"Newsnight with Aaron Brown" on CNN had a discussion about Rathergate. Mickey Kaus is a Kerry supporter, but in this bunch he was on the right. Micheal Wolff came across as a "flit."
BROWN: The CBS document story, the story of the story, if you will, raises all sorts of questions ranging from damage done, to the political impact, to the power of the bloggers, who first started raising questions. And we'll spend some time tonight on all of them.
We're joined in New York by our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield as well as Michael Wolff, who writes about media for "Vanity Fair" magazine these days. Alex Jones joins us, too, former reporter for "The New York Times," now director for the Shorenstein Center for the Press and Public Policy at Harvard. He comes to us from Boston. And Mickey Kaus, a blogger and a columnist for Slate.com, is in our D.C. bureau.
And we're pleased to have you all.
Alex, how much damage done to CBS on this?
ALEX JONES, DIRECTOR, SHORENSTEIN CENTER: Well, plenty of damage. I think plenty of damage without question, but I don't think it is fatal damage, provided they come clean about how this got on the air, and I mean really go into the process and explain not only how it happened, but how it will not happen again, I mean, what they're going to put in place that apparently wasn't in place when they considered this.
But I think they've also got to figure out who these documents came from. I think CBS owes us that as well.
BROWN: But do they have to -- do heads have to roll there?
JONES: Well, my guess is that there's going to be some head- rolling, but I don't think it will be Dan Rather's. But I don't really know. I think that depends on what their explanation shows was the problem. I mean, was it someone who showed such staggeringly bad judgment that you couldn't trust them to be in a position of authority again? If that should happen, then that person probably will go.
BROWN: Mike, you've been talking to the CBS people today. What's the mood over there?
MICHAEL WOLFF, "VANITY FAIR": Panicky.
BROWN: Panicky?
WOLFF: I would say, yes, panicky. They don't know what to do. They don't know how this happened. They think that they've made all the wrong moves. I mean, it is just that moment in which you find an organization...
BROWN: There was no sense of relief today that all this that had built up over the last...
WOLFF: No, you don't feel relief at this point in time. You feel, actually, like heads are going to roll and it is quite possibly your head that's going to roll.
And what you don't have is a clear sense of how to handle this, of how to move forward. That may come. I certainly put in my two cents today. Would you like to know what my two cents was?
BROWN: That's why we're paying you what we're paying you.
(LAUGHTER)
WOLFF: Literally, I said, if you believe in the story, which I think that they all still do...
BROWN: The underlying story, that the president (CROSSTALK)
WOLFF: The underlying story, the real story, that the president's service was facilitated and abbreviated, let us say. If you believe in that, I said, I would just apologize for what you got wrong and keep following the story, say, that's what we're committed to.
BROWN: All right.
I want to get to the blogger question in a second, but, Jeff, you and I were talking about this actually this afternoon in the hallway. Does this take at some level the whole president -- and maybe it should be off the table -- I'm not sure how relevant it is to anything anyway -- does it take it off the table?
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: To a substantial extent.
This is like what an old teacher of mine used to call the 13th stroke of the clock, which casts doubt not only on itself, but all that has gone before, fairly or not. Look, just today, "The New York Times" did a front page story on Bush and the Guard without any of these documents. And the other papers have done it.
But the problem is, it's like a prosecutor who gets an obviously guilty guy, but then uses tainted evidence. And what often happens is, the whole case gets thrown out. And I think, to some extent in the minds of people who are in a mood to distrust sources more than they are to judge impartially whether a story is true or not, yes, I'd be -- I doubt that the Democratic National Committee is going to want to pursue the fortunate son story very long, even if there's a lot of truth to it, which I think there probably is.
BROWN: Mickey, I want to talk about bloggers, but let me get to you weigh in on this question, too. Does this forever kill the idea that there is a politically effective story in the president's National Guard years?
MICKEY KAUS, KAUSFILES.COM: I think it does. And I think it is good for Kerry. He finally came out with a statement on Iraq today. And now he wants to focus on that, not on the Vietnam era. And I think it is actually a good thing for him to get the fortunate son story out of the way.
BROWN: Why? Why would it be good in the White House -- if this story was still out there, the White House would have to play defense on the story. They couldn't talk about what they wanted to talk about.
KAUS: Well, but I think most people seem to feel the campaign shouldn't be about what happened 30 years ago. And they don't know what Kerry stands for. Any time you're talking about that, even if it's anti-Bush, you're not talking about what Kerry stands for. He wants the rest of the campaign to be a debate about Iraq, apparently. And I think that's a good thing for him. And why have another competing news story getting in the way? BROWN: All right.
