ABC: CBS Ignored Experts It Hired On Documents
Captain Ed
ABC Evening News continues to chase down its competitor, CBS, on the Killian forgeries. Tonight, they broadcast an expose that alleges that CBS ignored the advice of several document experts who tried to warn them that the Killian memos were faked:
ABC's Brian Ross interviewed the two experts who CBS hired to validate the National Guard documents and reports they ignored concerns they raised prior to the CBS News broadcast. "I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Emily Will told Ross. "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did," Linda James told Ross. Ross reports 2 experts told ABC News today that even the most advanced typewriter available in 1972 could not have produced the documents.
Up to now, we assumed that CBS ran with the forgeries not out of malice as much as avarice and ignorance. Now that view may turn out to have been too charitable. Far from failing to properly vet the documents, CBS knowingly moved forward with these forgeries, only stopping long enough to shop for a couple of supporting opinions from people who turned out to be unqualified to authenticate them.
This goes far beyond journalistic malpractice and could go as far as libel (or slander). Dan Rather and CBS knowingly broadcast a story they knew to be based on documents that could not be authenticated and were most likely forgeries, advice they received from their own experts.
Instead of attempting to verify the documents with the family, CBS ran to broadcast the material, knowing that it would smear a candidate for President. Verification would have been fairly easy; CBS knew where the family lived and had tracked down one of Killian's superior officers. CBS could have held the story for a few more days while they brought the documents to these witnesses for further verification. Rather than follow normal journalistic practice, they misled General Hodges by telling him the memos were handwritten and never bothered to ask the Killian family at all.
Why?
Dan Rather has had a longstanding beef with the Bush family, going back to at least the 1988 interview in which the elder George Bush gave Rather an on-camera tongue-lashing. His political affiliations have been no secret either, appearing at a Democratic fundraiser with his daughter, who has been active in the Texas state party. It's likely that Rather had a much lower threshold for evidence when it came to the Bush family; certainly, he seems to have a lower threshold for Republicans in general.
This is why Rather can base his entire story on a man who has raised a half-million dollars for the Democrats, almost a fifth of it this year on Kerry's behalf, and a handful of memos that he knows to be true whether they're forgeries or not. He knows it because George Bush is a Republican, and Rather is a partisan hack.
Now, some of you may read the above and say, "Gee, Captain, that's just a bit harsh. How can you say all that?" (Some of you may be getting the rope to hang 'em, too.) I say that because there is no other explanation. Had Rather just been snookered -- as I said earlier, it happens to everyone -- Rather would have reacted intelligently and rationally, inviting more research and updating his readers on the progress.
Instead, Rather has acted like a cornered animal; he insisted that he didn't need to prove anything to his critics, who were "political partisans". CBS went out looking for more experts to support them and came up with a couple more, who have since wilted under the scrutiny that the media and the blogosphere has accorded this story. Rather and CBS then tried to pass the entire burden of proof onto his audience, saying that the mere possibility that a typesetting machine existed was good enough -- ignoring several content errors that have also pegged the Killian memos as fakes. Now he's stonewalling, hoping it blows over.
Does an innocent man react thusly? No. He deliberately published the memos, arrogantly believing that the Tiffany Network and the great Dan Rather would never be challenged. His unchecked hubris has brought him low, and now we must ask ourselves this question: how often has he held his audience in such low esteem? What other questionably-sourced stories has he and CBS fed us over the years and decades?
If CBS wants to rescue any measure of its credibility, it needs to jettison Rather and anyone else in the decision-making chain that allowed their own experts to be ignored, putting a fraudulent smear campaign on CBS broadcast stations intended to deliberately skew a presidential election. Lacking this response, the only rational choice America has is to tune out CBS. Not just Dan Rather, not just 60 Minutes, not just prime time, but every single television show on CBS.
It's not just the partisanship -- it's the serial dishonesty that has to be excised from the mainstream media. The only way that will happen is if they feel the damage in their pocketbooks. (Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt) |
