some guy in his pajamas. Still the information was good." An ankle-biter wondering why his nibbles weren't acknowledged? Inside every gadfly is a frustrated eagle. Posted by: stanley_s at January 14, 2005 9:08 PM | Permalink His pride about what? Who is the eagle? Posted by: Zig at January 14, 2005 11:34 PM | Permalink "receives an honorable discharge and therefore was not AWOL" "Begging the question," for those who are counting fallacies. Posted by: Zig at January 14, 2005 11:36 PM | Permalink Van Gordon Sauter was president of CBS News in the early 1980s: At this stage, local television news, the most heavily researched news product in the nation, clings to the center, trusting that banality will trump opinion. Ultimately, if the networks can't reform themselves, this country will end up with just that: a lot of scrupulously impartial (which is not necessarily to say good) news sources, managed by research-driven executives who find it a good marketing approach. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 14, 2005 11:45 PM | Permalink Precisely. They ARE the blase center, not biased in either direction. Posted by: Zig at January 15, 2005 1:34 PM | Permalink Sauter said he prefers NBC MSNBC and FOX so he seems to think CBS is as liberal as most of these folks say. I watch frequently and I fail to find such a thing. Investigative shows like 60 Minutes are supposed to dig deeper than the nightly newscast, hence are more liable to draw the ire of those not wanting to be exposed and in this case, their fans. How dare they criticise my hero. Outrageous. Posted by: Zig at January 15, 2005 4:30 PM | Permalink The issues presented by Mapes have been proven factually wrong. Her key allegation, what made this story newer than the rehashed boy-of-privilege story, is that there were waiting lists for pilots and that he was ordered to take a physical and failed to deal with it. Both have been proven via documentation, cited in the Thornberg report to be incorrect. Mr. Lynch. You are a liar. There was no allegation that there was a waiting list for pilots. There was an allegation that there was a waiting list to get into the Texas Air National Guard. And there was. Just ask the historian for the Texas National Guard, a gentleman by the name of Tom Hall. Here is a clue. There was no waiting list for pilots because the system did not allow for "waiting lists for pilots" (there is an exception for this for those who actually were pilots, but you are too ignorant of the facts to bother to explain how that system worked.) But according to Hall, who (unlike thornburgh) did examine the documentary evidence, at the time that Bush entered TXANG, the 111th FIS was authorized to have 29 pilots. It had 30 pilots either assigned to it, training to be pilots, or in the process of being transferred into it. There was no shortage of pilots, in other words. In fact, it was in 1968 that the Air Force was getting rid of F102s (and F102 pilots were looking for National Guard positions). By the time Bush quit flying in 1973, it had been two years since the regular Air Force had eliminated any F102 pilot positions---and there was only one small regular Air Force unit, stationed in Iceland, that still flew the F102 (this unit stopped flying F102s in 1973.) the rest of your comment is just as much a pile of complete crap as the paragraph above...I just don't feel like wasting any more bandwidth proving what a liar your are.... Do yourself a favor. Don't get in a discussion with people who know a subject backward and forward---you only embarrass yourself. Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 16, 2005 10:54 PM | Permalink Van Gordon Sauter was president of CBS News in the early 1980s wait! he's not credible. He's a disgruntled former employee! (oh, I forgot...in Jay's world only disgruntled former employees who criticize Bush are not credible...) but can we get real here for a moment. Sauter watches Fox News. I mean, c'mon Rosen.... Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 16, 2005 10:57 PM | Permalink p.luksiak I believe we are seeing some part of the difficulty in reaching Jay's press improvement through "dialog" being illustrated in this exchange. You make assertions, largely 'controversial' and build a case on opinions not shared. If there is a belief that conversation requires challenging underlying beliefs in order to communicate - assuming one actually wishes to communicate - then these challenges should also be present between the press and the reader, broadcasters and viewers; and the various idealogues; partisans; and even publishers that believe they are above reproach and "know a subject backward and forward." I stand by my assertion. There is no AWOL in Bush's service. There is no lie in Bush refusing to admit AWOL. There are factual flaws in Mapes' story. And, she knew them before the infamous report. Good day. Posted by: John Lynch at January 18, 2005 3:14 PM | Permalink |
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