Rival execs take Rather to task
By DAVID BIANCULLI
DAILY NEWS TV CRITIC
Saturday, January 22nd, 2005
New York Daily News - nydailynews.com
LOS ANGELES - NBC executives came down hard on CBS, Dan Rather and "Memogate" yesterday, saying the same situation would not have occurred in their shop.
"The biggest shock to us is that none of those safeguards were in place there," NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker told members of the Television Critics Association. "Because nothing like that could have gotten through, at any level, because of the safeguards we instituted more than a decade ago."
NBC had the misfortune of going through a similar situation in 1993 when a producer staged an explosion of a truck for a "Dateline" segment.
Regarding Rather's role in checking the accuracy of the CBS story about President Bush's National Guard service, Zucker was equally harsh.
"The degree to which responsibility was abdicated on a piece about the President of the United States, six weeks before the election," Zucker said, "is something that would have never been done by Tom Brokaw or Brian Williams. Rather's "lack of involvement on a piece of that magnitude," Zucker added, "was shocking."
Safeguards installed after the "Dateline NBC" fiasco, insisted both Zucker and NBC News President Neal Shapiro, would have prevented such a flawed story from making the air on their network.
"As I read the CBS report," Shapiro said, "I was struck by a number of things that we do that they didn't. ... The role of the senior producers and executive producers, if it gets that far, is to challenge the premise of every story."
Other layers of scrutiny at NBC include a department of standards that looks at each story without any vested interest, and executives and attorneys who do the same.
Also, NBC News procedures encourage anyone in the newsroom to come forth with concerns, even anonymously if necessary.
"Everybody should raise their hand if the story's not ready," Shapiro said. "If it's not ready, it's not ready. It doesn't make a difference who does it. It doesn't make a difference what the competitive pressures are."
NBC's new flagship anchor, Brian Williams, added that the report on the CBS story was required reading in his newsroom - and that he felt great empathy for Rather.
"I've known Dan for a long time. I think it's, on balance, a shame that his career may be viewed through the prism of the last act in the job," said Williams. "He's done some extraordinary journalism over the last few decades." |
