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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (89311)	12/4/2004 9:40:49 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

Rathergate - Report predictions part one: Journalism bungles Filed under: General— Kevin Craver @ 9:30 pm Several weeks after cBS’ Sept. 8 airing of the bogus memos, a Gallup poll showed that 56 percent of Americans believed that the network made “an honest mistake“. Sixty-four percent said Rather should keep his job. But the blogosphere, energized by its role in revealing the fraud on the surface, had only just begun digging. With three months gone by, we have answered for ourselves most of the questions we want addressed in the final report. Maybe Gallup should re-poll the public. I did not have high hopes for the Memogate report, but it is a very good sign that Rather chose to surrender the anchor chair with just short of two years left on his contract. Matt Drudge’s inside sources hinted that Rather resigned after cBS executives read a draft. Here are a few of my official, bank on them, predicitons of the conclusions of two-man panel Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, Jr. as to what went wrong during the story: 1) Rather will be spanked more for the stonewalling following the story than the story’s content. If the Internet chatter is any indicator, Producer Mary Mapes will take the fall for the shoddy journalism and (maybe) liberal partisanship that allowed this to happen. Rather likely will be chastised for long supporting Mapes and the story that was ruled as bogus within hours of its airing. 2) Mapes will be found guilty of misleading CBS executives. The New York Post reported (via Blogicus) that she assured her supervisors that the memos were authenticated by four experts. But it appears only two did so, and they could only vouch for the signature, not the entire document. Execs also apparently denied Mapes permission to put Bill Burkett in contact with the Kerry campaign as payback, but she did so anyway. 3) Mapes went “expert shopping” to authenticate the memos. “Expert shopping” is a cardinal sin of every research-related field, not just journalism. Indicators abound that Mapes and her immediate underlings only aired information which supported her claim and kept equally-credible sources disputing the documents off the air: a) The widow and son of deceased Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who allegedly wrote the memos, cast doubt during their cBS interview that he wrote the memos. Those comments were not aired. b) There is credible evidence in the blogosphere that cBS withheld some of the memos from the “experts” that would have proven them bogus. Read about it at Allahpundit.com. c) Potential sources who were deemed too “pro-Bush” were left out of the report. 4) The report will hint that Mapes had an unhealthy obsession with a story. Note that I said “hint” – I would be very surprised if the report outright suspects anyone at cBS “News” of liberal bias. But on top of the monkeyshines that Mapes performed to rush this story to print, she researched it for five years, a time frame that many journalists agreed is very unusual. At the same time, cBS “News” and other MSM agencies covered the Swift Boat Veterans’ allegations with a “who cares, it’s ancient history” approach. 5) Rather and cBS President Andrew Heyward will be found guilty of negligence regarding Mapes’ techniques and work product. Editors frequently give trusted journalists a lot of latitude to get things done. In this case, Mapes’ biases fostered gross ethics violations that required constant supervision. This obviously did not happen. 6) The panel will find no evidence of collusion between CBS and the DNC, aside from Mapes putting her source in contact with the Kerry campaign. cBS President Lester Moonves said the investigation panel grilled him for a whopping three minutes. That’s a little short if the two men suspected the vaunted Tiffany Network’s news wing to be under the influence of a political party. Tune in tomorrow for my predictions of what the report will say regarding cBS’ handling of the criticism.