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Date Posted: 19:54:13 09/21/04 Tue
Author: CBS' blunder
Subject: Truth takes a beating from

Truth takes a beating from CBS' blunder

After a week of we-stand-by-our-story piety, CBS News and news anchor Dan Rather conceded Monday they had been "given a false account" of the origins of documents used to discredit President George W. Bush's actions in the Texas Air National Guard three decades ago.

"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said CBS News president Andrew Hayward.

"We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."

Chimed in Rather: "We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry."

A marked departure from last week when network officials stood by its Sept. 8 "60 Minutes" report and said they were confident that the documents from a then-unidentified source were from the files of the late Lt. Colonel Jerry B. Killian, who died 20 years ago. In those now-suspect documents, Killian complains of pressure to "sugar coat" the record of then Lt. Bush and says he disobeyed a direct order to take a physical - which Bush did not do.

"Oooops," says CBS. "Never mind."

That's hardly sufficient.

The CBS blunder is one that would get anyone an "F" in Journalism 101 and have them given the gate at even the tiniest newspaper in any part of the country.

The errors were not little ones. For starters, CBS News relied on anonymous sources - something that national media does far too often and far too easily.

Second, they relied on a source - now identified as former Texas Army National Guard officer Bill Burkett - with an ax to grind. Burkett had a fallout with the Texas National Guard in the late 1990s and was also reportedly disenchanted with President Bush for not supporting reforms in the Guard.

In any newsroom, a background like Burkett's raises the bar of proof needed before a story is publicized or aired. Not apparently at CBS. Worse, there were hints before the story aired that not all was as it seemed to be.

Two of CBS' "document specialists" who inspected the records said they had told network they had some misgivings about the validity of the documents.

Yet CBS blundered on to airtime. The only major question that remains unanswered is, "Why?" For the sake of breaking a story? To impugn the candidacy of the president? We don't know if we'll ever have the full answers to that.

True, CBS' error didn't kill anyone. But the backlash from the bogus report could be a bullet to the election chances of presidential candidate John Kerry. Even if there is substance to some of the allegations over President Bush's conduct in the Guard during that era, CBS' misstep puts a taint on any further news reports on that topic. For a bogus piece of journalism to impact an election - any election - is regrettable.

The lack of basic journalism practices at a major network news will, unfortunately, also feed the cries of "liberal media" bias and anti-media feelings. That too, is regrettable, because it undermines the trust that a newspaper, radio or television station tries to build with its readers, listeners and viewers day after day, year after year.

When it comes to newspaper presidential endorsements at least, that "liberal media bias" charge is off the mark. In the last presidential election the nation's small newspapers went 3-to-1 for Bush; medium-sized newspapers, (50,000 to 100,000 circulation) favored Bush by 5-to-3 and larger newspapers endorsed Bush by a 5-to-4 margin. That's according to a survey by Editor and Publisher, the professional journalism news magazine.

Do you believe those numbers? No? See, that's the real danger of reports like CBS'. Truth takes a beating.

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