Let's go to one of the other questions I guess that's sort of come up in all of this, and that is the role of the bloggers.
And, Mickey, A, you are one. And, B, you feel sort of strongly that this was their moment.
KAUS: Well, it's a huge victory for the bloggers.
Rather ridiculed the bloggers. A CBS executive said they were just people in their pajamas in their living rooms going on the Internet and writing what they think, which is essentially true. But, in this case, they were right. And CBS, this vaunted network that supposedly had myriad checks and balances so no mistake could ever be made, turned out to be a complete nothing. It was the emperor had no clothes. There were no checks and balances.
So it was -- Dan Rather blew it up into more of a victory for the bloggers than it had to be. And the problem isn't so much getting the story wrong in the first place as the week of cover-up that followed, during which they said, we have complete confidence in the chain of custody, we have complete confidence in the documents. All of it turned out not to be true. Why did they put out those press releases?
BROWN: Alex, does this in your mind signal some sort of watershed moment for the traditional mainstream press and everyone and everything else out there?
JONES: Well, certainly, the bloggers are watching. There's no question about that. And that's probably a good thing.
I think that the other aspect of this that probably does not apply in this case, but certainly lends itself to suggestion is, if you can get something phony into a newscast, you can discredit it in a dramatic way. And, as Jeff said, it's like the old plot to the movie "Witness For the Prosecution" when the killer is let loose because the wife discredits herself.
I think that the point is that the bloggers are watching, that -- to safeguard. They're watchdogs. I don't think that Mickey's been entirely fair to CBS. I do fault them. I think they could have done what they did today a week ago, certainly. But I don't think it was entirely because it was a smokescreen. I think they were really still in the thrall of this man Burkett. And I think that they somehow for reasons that are yet still unexplained, believed him past, far past when anyone reasonable would think that they should, even though they put the secretary on the air who discredited the documents herself.
I think that there was a schizophrenia almost going on there and a denial perhaps, but also a real struggle within the institution to find out what the facts were, because they did have a kind of faith in these documents that went beyond reason, to an outsider anyway. And I think that still has to be explained.
(CROSSTALK) BROWN: Mickey, hang on. We'll come back to you on that point and get Jeff and Michael too.
We need to take a quick break first. We'll continue this conversation in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Continuing now with our panel, Alex Jones, Mickey Kaus, Jeff Greenfield and Michael Wolff.
On the bloggers' point.
GREENFIELD: Yes.
Look, as somebody who works in traditional media, I happen to think that bloggers are by and large a neat thing. I like the fact that people are looking over my shoulder, the army of the overinformed, people who have spent all their lives worrying about something so small, but that they know more about it than anybody else and they're going to hold you to account.
Here's the other part, though. These are not free -- these folks are not free of an agenda. They did not go after CBS because they had a great dedication to truth. They thought their guy, George Bush, was going to be damaged, just like the swift boat veterans wanted to hurt Kerry. Now, I believe in that whole notion that out of all this fray comes some truth.
But I think that what happens is more and more the quaint idea that there are some organizations that just try to figure out what's going on, that's been kind of seen as old-fashioned. And now that CBS, the network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, has been seen to be faulty, I think a whole lot of people are looking at this not as an accident or not as a bad journalistic decision, but as a political decision.
BROWN: Yes.
GREENFIELD: They wanted to take down George W. Bush.
And then the question is, is there any room to survive for people who say, I really just am trying to do reporting?
BROWN: I've got 90 seconds left. I'd like to get you all in one more time.
Michael, you want to pick up on that?
WOLFF: You know, my concern and my worry and my suspicion is that this is a formal takedown.
BROWN: Which means?
WOLFF: That means that certain people, a certain ideology looked at this story and said, we're screwed on this story. We have to discredit it anyway. How do you go about doing that? If the story is real, but you want to discredit it, then you pick up from the...
BROWN: But let me -- can I just suggest that I'm not sure that, had "The Washington Post" and other mainstream newspapers, news networks gotten involved in this story that it would have gone anywhere anyway.
WOLFF: What do you mean? It did go somewhere. What do you mean? You mean the CBS story or the question of the National Guard story?
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: The authenticity of the documents was moved as much by the mainstream press. Clearly, it was started by the bloggers. I'm not arguing that. But it was "The Washington Post," Howard Kurtz and others who worked the story very hard and I think that gave it credibility.
