Fallout from Rathergate

The panel investigating the story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service that CBS aired shortly before the election, and which relied on forged documents, has released its report. As a result of this investigation, four high-ranking staffers were ousted. The producer of the piece, Marty Mapes, was fired outright. Three others, Senior Vice President Betsy West, 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard, and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy, were asked to resign. In reponse, Marty Mapes released a statement. In it, she says:

I am shocked by the vitriolic scape-goating in Les Moonves’s statement. I am very concerned that his actions are motivated by corporate and political considerations -- ratings rather than journalism. Mr. Moonves’s response to the review panel’s report and the panel’s assessment of the evidence it developed in its investigation combine not only to condemn me, but to put all investigative reporting in the CBS tradition at risk.

Corporate considerations I can believe. After all, CBS is in business to make a profit and having a producer who is so clearly tainted would be bad for the bottom line. Political considerations, on the other hand, I think are unlikely. You're both probably liberal Democrats. It's about the bottom line and not having a producer who screws up on staff, regardless of whether or not her political bias had anything to do with it.

Much has been made about the fact that these documents are photocopies and therefore cannot be trusted, but decades of investigative reporting have relied on just such copies of memos, documents and notes. In vetting these documents, we did not have ink to analyze, original signatures to compare, or paper to date. We did have context and corroboration and believed, as many journalists have before and after our story, that authenticity is not limited to original documents. Photocopies are often a basis for verified stories.

Saying that these particular photocopies are a valid basis for this story is like saying that a photograph of the Chicago skyline that contains the Sears Tower is a valid representation of Chicago in the 1960's, which was before the tower was built. These documents cannot be trusted not because they are photocopies, but because they show something that simply did not exist at the time the originals were purported to be created. I don't care how many people swear up and down that our hypothetical photograph represents the reality of the time. It simply cannot do so.

I cooperated fully with the review panel, provided them with more than 1,000 pages of reporting and background materials and answered each and every one of their questions completely and truthfully. To the extent that my answers differed from others’ statements, I can only emphasize my own honesty and integrity in attempting to reconstruct the details of the days leading up to the story’s airing.

Cooperating fully with the investigation and providing them with complete information doesn't absolve you of responsibility. If a criminal tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on the stand, he is still guilty.

It is noteworthy the panel did not conclude that these documents are false. Indeed, in the end, all that the panel did conclude was that there were many red flags that counseled against going to air quickly.

Indeed it is noteworthy, but not in the way that Ms. Mapes thinks it is. By not concluding that the documents are false, despite the overwhelming and incontrovertable evidence that they are, shows that the panel is either biased itself, or is afraid to speak the truth. I fail to see how anyone could have any doubt, given all the evidence, that these documents were fabricated. Tortured theories about expensive typesetting machines are the best that supporters could come up with and there is just no way that an ANG Colonel would have one of those machines, let alone use it for routine memos.

I am heartened to see that the panel found no political bias on my part, as indeed I have none. For 25 years, I have built a reputation as a fair, honest and thorough journalist.

Maybe so, but she sure blew it big time. She should have copped to it right away once the evidence that these documents were fabricated was presented. But she stuck to your story, and continues to do so. I can't prove that she was motivated by political bias, but her actions are certainly consistent with such motivation. That level of proof is apparently good enough for her to conclude those documents were accurate so it's good enough for me to conclude that she was pursuing the political agenda of doing whatever she could to ensure the election of John Kerry.

Goodbye. And good riddance. I only wish Dan Rather had been shown the door as well, but that's a whole other post.