<font size=4>L.A. Times Whiffs the Forged Documents Story
<font size=3>Liberal media blog
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The lesson of the CBS forged documents scandal for the mainstream media is simple and straightforward: Don't hide the truth. Because if you try, your deception will be discovered, and your reputation will be irreparably damaged.
John Carroll, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, hasn't learned this lesson -- as is apparent to anyone who reads the paper's pieces today on the CBS document scandal.
The L.A. Times's reporting this morning on the document scandal is a distressing example of the paper hiding the truth.
Yesterday, ABCNEWS broke the biggest story of the scandal: two document experts (Emily Will and Linda James) had warned CBS -- in advance of the "60 Minutes" broadcast that featured the documents -- that they believed the documents were phony. Not only did the network ignore these experts' warnings, it didn't tell its viewers that there was a question about the documents' authenticity.
Yet the L.A. Times doesn't mention the experts' warnings anywhere in the paper today, even though the paper prints two separate stories and one editorial on the issue of the scandal. Searches on the paper's website for the names Emily Will or Linda James reveal no relevant stories.
There is no defense for this.
Times editors cannot plausibly justify this omission as a valid exercise of editorial judgment. The CBS forged documents scandal is the biggest scandal in journalism since Jayson Blair, and last night's revelations were the most damning evidence yet.
As Glenn Reynolds says: <font color=green>"I have to say, I've spent years criticizing the media and this still makes my jaw drop."<font color=black> As I said last night, the CBS News cover-up of these warnings suggests a reckless disregard for the truth -- a deliberate suppression of facts favorable to President Bush.
Nor can the L.A. Times editors convincingly argue that they didn't know about the document experts' allegations. After all, the paper ran a front-page story today about statements made by Lt. Col. Killian's former secretary Marian Carr Knox -- a confirmed Bush-hater who says that Bush was <font color=blue>"selected, not elected."<font color=black> (H/t Xrlq.) To my knowledge, Knox's statements were first reported in the same ABCNEWS segment that reported the document experts' allegations. If the Times editors were aware of Knox, they must also have been aware of document experts Emily Will and Linda James, the people whose allegations demonstrate that Rather was not duped -- he duped his viewers.
This becomes all the more important when you realize that, without the documents, CBS News would have had no story. As a former L.A. Times staff writer named Evan Maxwell wrote me today:<font color=blue>
[T]he simple fact is [CBS News] would not have had a story without those documents. Nobody else, including Barnes, said anything that was "news." Nobody said anything that "advanced the story," to use the old LATimes term. If they had trotted out all the other palaver, people would have yawned and said "Tell us something we didn't know." But with the documents, the story is renewed. With those scraps of paper, they had the smoking gun, they thought.
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So: the documents were critical, and CBS News had reason to believe they were false. And CBS News went with the documents anyway, all the while suppressing its experts' doubts. It's a blockbuster story. The Washington Post ran an entire article about it. The New York Times mentioned it. ABCNEWS reported it.
And the L.A. Times buried it.
Why? Why not report such an important story? I have a theory. Now that the Times is forced by overwhelming evidence to admit that the documents are forged, it has adopted the view that Rather was deceived. The paper's suppression of the experts' allegations allows the paper to push this point of view, without confronting the clear evidence to the contrary. Proof of my theory can be found in this misleading L.A. Times editorial from this morning, which makes the ridiculous assertion:
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CBS News was had. It's hard to reach any other conclusion about documents that CBS and anchor Dan Rather have defended as revealing the truth about George W. Bush's military service.<font color=black>
Actually, it's very easy to reach a different conclusion -- if you know the facts. If you know that CBS News was warned in advance that the documents were phony, the conclusion is inescapable: CBS News was not "had." CBS News "had" its viewers. Dan Rather was complicit in the fraud. The document experts' allegations prove it. So the Times editors suppress the experts' accusations -- and then argue that Rather was duped. This is breathtaking dishonesty.
The final insult is the paper's interview today with Dan Rather. The headline says it all:<font color=black> Rather Rides Out Latest Partisan Storm.<font color=black>
That's two errors in just six words.
First, the <font color=blue>"storm"<font color=black> is not a <font color=blue>"partisan storm."<font color=black> As Steve at Begging to Differ says: <font color=green>"What is political about Times New Roman font?"<font color=black> To the contrary, this is a simple question of journalistic credibility.
Second, I think it's a leetle bit early to declare that Rather is going to ride out this particular storm -- unless they mean he's riding it out to sea, never to be seen again.
No mention of the experts' blockbuster allegations in the interview:
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In the week since the Sept. 8 report on the newsmagazine "60 Minutes," Rather has twice gone on the air to defend his reporting and the documents, which critics have argued couldn't have been produced by the typewriter technology commonly in use at the time.<font color=black>
How hard would it have been to mention that a couple of the <font color=blue>"critics"<font color=black> were document experts consulted by CBS, who told CBS the documents were fakes before the program ran??
The irony is that the L.A. Times is doing exactly what CBS News did. The Times editors are suppressing clearly newsworthy information that doesn't fit the organization's official storyline. They think they can do this with impunity, because they've been doing it for years.
Memo to John Carroll: that's what Dan Rather thought.
NEXT UP: The L.A. Times suppressed more than just the document experts today. Its editors continue to suppress vital information regarding the Texans for Truth. More on this in my next post.<font size=3>
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