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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (93256)	1/11/2005 2:25:49 PM
From: one_less	Respond to of 108807

4 CBS staffers fired over report on Bush Probe accuses network of "myopic zeal" but found no political agenda By David Bauder The Associated Press New York - Four CBS News staffers were fired Monday following the release of an independent investigation that said a "myopic zeal" led to the airing of a discredited story about President Bush's military service. The panel's 224-page report detailed dozens of missteps, including the reliance on documents that were allegedly forged to a circle-the-wagons mentality that compounded the damage. CBS fired Mary Mapes, producer of the report aired Sept. 8 on "60 Minutes Wednesday"; Josh Howard, executive producer of the show; his top deputy Mary Murphy; and senior vice president Betsy West. Dan Rather, who narrated the report, was faulted for "errors of credulity and overenthusiasm," but was not disciplined by top CBS executive Leslie Moonves. Rather announced in November that he was stepping down as anchorman of the "CBS Evening News," but insisted the timing had nothing to do with the investigation. CBS News President Andrew Heyward kept his job. The panel said Heyward had explicitly urged caution before the report aired. CBS is part of media conglomerate Viacom Inc. Moonves had appointed former Republican Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi, retired president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press, to investigate what went wrong. They delivered their report last week. "These problems were caused primarily by a myopic zeal to be the first news organization to broadcast what was believed to be a new story about President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, and the rigid and blind defense of the segment after it aired despite numerous indications of its shortcomings," the panelists concluded. Boccardi and Thornburgh said they could find no evidence to conclude the report - aired two months before Bush won re-election - was politically motivated. The report cited documents purported to be from one of Bush's commanders in the Texas Air National Guard. The documents say the commander, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, ordered Bush to take a medical exam and the future president did not. Killian also reportedly felt pressured to sugarcoat an evaluation of then 1st Lt. Bush. Questions were quickly raised about the memo. Some document experts said the memo appeared to have been written on a computer that had not been invented at the time. Although the panel said it couldn't prove conclusively the documents were forged, it said CBS News failed to authenticate them and falsely claimed an expert had done so when all he had done was authenticate one signature. The panel said Mapes had misled her superiors about the documents and the background of her source, retired Texas National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett. CBS News executives relied too heavily on Mapes, who only months earlier had broken the story about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and had been investigating Bush's National Guard service since 1999. Howard, who had begun supervising "60 Minutes Wednesday" in June, gave too much deference to her and Rather, the panel said. Reached at her Dallas home today, Mapes said: "I haven't seen the report yet, so I won't be saying anything until I do." Two days after the report, Heyward ordered West to review the opinions of document examiners and confidential sources who had supported the story - but no such investigation was done, Thornburgh and Boccardi said. "Had this directive been followed promptly, the panel does not believe that '60 Minutes Wednesday' would have publicly defended the segment for another 10 days," Boccardi and Thornburgh wrote. The panel faulted Rather, and said it did not appear he had even seen the report until its broadcast. And it said CBS' apology, issued nearly two weeks after the report aired, unfairly pinned too much blame on Burkett and not enough on its own failures. Following the independent investigation, CBS News appointed one of its executives, Linda Mason, to a newly created job of senior vice president of standards and special projects. It will be her job to thoroughly review everything about an investigative scandal before it airs. Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes" on Sunday, will oversee the Wednesday broadcast as well for the rest of the TV season. Both Moonves and the panel said it hoped the report did not have a "chilling effect" on CBS News' commitment to investigative journalism. "By doing what needed to be done, as painful as some of these steps are, we hope to have moved decisively to set the record straight, and to turn this crisis into an opportunity to make CBS News stronger than it ever has been," Moonves said denverpost.com

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (93256)	1/11/2005 2:30:01 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

I just think it should all be on the table. If a $2 Chinese shirt can fetch $20 in America, but that kills American jobs, that might be a foolish thing for me as a consumer if $18 of that $20 is really associated with making somebody rich short term, especially if they don't give a darn about me, my family or citizenry. Unless the middlemen and manufacturers are providing EXACTLY the same services (with all the spinoff dollars and labor protections, etc.) it really isn't the SAME shirt even though to one person (the one who wears it) it might be. If the dye plant in China is making chromium or mercury waste that will end up in the food chain (in imported Shitake mushrooms that aren't inspected) then this little, harmless, shirt is now poisoning the food supply. What is the marginal value of that? If the only savings is $3 ($2 from China/$18 to middlemen vs. $23 in America) and most of the value is going to people who have no interest in my health or that of my neighbor, then really, I'd rather pay $23 for the shirt.