Analysis: 'Final' report on CBS?

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The decision by CBS to terminate four CBS News employees over a report on President Bush's military service, and the inquiry that led to the decision, will not likely settle larger questions about the role of media -- both new and "old" -- in U.S. political life.

The CBS News employees were let go for their roles in broadcasting a "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War -- a report that relied in part on documents whose authenticity turned out to be questionable.

The controversy over the documents -- and how they came to be featured prominently in the report -- led CBS' parent company, Viacom, to appoint an independent panel to investigate the matter. The panel -- headed by retired news executive Louis D. Boccardi and former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh -- has concluded that CBS News failed to adhere to basic journalistic principles in preparing and reporting the story and that it compounded the failure by engaging in a "rigid and blind" defense of the report.

CBS has terminated Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News prime-time programs; "60 Minutes Wednesday" Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard's deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The network also fired Mary Mapes -- a longtime star producer for CBS -- who was the producer on the Bush National Guard story.

Dan Rather, who reported the story on the Sept. 8, 2004, edition of "60 Minutes Wednesday," is stepping down as anchor of "CBS Evening News" on March 9.

"We deeply regret the disservice this flawed '60 Minutes Wednesday' report did to the American public," said CBS President Leslie Moonves, "which has a right to count on CBS News for fairness and accuracy."

Conservative critics of CBS News have accused Rather and company of waging a biased campaign on behalf of liberal ideology and alleged that the story on Bush's National Guard service was intentionally designed to help the Democratic Party presidential ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards during the 2004 presidential campaign. But Boccardi and Thornburgh exonerated CBS on that count, concluding that a "myopic zeal" to beat the news competition to the story was a key factor in presenting the story.

The panel acknowledged that some actions taken by CBS News tended to encourage suspicion about its motives but that there was no reason to conclude that "a political agenda at '60 Minutes Wednesday' drove either the timing of the airing of the segment or its content." The panel concluded that the story got on the air, at least in part, out of "deference" for the journalistic record compiled by Rather and Mapes during their careers at CBS.

Web sites including Little Green Footballs and Free Republic, which helped drive the controversy over the authenticity of the National Guard documents, are widely seen as part of a new media dynamic in which smaller, more nimble organizations can have an impact on public opinion -- and may even be helping to undermine the traditional power of big media.

Elizabeth Garrett, a law professor at the University of Southern California and the director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics, told United Press International there is no question that the role of media in U.S. politics is changing -- largely because the major media have become part of the conglomerate culture but are still governed by rules that applied when they were largely independent.

"It strikes me that we have many laws and norms left over from decades ago as to how the media are organized," she said. "We still haven't come to grips with how the new setup affects politics."

Garret said a major issue that needs to be resolved is the exemption of news media from laws on campaign finance.

"This is a world where CBS, ABC and others are members of an industry that goes to the government all the time asking for favors," she said.

The National Rifle Association figured out last year that it could gain an exemption from campaign-finance restrictions by creating a newsletter and calling itself a news organization. However, the recent controversy involving conservative columnist Armstrong Williams suggests that it might not be so easy to have it both ways.

Williams has apologized for showing "bad judgment" following a report in USA Today that the Bush administration had paid him $240,000 to promote its No Child Left Behind education bill. Williams had supported the policy already, but he had not informed readers and listeners about the financial arrangement -- and has now characterized it as a conflict of interest.

Williams even told liberal columnist David Corn -- who wrote about it in The Nation -- that government payment to pundits "happens all the time." Corn said he asked Williams if other conservative commentators take money from the Bush administration and asked for names, but Williams changed the subject.

"I'm not going to defend myself that way," he said.

The Williams story is already being used to deflect -- or at least dilute -- criticism of CBS over the Bush National Guard story.

Following the release of the CBS report Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie issued a statement that, while acknowledging the honesty and integrity of "the vast majority of journalists," nevertheless took a parting shot at CBS News for "unprofessional conduct" on the Bush story.

The Democratic National Committee quickly followed with a statement saying that the real case of unprofessional conduct was the payment to Williams.

"As long as the White House refuses to answer whether they paid other conservative commentators to push out the party line," said the statement, "any Republican talk of 'unprofessional media conduct' rings hollow."

Boccardi and Thornburgh included several recommendations in their report intended to avoid a repetition of CBS News' mistake -- including one to "foster an atmosphere in which competitive pressure is not allowed to prompt airing of reports before all investigation and vetting is done." But journalists learn from their first day on the job that being first with a story gets you nothing -- or worse -- if you haven't got the story right.

Perhaps another study would be in order -- to determine other ways in which the pressure on network news divisions to function as profit centers has affected the quality of journalism that they produce.

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