CONSEQUENCES
CBS Quiet About Fallout, but Precedent Is Ominous
By BILL CARTER and JACQUES STEINBERG - NYT
Shortly after NBC News suffered the worst scandal in its history more than a decade ago, admitting that it had rigged a General Motors truck to explode in an accident staged for "Dateline," a longtime network news anchor offered cautionary words.
"There's no rejoicing that a terrible, unusual journalistic practice has been caught, punished and eradicated," the anchor said. "Because we all know that with only a slight relaxation of vigilance and a slight increase of fear, those journalistic sins could be visited upon us."
The speaker of those words, Dan Rather, the anchor of CBS News, now finds himself and CBS News implicated in just such a relaxation of vigilance, one that threatens to tarnish their reputations, drive away viewers and advertisers and jeopardize the careers of several people involved in the report.
Yesterday, CBS News acknowledged in a statement and on its evening newscast that a source had duped it and that it could no longer vouch for the documents in a "60 Minutes" report that said President Bush was given preferential treatment in his National Guard service.
"Somewhere along the way, somebody got really sucker punched in this," said Bob Lee, the president and general manager of WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Va., and the president of the CBS Affiliates Association, which represents about 180 stations. Besides Mr. Rather, others at CBS News under scrutiny include the producer of the report, Mary Mapes, who is widely considered one of the best newsmagazine producers at CBS News and who recently oversaw the "60 Minutes" report about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq, and Andrew Heyward, longtime president of CBS News.
CBS executives said nothing about any such fallout from this incident. A spokeswoman for CBS News, Sandy Genelius, said, "CBS News does not comment on rumor and speculation."
But CBS News and CBS management announced that they were "commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken."
Certainly there is precedent for the harsh treatment of those involved in such missteps.
In the "Dateline" incident in 1993, three producers and the president of NBC News, Michael Gartner, were shown the door.
At CNN, after a report in 1998 saying that American soldiers had used nerve gas against American defectors in Laos in the Vietnam War had been discredited, two producers of the report and the head producer of the documentary unit were fired. The role of the correspondent, Peter Arnett, was downgraded, and he eventually left, too. But although the top executive, Tom Johnson, offered to resign, he remained.
CBS News made its acknowledgement as news organizations are struggling with a crisis of credibility that has been fueled, at least in part, by admissions of fabrication or plagiarism by newspapers large and small. Among those news organizations are The New York Times and USA Today, whose top editors resigned after each paper had reported widespread fabrications by one of its reporters.
For Mr. Rather, 72, the episode could prove a painful coda to a four-decade career that has produced extraordinary highs and lows. Known for his reporting on President John F. Kennedy's assassination and for vigorously standing up to President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Rather also was involved in a number of strange incidents, including one on a night when CBS went black for seven minutes after he stormed out of his anchor chair because a tennis broadcast delayed the news and another in a street confrontation with a lunatic who pummeled him while screaming, "What is the frequency, Kenneth?"
Mr. Rather's reporting about the first President George Bush made him a target of conservative critics who accused him of liberal bias, which Mr. Rather and CBS News always strenuously deny.
Many critics immediately called for the resignation of Mr. Rather, who has been rumored for some time to be near retirement. Ms. Genelius said: "We have always said that at an appropriate time there would be an orderly succession at 'The CBS Evening News.' That hasn't changed."
In a telephone interview, Mr. Rather said: "I'm not worried about how it affects me. I am concerned about the reputation. integrity and honor of CBS News and the people that I work with. My whole professional life is wrapped up in CBS News. I love the place. I would never do anything to harm it at whatever expense to myself. I would never knowingly do that."
Although few television executives expect the disclosures to affect the popularity ratings of the entertainment shows at CBS, the most-watched network in prime time with hits like "C.S.I." and "Survivor,'' its news programs are more vulnerable. The evening and morning programs are a distant third, and any loss of viewers would mean losses in advertising revenue.
Some longtime veterans of the Sunday evening program expressed outrage that the newer Wednesday night edition, until this summer named "60 Minutes II," had produced a report that could damage the reputation of the original.
"These are not standards that would have been ever tolerated, and it's inconceivable this would have made it on the air on the Sunday show," Morley Safer of the original "60 Minutes" said.
Mr. Rather and the Wednesday program have defenders, too. Howard Stringer, chairman of Sony USA, was a president of CBS News, as well as executive producer of Mr. Rather's newscast when it dominated the ratings. Mr. Stringer said he did not believe that the "60 Minutes" mistakes enough to cost Mr. Rather or Mr. Heyward their jobs.
There is no political bias, he said, adding: "Dan Rather is tough on Republicans. He's tough on Democrats, and he's tough on himself."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
