In September of 2004, CBS and Dan Rather ran a 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast which featured memos known as the Killian documents. These documents, supposedly written by President George W. Bush's superior Jerry B. Killian, were critical of Bush's service in the Texas Army National Guard and suggested that Bush may have received preferential treatment. Without definite confirmation that the memos were not forgeries, CBS decided to run the controversial segment just two months prior to the upcoming election.
Chaos ensued during the weeks following the broadcast, and the both CBS and the memos in question fell under heavy scrutiny, especially in the blogosphere. While CBS continued to vehemently defend their position a review panel was convened, and reported serious defects in the September 8th segment of 60 Minutes Wednesday. While many experts continued to assert that the documents were forgeries, the absence of the original memos prevented a definitive answer from forensic examiners on the credibility of the Killian memos. Regardless, CBS eventually issued an apology for the mistakes made during the research and production of the segment, and many top executives within CBS were terminated or resigned.
As a journalism student I can understand the excitement of such a story and why CBS wanted to air its findings, however their timing offends me both as a consumer of the news and a voter. Surely CBS understood the enormity of their story and the implications it could bring once aired. It seems too obvious to me that when dealing with such a story, you would go to every length necessary to ensure that the facts you are about to present are absolutely true, for without a doubt your reporting will draw critics who will comb through every detail of your report. After spending years in research for the story (as CBS did), I see no reason to jeopardize the entire story by rushing to air it without proper vetting of facts other than the hope to influence political opinions.
Why not take the time to get a forensics expert to verify without a doubt that the memos are real and air the story in 6 months, or a year? I believe that Mary Mapes and other executives that were new to CBS, were more interested in making their presence known and producing a story with a huge political impact, than delivering what was most useful for the public.
As a voter and consumer of the news the fact that a news outlet may have a political agenda irks me the most. If there is one reason that I would make a point of following a CBS news broadcast or any other major media outlet over an individual's blog, it would be that in following a major media broadcast I have the assurance that I am receiving information that is both factual and completely fair. When slip-ups such as this are made, I have a hard time convincing myself that there is any source of news completely free of a calculated agenda.
Even if we give CBS the benefit of the doubt, and decide that their timing was coincidental and the story was aired because those researching it were absolutely certain that their facts were checked and could just not wait to get the story out to the masses. Even assuming all of this, why the aggressive defense of the story without further research? Why not give any merit to those who raise questions about your findings? Why not allow an independent team to do the follow up researching and news reports instead of assigning those attached to it in the first place? All of this makes it extremely difficult to assume that the utmost goal of CBS is to provide a fair account of the story. The ignorant defense offered by Dan Rather and those associated with the segment only contributes to the feeling that information is being forced upon us as fact.
Without a doubt, hubris played a role in the stubbornness shown by Rather and his associates after the story came under fire, however I cannot attribute all of the blame to their egos. Those in charge of researching and producing the show were determined to break a story with a severe political impact, and in their ambition to do so, overlooked basic journalistic principals and deceived their audience.
Even though CBS did some house cleaning and promised to avoid similar errors in the future, the damage is done and you cannot help but wonder just how deep political ideals are rooted in our major media outlets, CBS or otherwise.
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The fact that some networks use the news to forward their political agendas bothers me as well. Citizens trust journalists to tell them the TRUTH about what's going on within society, but I guess now more than ever we have to be careful and skeptical as we watch the news and form opinions on political issues (we may think they are our own opinions, but we have to ask ourselves if certain cable TV networks may be influencing them in anyway).
ReplyDeleteGood post. You provided good balance, and I appreciate the depth of treatment you provide.
ReplyDeleteOn a context note: certainly the impending election was a variable in the decision to rush the story. I suspect Mapes, et.al. would have been less interested in the facts of the case six months after George W. Bush was re-elected.
Man, your summary of the events as they occurred was very well put. I struggled with keeping the general summary of the event both concise and clear, but your introduction clearly stated what was going on without getting muddled up with details.
ReplyDeleteI guess you sound a bit harsh on CBS. Its certainly easy to declare the mistakes CBS made in hindsight, but I suspect we may have overlooked these details ourselves given the exact situation. While they may have rushed the story in retrospect, its easy to see how they would have thought they could account for their critics' counter argument. After all, the expert they claimed verified the validity of the memos reneged on his initial verification after their research methods came into question. I'm guessing they did not foresee this turn of events.
Also, its easy to preach magnanimity, but harder to follow through with. I suspect if a story you ran came under critical speculation, you might respond as defensively as CBS. Its really kind of a natural human reaction.
In contemporary society, defensiveness trumps analytical introspection ten times to one. From an intellectual point of view, using your critics attacks as a chance to analyze an outsider's perspective will always be a clearly better decision than reacting defensively, but who gives a shit about the intellectual point of view when millions of dollars are at stake? A purely intellectual perspective is hardly ever a profitable one.