Via Instapundit;
Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush's National Guard service.The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with "rigid and blind" defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report.
Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard's deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated.
[...]
"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." [*cough* - ed]
The full panel report (pdf).
Harking back to something I mentioned in September;"About a week ago, I began to wonder why one person mentioned in the discredited Rathergate memos had not commented on the controversy. My suspicion is that he may have been seeking legal advice - as far as I can tell, it looks as though he'd have one hell of a libel suit against CBS"; this observation from Ratherbiased about the delay in the release of the report;
It's now been 110 days since CBS News President Andrew Heyward promised the report would come "in weeks, not months." Is Walter Staudt, the former commanding officer of George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard unit, indirectly responsible for why we haven't heard anything from the Memogate commission?That may very well prove to be the case considering that Staudt may have good grounds for a libel suit against CBS for claiming, without even asking him, that he had pressured subordinates to "sugarcoat" the record of Lt. Bush. One thing is almost for sure, if the report is released in a heavily edited form, the odds are pretty high CBS is worried about getting sued.
Stay tuned, as various bloggers are now combing and factchecking the report.
update
Rather informed the Panel that he still believes the content of the documents is true because 'the facts are right on the money,' and that no one had provided persuasive evidence that the documents were not authentic.
Powerline has some damning quotes and analysis.
Smith sent an email to Mapes proposing that they set up a book deal for Burkett so that he could be paid in exchange for turning over the documents:
Today I am going to send the following hypothetical scenario to a reliable, trustable editor friend of mine...What if there was a person who might have some information that could possibly change the momentum of an election but we needed to get an ASAP book deal to help get us the information? What kinds of turnaround payment schedules are possible, keeping in mind that the book probably could not make it out until after the election.
Mapes replied: "that looks good, hypothetically speaking, of course."
Egads.
politics, a dirty job but someone has to do it,definitely a blood sport.
The report focuses almost exclusively on the specifics of the CBS reporting, and does not (generally) independently examine the questions raised. The Panel did talk to one typography expert, but never did a proper examination of the authenticity of the documents (so their "inconclusive" conclusion regarding the authenticity of the documents is somewhat misleading). Similarly, although the Panel spends considerable effort describing the competition for "the story," and mentions that USA Today used the same memos in a story the next day, there is no description as to how USA Today came by those documents.
I'd expect extensive coverage over at LittleGreenFootballs, PowerLine, and PoliPundit.
"the Panel cannot conclude that a political agenda at 60 Minutes Wednesday drove either the timing of the airing of the segment or its conten " . That is why Dick was put on the Panel by Viacom, to mask their sloppy smear attempt. An independent panel would have concluded.
Rod Stanton
Cerritos
Shame they didn't honestly mention the political aspect - would have been nice to see CBS (or at least Mapes and Rather) charged with trying to rig an election. Considering how long Mapes was working on that story and the intended timing of the release, it seems pretty obvious to me that's what they were doing.
And what kind of news station lets an employee work on the same story for that long? She should have been told publish it or kill it a long time ago.