(CROSSTALK)
WOLFF: Obviously. But that's how it works. That's how the takedown works. You -- it originated from outside. It goes to the -- the question becomes a very literal question instead of, in this instance, the real question. Did George Bush avoid service? Did he get to be in the National Guard because -- you know, because he bought it?
BROWN: Right.
Mickey, last word. Twenty seconds.
KAUS: Even more reason to have checks and balances. In this case, the blogs turned out to have higher standards than CBS. It is sort of unfair to tar the rest of the press with CBS' behavior. I know conventional journalists who work for big papers who are appalled by what CBS did. So, in some sense, it is CBS' fault, only, as CBS.
BROWN: Mickey and Alex, Michael and Jeff, good to see you all. Thank you.
KAUS: Thanks.
BROWN: We'll take a break. We'll continue in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Tropical Storm Jeanne has killed at least 500 people in Haiti so far, survivors spending the night in trees, on top of cars and rooftops.
Then there's Hurricane Karl, bringing the season's total to seven. And that's before we even get to Tropical Storm Lisa. And then there is Ivan, hurricane past. It will be months, years before life returns to normal for many.
Here's CNN's Chris Lawrence. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hurricane Ivan did such damage to this Pensacola neighborhood, it's taken four days for families to even be allowed back in.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every little thing that I find is a treasure.
LAWRENCE: Like this bracelet from her husband's time in Vietnam. But the big things are gone. And so is the home John (ph) and Nancy McCamey (ph) shared.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first thing I said when we came out, I said, well, you know, as bad as it is, it is better than being a POW and better than being a POW'S wife.
LAWRENCE: And they would know. John's fighter jet was shot down over Vietnam in 1965. He was held captive for the next seven years. And his wife didn't know if he was dead or alive.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was nothing compared to that.
LAWRENCE: But parts of the Florida Panhandle look like they've been through a battle.
GARY COLE, PENSACOLA RESIDENT: My house is trashed.
LAWRENCE: On Pensacola Beach, entire homes have been ripped in half with no hope of repair.
(on camera): It is almost as if the hurricane picked up the beach and dumped it into this neighborhood. This is someone's living room, where you should see carpeting and tile, not sand piled halfway to the top of the door.
(voice-over): People like Gary Cole are years away from having a home to come back to.
COLE: Wait until they get water, electric, all that. Then they'll have to tear the house down, and then go through the permitting system and get a new house. It's a heartbreaker.
LAWRENCE: But one that hasn't broken the spirit of the families who survived it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One thing you learn as a POW, it can always get worse.
LAWRENCE: Chris Lawrence, CNN, Pensacola Beach.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Morning papers after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (ROOSTER CROWING)
BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. A number of kind of interesting things, OK? Of course, would I tell you if there weren't? No. Of course I would.
"International Herald Tribune," published by "The New York Times." A lot of Iraq on the front page. The picture is Senator Kerry. "Kerry Sees Crisis of Historic Dimension. He Says Iraq Missteps By Bush Could Lead to War Without End." Well, I don't know about that, but it sure isn't going very well these days. "As Iraq War Escalates, So Does Anxiety Over Iran," a sidebar story by Steven R. Weisman, an analysis piece. And down here, a very good story idea. "Iraqi Police: Hunters and Hunted." Not the most secure job on the planet these days. That's "The International Herald Tribune."
There's an intriguing story in "The Financial Times" down at the bottom here. "Bush Described as al Qaeda's Best Recruiting Sergeant by U.K. Ambassador." The British ambassador to Italy made no friends, I suspect, either in London or certainly in Washington with that comment.
"The Washington Times," not every paper -- most papers played the CBS story on the front page. "CBS Admits Memo Mistakes. Rather Offers Viewers Apology." He was pretty straight ahead about that. Also put John Kerry on the front page. "Kerry Calls Iraq War Profound Diversion."
This is the way the Charleston, West Virginia, "Gazette" headlined the Kerry speech today. "Kerry Says He Wouldn't Have Gone Into Iraq. Bush Accuses Senator of Flip-Flopping Again." How many times can you flip-flop before you're back at the beginning? I'm not sure.
"The Detroit News" leads local. "Roadwork Fixes Clogged Downtown Detroit." I've never seen it clogged in downtown Detroit.
"Philadelphia Inquirer." "Bush Gains in Crucial States," political story on the front page. And "Rather Apologizes, Says Papers May Not Be Real."
I'll bet we're just about out of time, aren't we? "Dan Rather Sorry" is "The Chicago Sun-Times." The weather tomorrow in Chicago "a gift."
We'll wrap it up in a moment. |
