Hoystory

It’s been more than four years, and the attempts to rehabilitate former CBS newsman Dan Rather’s reputation continues. Rather is currently suing CBS for violating his employment contract and that the investigation that led to CBS determining that it could no longer stand behind the National Guard memos which purported to show that President George W. Bush had disregarded orders and been AWOL while serving in the Guard in the 1970s.

The latest on the story comes from The New York Times which points out that when CBS decided to investigate the reporting that went into the ill-fated “60 Minutes” report, that it spent time considering who to put on the panel that Republicans would respect.

Using tools unavailable to him as a reporter — including the power of subpoena and the threat of punishment against witnesses who lie under oath — he has unearthed evidence that would seem to support his assertion that CBS intended its investigation, at least in part, to quell Republican criticism of the network.

Well, duh. Seriously. This is some sort of scandal. After all the reporting on the issue that occurred in the blogosphere at places like Little Green Footballs and Powerline, why would they think they had to worry about Democrat skepticism?

Some of the documents unearthed by his investigation include notes taken at the time by Linda Mason, a vice president of CBS News. According to her notes, one potential panel member, Warren Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, was deemed a less-than-ideal candidate over fears by some that he would not “mollify the right.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Thornburgh, who served as attorney general for both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, was named a panelist by CBS, but only after a CBS lobbyist “did some other testing,” in which she was told, according to Ms. Mason’s notes, “T comes back with high marks from G.O.P.”

Another memorandum turned over to Mr. Rather’s lawyers by CBS was a long typed list of conservative commentators apparently receiving some preliminary consideration as panel members, including Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan. At the bottom of that list, someone had scribbled “Roger Ailes,” the founder of Fox News.

Asked about the assembly of the panel in a sworn deposition, Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News, acknowledged that he had wanted at least one member to sit well with conservatives: “CBS News, fairly or unfairly, had a reputation for liberal bias,” and “the harshest scrutiny was obviously going to come from the right.”

Say what you will, but Heyward is no fool. How does the obvious become scandalous?

The Times report garnered little notice at the time, until Edward Wasserman at the Miami Herald wrote a column on the subject describing it as a “scandal” that a media organization investigating journalistic malpractice directed at one political party would want to make sure that the victim of the malpractice would have faith in the investigation itself.

But CBS test-marketed the panelists. Before Thornburgh was named, the network had one of its lobbyists learn from Republican sources whether he would do. Yes, apparently. Other conservatives considered included Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh. Republican ex-Sen. Warren Rudman was rejected because, a CBS official wrote, he wouldn’t “mollify the right.”

So, a panel is convened by one of the country’s most powerful news organizations to scrutinize the journalism that produced a scathing portrayal of the dubious military record of a sitting president. And the panel is assembled to the specifications of the president’s most zealous supporters.

That the panel was “assembled to the specifications” of the extreme right of the GOP is laughable. If they’d chosen Limbaugh or Coulter, Wasserman would have a point. Thornburgh is hardly a rabid right-winger.

After calling common sense a “scandal,” Wasserman then goes into the dishonest defense of the “60 Minutes” report.

Journalists mention Rather with the same contempt reserved for such villains as Jayson Blair of The New York Times and Jack Kelley of USA Today. That’s low company. Both were frontline reporters who fabricated, plagiarized or both.

The September 2004 Bush report had problems, but it wasn’t even remotely in that league. It presented a compelling case that George W. Bush’s record with the Texas Air National Guard was marked by favoritism and dereliction. It was based on a number of interviews and, notably, on several documents — chiefly memos from Bush’s squadron commander — whose authenticity was immediately challenged.

Rather did little reporting for the segment, but led the defense. Within three weeks the network caved and said it shouldn’t have relied on the documents. That concession was viewed as acknowledging fundamental problems with the segment’s veracity. So were the conclusions of the review panel headed by Thornburgh and Boccardi.

But their 223-page report did no such thing.

The interviews in the CBS report were of anti-Bush partisans. It was the (fake) memos which gave their charges credibility. Without the (fake) memos, CBS doesn’t have a report that it can run with.

Though sharply critical of the network’s strident dismissal of critics, the panel never concluded the broadcast was wrong — that Bush’s military record wasn’t marked by favoritism and dereliction. Nor did it ever say the disputed documents were bogus. Instead, the panel concluded the documents couldn’t be proven genuine, and for a simple reason: They were photocopies. And experts are reluctant to vouch for the authenticity of any document when they can’t inspect its paper and ink.

What’s more, the panel said, the producers failed to ascertain precisely how the documents got to them — the ”chain of custody” — and therefore weren’t justified in using them. In an extraordinary passage, the panel scolded the producers for not knowing “the background, identity, credibility, motivations, biases and other relevant information about the sources of the documents.”

To paraphrase Shakespeare: Givest thou me a break. Wasserman would have his readers believe that the issue with these documents was the fact they were photocopied? To refresh your memory, here’s Charles Johnson’s famous animated gif.

The panel, which Wasserman describes as a “scandal,” even with Thornburgh was a whitewash. Wasserman says it’s the fact that CBS had a photocopy, but as you can see, the documents exactly match what you can do with Microsoft Word’s default settings — a company and a program not in existence when the memo was purportedly written in 1973. Rather’s defenders have yet to discover any typewriter that ever existed — let alone the ones Killian’s secretary said she used at that air base — that can produce the above memo.

Wasserman is either dishonest or a fool. He claims that Rather’s report was good journalism, but bad legal practice, which is why the panel of lawyers sided against Rather. But in presenting his case, Wasserman’s analysis is that of a defense lawyer, not a journalist.

For the record:

Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University.

If I were one of Wasserman’s students, I’d want my money back.

UPDATE

Powerline’s Scott Johnson discovered Wasserman’s lame apologia when the Star-Tribune felt it worth publishing. His take on the tripe can be found here.

UPDATE 2

Welcome fellow Lizardoids! Please feel free to look around.