Nbadan
09-19-2004, 07:32 AM
Sept. 17 - It's like that television ad, "Another loan lost to Ditech." From the Kerry campaign's perspective, this was another week lost to the Republicans. George W. Bush's proven failure to fulfill his National Guard duties was widely reported, but because of CBS's flawed journalism, the GOP was able to shift the story away from Bush's credibility to Dan Rather's.
"Score it as a loss for [John] Kerry and as a loss for the liberal news media," says pollster John Zogby. "It's amazing how Fox is the tail that wags the dog. Fox, [cybergossip Matt] Drudge and [Rush] Limbaugh are in the driver's seat." Zogby attributes much of Kerry's slide in the polls to discouraged Democrats moving into the undecided column. "I've never seen a situation where a candidate has de-energized his own base," says Zogby. "He's not saying anything his own base needs to hear."
Republican lapdogs on Capitol Hill rushed to cash in on "Rathergate." Rep. Chris Cox, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, urged the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications to investigate CBS's use of potentially falsified documents. This is a party that launches investigations into Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction—and now this—while ignoring the intelligence lapses that led the country into an unnecessary war in Iraq, and covering for Bush when he exaggerates the progress in that nation’s development. The National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the president in late July, and reported Thursday by The New York Times, describes Iraq in far more pessimistic terms than Bush does on the campaign trail, with civil war a likely outcome.
The White House kept the report under wraps for two months, yet where is the outrage? Instead, Republicans want to launch hearings on the inner workings of CBS. "It really scares me when members of Congress begin to publicly talk about holding an investigation into how a journalist does his job," says Bill Kovach, veteran newsman and founder of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. The First Amendment begins with the words "Congress shall make no law" when it comes to abridging freedom of religion or expression, or freedom of the press. "What if Congress began an investigation into what the Catholic church does," Kovach says to make his point on how wildly inappropriate Cox's action is.
Clearly CBS and Dan Rather now have doubts about the quality of the documents they aired last week about Bush's behavior as a young lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard. The network had reason to question the story even before the broadcast, but chose not to share its concerns with the viewing public. "I'm troubled by the lack of transparency on the part of CBS," says Kovach. A former New York Times Washington bureau chief and former editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kovach thinks CBS should have said at the very beginning that it believed the documents to be accurate but couldn't be sure, but that people on the scene at the time say they adequately reflect the perceptions of Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died in 1984. "Be honest about what you've got and you wouldn't be in as much jeopardy," says Kovach, whose high ethical standards throughout his long career earned him the moniker, "the conscience of journalism.”
The controversy over the memos overshadowed what is known about Bush's Guard service, or lack thereof. First, Bush needed political pull to land a coveted spot in the Texas Guard. Former Texas House speaker Ben Barnes, a Democrat, told Rather that he helped Bush at the request of a Bush family friend, that he did it for countless other well-connected young men and that he regretted it. Secondly, we know Bush didn't show up in Alabama when he was supposed to. There's a $50,000 reward for anybody who can vouch for him, and nobody has stepped forward. Third, The Boston Globe revealed that Bush never reported for Guard duty in Boston as promised when he attended Harvard Business School. Lastly, Killian's secretary, Marian Carr Knox, says the content of the disputed memos is true even if the memos were forged.
Speculation centers on Bill Burkett, a retired Texas National Guard officer, who earlier this year said that he had overheard a conversation in the spring of 1997 about needing to "sanitize" Bush's Guard records. Bush was running for a second term as governor and anticipating a run for the presidency. Burkett said he later saw dozens of pages from Bush's file dumped in the trash.
It isn't hard to imagine a frustrated Burkett re-creating memos he knew existed, and which he believed the Bush machine had destroyed—and doing an amateurish job of fakery. "Your imagination is free to roam anywhere it wants to because they [CBS] haven't shut the door," says Kovach.
Journalists fight to the death to protect a source, but in this case Kovach thinks the burden is on CBS to provide more information about a story that goes to the heart of the network's credibility. "Anonymity is a contract,” he says. “If I'm counting on your information being absolutely foolproof, and if you deceive me, I have no obligation to protect you. It's a two-way street." The facts about Bush's Guard service are not in doubt. The question is can Rather credibly back up his claims. It's a fair question to ask any journalist.
