Posted by Jim Lindgren:
Comparing Blogger Political Agendas With CBS's Lack of an Agenda.--
The [1]CBS Panel "does not believe that political motivations drove
the September 8 Segment." Further, after mentioning political agendas
and bias, the Report says: "the Panel will not level allegations for
which it cannot offer adequate proof."
Given those sentiments, the Panel is pretty quick to charge those who
exposed CBS's fraudulent documents as having a political agenda. The
motivation to seek and expose the truth is a pretty powerful one by
itself, and motivations are complex. As I have said many times before,
first you determine if the facts that someone is asserting are true or
not. Only if they are false do you begin to ask why they would be
putting forward false information, whether pushing false information
might be the result of political bias.
I can understand ignoring the probable political bias of people who
are making substantive, rational arguments (even if mistaken), or I
can understand attributing political motives to people who act
recklessly, repeatedly making statements that they know to be false
(such as that CBS's experts authenticated the documents or that they
came from "an unimpeachable source"). What I can't understand is that
the Report appears to use a double standard on whether someone has a
political agenda.
Here are some of the Report's discussion of political bias:
(1)
At the same time, some people on the Internet, at first primarily
supporters of President Bush with their own conservative political
agenda, started to question the authenticity of the documents. By
the next afternoon, however, it became clear that the criticisms
were no longer simply partisan. Mainstream media, including ABC
News, The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington
Post, were investigating whether 60 Minutes Wednesday had used fake
documents in the September 8 Segment. Thereafter, and continuing
well after September 20, 2004, when CBS News issued its apology and
stated that it could not vouch for the Killian documents'
authenticity, CBS News and 60 Minutes Wednesday were under
continuous attack by the media, political personalities and others.
Indeed, CBS News advised the Panel that between September 8 and
October 13, it received nearly 109,000 e-mails related to the
September 8 Segment, most of them negative. ...
(2)
The attacks on the September 8 Segment began virtually immediately.
One of the first came on freerepublic.com, a website:
[E]very single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally
spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people
used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used
monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not
come into common use for office memos until the introduction of
laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers.
They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then,
you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal
memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid
80's used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are
forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them
look old.85
This was followed on the morning of September 9 by further attacks,
mostly by bloggers with a conservative agenda, challenging the
authenticity of the documents. These included stories on
Powerlineblog.com86 and littlegreenfootballs.com.87 Finally, by
about 3 p.m., Matt Drudge, the author of the widely read Drudge
Report website, had joined the fray, and, thereafter, the onslaught
of attacks on the authenticity of the Killian documents was
unrelenting. . . .
(3)
H. Political Agenda
The Panel is aware that some have ascribed political motivations to
60 Minutes Wednesday's decision to air the September 8 Segment just
two months before the presidential election, while others further
found political bias in the program itself. The Panel reviewed this
issue and found certain actions that could support such charges.
However, the Panel cannot conclude that a political agenda at 60
Minutes Wednesday drove either the timing of the airing of the
Segment or its content.
Given that the Panel does not believe that political motivations
drove the September 8 Segment, questions likely will be raised as
to why these massive breakdowns occurred on this story at an
organization like CBS News with its heritage and stated commitment
to the highest standards of journalism. The Panel heard from many
that the Rather/Mapes team was a formidable force at 60 Minutes
Wednesday. ...
(4)
X. WHETHER THERE WAS A POLITICAL AGENDA DRIVING THE SEPTEMBER 8
SEGMENT
There has been widespread speculation in the media that the
September 8 Segment was motivated, in whole or in part, by an
anti-Bush political agenda. Thus, after the Segment was aired, the
following types of comments appeared in print media:
Rather has long been criticized by some conservatives as being
emblematic of the liberal news media.116 Rather's involvement in
the politically charged story has led some Bush allies to challenge
the network's general credibility.117 "I'm really heartsick she
made that call [to Lockhart]. It has the air of some kind of
conspiracy behind it to help Kerry," said Sandy Socolow, a former
executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and his
predecessor, Walter Cronkite. "She was trying to manipulate the
political process in some way that's not clear to me."118
The question of whether a political agenda played any role in the
airing of the Segment is one of the most subjective, and most
difficult, that the Panel has sought to answer. The political
agenda question was posed by the Panel directly to Dan Rather and
his producer, Mary Mapes, who appear to have drawn the greatest
attention in terms of possible political agendas. Both strongly
denied that they brought any political bias to the Segment. The
Panel recognizes that those who saw bias at work in the Segment are
likely to sweep such denials aside. However, the Panel will not
level allegations for which it cannot offer adequate proof.
The Panel does not find a basis to accuse those who investigated,
produced, vetted or aired the Segment of having a political bias.
The Panel does note, however, that on such a politically charged
story, coming in the midst of a presidential campaign in which
military service records had become an issue, there was a need for
meticulous care to avoid any suggestion of an agenda at work. The
Panel does not believe that the appropriate level of care to avoid
the appearance of political motivation was used in connection with
this story.
References
1. http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf
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