tkdan28: my favorite Pet Shop Boys song

Not sure what your favorite Pet Shop Boys song is, but "Tainted Love" was by Soft Cell, and it was a cover of the 1964 hit of the same title by Gloria Jones.

ArizonaBay: I've never seen a satisfactory finding that the report was false.

Not the problem. The problem was that Rather & Co. could not prove it was TRUE.

Abagadro: If you have the info you better get on the horn to Richard Thornburgh so he can fix his official report on the matter.

STILL not the issue.

Claims require proof; extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

My first degree is in journalism; I still work in that field. The first thing you learn is not to print anything you can't prove. It is not sufficient to print things no one else can DISPROVE.

If you can't prove it, you don't print it. If you do print it and it turns out you didn't have proof, you lose your job. That's why Mapes got fired and Dan put out to pasture.

Rather and Mapes were like court prosecutors in this regard. A prosecutor has to PROVE guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The burden of proof is therefore upon him--not the defense attorney. The prosecutor doesn't get to protest that the defense can't prove the charges false. If he fails to make his case, the case gets thrown out of court.

I have no doubt Bush didn't show up for the physical in question and that he gamed the rules some when he was in TANG.

But Rather went on the air and claimed he had proof the rumor was true. And when his evidence was called into question, it turned out he and Mapes had broken every rule in the book getting this story to air:

1. The first of the three document experts said the documents looked fake.

2. The second said she could say nothing meaningful because they were faxes of photocopies--too far removed from the originals.

3. The third said the signature looked real, but that there was no way to tell if it had originally been affixed to the documents in question or how old they were.

4. After the story aired and the questions started rolling in, Rather insisted they documents had been examined and certified by three experts.

5. Whereupon the first two angrily went on record saying they had said no such thing.

6. And the third protested he had said only that the signature looked genuine, but that it could have been a copy.

I read Thornburgh's report cover to cover. He did indeed say it was impossible to prove the documents were fake.

He also said CBS had blown the most basic rules of journalistic integrity from beginning to end and circumvented more than a few of CBS's rules.

He also said there was clear evidence that Mary Mapes was so desperate to bring this story to air that she misled the CBS brass to get the story past them.

He also said there was clear evidence that political bias drove these events.

And he concluded that the story should never have been aired, and that CBS was incredibly irresponsible and unprofessional in doing so.

Abagadro:

your standards of proof for journalism are a bit out of whack and I wonder if you apply them equally across accusations against people of other political stripes. Somehow I doubt it based upon what I have seen of you over the years.

What years? My account is one year and three weeks old.

Regardless, it's hardly out of whack to say that journalists aren't supposed to report anything they can't prove and that "You can't prove the documents are FAKE," as a defense, is a joke. If Woodward and Bernstein had had standards that crappy, Nixon would have finished his second term.

And yes, I'm just as harsh in the opposite direction. I'm still furious at WND for printing the rumors about Clinton murdering 100 people and dealing drugs.

Abagadro:

This is completely false. Ah yes, here it is, page 211:

The Panel does not find a basis to accuse those who investigated, produced, vetted, or aired the Segment of having a political bias.

Let's just check a few other quotes from that report before we read your cite in context, shall we?

Page 117: "Scott also recalled that Mapes said that one of the one of the experts 'cancelled herself out' and showed a bias by researching President Bush's TexANG service on the Internet."

Page 219: The panel points out that CBS' producer could hardly present herself as unbiased when she called Kerry's campaign manager to give him a heads-up before the segment aired.

Page 223: "The Panel recognizes the appearance problems involved in receiving information from partisan individuals. It is not at all unusual or inappropriate, however, for news organizations to obtain information from a political, business or other opponent of the subject of an investigation, given that supporters are manifestly less likely to provide critical or damaging information. It only becomes problematic if the political bias of the source is allowed by the reporter to affect the fairness of the story."

And finally, your quote in context shows that the Panel declined to accuse anyone formally of bias because they could not prove it:

"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."

Summary: OF COURSE Mapes and Rather were biased. The Panel simply noted it couldn't really prove it, but there was so much other malfeasance and misconduct it hardly mattered.

Abagadro:

requiring "proof" (to whose satisfaction BTW?) before publishing something seems like an incredibly high standard that would grind journalism to a halt

Well, for starters--how about the document experts they asked to examine the documents, and whose professional advice they ignored?

Yes, it's a high standard. But when you're a journalist, your stock in trade is credibility. No effort to protect it is too much.

Wintermute: that headline ROXORZ

*bows*

Thank you! I'm here all week! Try the veal!

Rather's on Daily Show now, reading Pink Floyd lyrics off a teleprompter.

Now there's a fine ending to an illustrious career.

Abagadro:

That is an affirmative finding, not just "we can't prove it." So you are not even misrepresenting the findings, you are direcly contradicting them.

Not if you look at what the panel report said about bias as a whole.

But I'll agree that's a subjective conclusion either way, as the panel said.

The point, however, as I've been saying all along, is that CBS could not prove its claims--its documentary evidence was totally unreliable. Rather's/Mapes' segment was irresponsible, unprofessional and should never have been aired.