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 3:48 p.m. ET Sept. 17, 2004
MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6030085/site/newsweek/)
"Score it as a loss for [John] Kerry and as a loss for the liberal news media," says pollster John Zogby. "It's amazing how Fox is the tail that wags the dog. Fox, [cybergossip Matt] Drudge and [Rush] Limbaugh are in the driver's seat." Zogby attributes much of Kerry's slide in the polls to discouraged Democrats moving into the undecided column. "I've never seen a situation where a candidate has de-energized his own base," says Zogby. "He's not saying anything his own base needs to hear."
Republican lapdogs on Capitol Hill rushed to cash in on "Rathergate." Rep. Chris Cox, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, urged the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications to investigate CBS's use of potentially falsified documents. This is a party that launches investigations into Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction—and now this—while ignoring the intelligence lapses that led the country into an unnecessary war in Iraq, and covering for Bush when he exaggerates the progress in that nation’s development. The National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the president in late July, and reported Thursday by The New York Times, describes Iraq in far more pessimistic terms than Bush does on the campaign trail, with civil war a likely outcome.
The White House kept the report under wraps for two months, yet where is the outrage? Instead, Republicans want to launch hearings on the inner workings of CBS. "It really scares me when members of Congress begin to publicly talk about holding an investigation into how a journalist does his job," says Bill Kovach, veteran newsman and founder of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. The First Amendment begins with the words "Congress shall make no law" when it comes to abridging freedom of religion or expression, or freedom of the press. "What if Congress began an investigation into what the Catholic church does," Kovach says to make his point on how wildly inappropriate Cox's action is.
Clearly CBS and Dan Rather now have doubts about the quality of the documents they aired last week about Bush's behavior as a young lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard. The network had reason to question the story even before the broadcast, but chose not to share its concerns with the viewing public. "I'm troubled by the lack of transparency on the part of CBS," says Kovach. A former New York Times Washington bureau chief and former editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kovach thinks CBS should have said at the very beginning that it believed the documents to be accurate but couldn't be sure, but that people on the scene at the time say they adequately reflect the perceptions of Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died in 1984. "Be honest about what you've got and you wouldn't be in as much jeopardy," says Kovach, whose high ethical standards throughout his long career earned him the moniker, "the conscience of journalism.”
The controversy over the memos overshadowed what is known about Bush's Guard service, or lack thereof. First, Bush needed political pull to land a coveted spot in the Texas Guard. Former Texas House speaker Ben Barnes, a Democrat, told Rather that he helped Bush at the request of a Bush family friend, that he did it for countless other well-connected young men and that he regretted it. Secondly, we know Bush didn't show up in Alabama when he was supposed to. There's a $50,000 reward for anybody who can vouch for him, and nobody has stepped forward. Third, The Boston Globe revealed that Bush never reported for Guard duty in Boston as promised when he attended Harvard Business School. Lastly, Killian's secretary, Marian Carr Knox, says the content of the disputed memos is true even if the memos were forged.
Speculation centers on Bill Burkett, a retired Texas National Guard officer, who earlier this year said that he had overheard a conversation in the spring of 1997 about needing to "sanitize" Bush's Guard records. Bush was running for a second term as governor and anticipating a run for the presidency. Burkett said he later saw dozens of pages from Bush's file dumped in the trash.
It isn't hard to imagine a frustrated Burkett re-creating memos he knew existed, and which he believed the Bush machine had destroyed—and doing an amateurish job of fakery. "Your imagination is free to roam anywhere it wants to because they [CBS] haven't shut the door," says Kovach.
Journalists fight to the death to protect a source, but in this case Kovach thinks the burden is on CBS to provide more information about a story that goes to the heart of the network's credibility. "Anonymity is a contract,” he says. “If I'm counting on your information being absolutely foolproof, and if you deceive me, I have no obligation to protect you. It's a two-way street." The facts about Bush's Guard service are not in doubt. The question is can Rather credibly back up his claims. It's a fair question to ask any journalist.
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 3:48 p.m. ET Sept. 17, 2004
MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6030085/site/newsweek/)