<font color=blue>"Tick, tick, tick."<font color=black>
<font size=4>Eye wide shut
<font size=3>Chicago Tribune editorial
September 17, 2004
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Every day in this country, thousands of journalists try hard to earn and keep the trust of their readers, listeners and viewers. Now, with what looks like shoddy reporting on George W. Bush's career in the Texas Air National Guard, anchorman Dan Rather and his colleagues at CBS News have made it harder for all those other journalists to earn and keep trust.
Last week, CBS claimed it had obtained four memos from the early 1970s that raised new questions about Bush's service in the Guard. Internet bloggers cited clues in the typography of the memos suggesting they are forgeries. CBS retorted that each document <font color=blue>"was thoroughly vetted by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity."<font color=black> In his Friday newscast, Rather huffily blamed part of the challenge to CBS on <font color=blue>"partisan political operatives."<font color=black> He insisted CBS had obtained the memos from <font color=blue>"unimpeachable sources."<font color=black> But ABC News, The Washington Post and others have since reported that:
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- Emily Will, a document expert retained by CBS, said Tuesday she had e-mailed to CBS her five concerns about the memos three days before the network aired its story. In a call to a CBS producer, Will said, <font color=purple>"I repeated all my objections as strongly as I could."<font color=green> Will says she warned: <font color=purple>"If you air the program on Wednesday, on Thursday you're going to have hundreds of document examiners raising the same questions."<font color=green>
- Another expert consulted by CBS, Linda James, said Tuesday she told CBS the documents <font color=purple>"had problems,"<font color=green> and she questioned <font color=purple>"whether they were produced on a computer."<font color=green> Asked whether CBS took her authenticity concerns seriously, James responded: <font color=purple>"Evidently not."<font color=green>
- A former Texas Guard commander whom CBS prominently cited in defending its authentication process said he was misled by CBS and now thinks the memos are fakes.
- Marcel Matley, the lead expert cited by CBS, said Monday: <font color=blue>"There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate [the memos]."<font color=green> Matley said he examined only the signature of the late officer who purportedly wrote the memos--and he couldn't rule out the possibility that the officer's signature had been lifted from other documents and placed on phony memos.
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That officer's former secretary says she thinks the memos are fakes, but that they reflect the officer's thinking. On Wednesday, Rather finally acknowledged questions about the memos' authenticity--but insisted the sentiment they conveyed was correct. As if to say: This just in! We think George W. Bush got special treatment!
Nice try, but that charge is old news. The new news was CBS' <font color=blue>"Gotcha!"<font color=black> memos. The fact that Adolf Hitler allegedly had thoughts similar to some in those long discredited <font color=blue>"Hitler's diaries"<font color=black> doesn't make them more than sleazy frauds.
The president of CBS News now says the network will <font color=blue>"redouble its efforts"<font color=black> to investigate the documents. The time to do that was before the story aired. And some journalists wonder why many Americans think we're biased, arrogant and inaccurate. The burden of proof here was on Rather and Co. If they did ignore warnings from experts, they hurt a lot of honest reporters.
News organizations that relied in part on CBS' story--the Tribune included--put some faith in CBS News' credibility. Only to learn that the network may have had its trademark eye wide shut.<font size=3>
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