3 of the 4 CBS firings were Female. Martha Burke Where Are You?

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG

The Small Matter of Proof
The CBS report is the liveliest investigative document to come along in a long time.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005 12:01 a.m.

The Independent Review Panel's conclusions concerning CBS's "60 Minutes" report on George Bush's National Guard Service was a long time in coming--not long enough, though, to dull memories of that debacle, or the bitterness of CBS staff bearing the heaviest burden of blame for it. Mary Mapes, producer of the Sept. 8 segment, who was fired outright--three others accountable for the program, one of them a longtime executive, were asked for their resignations--issued a statement Monday night, accusing CBS chairman Leslie Moonves of "vitriolic scapegoating," which, she said, shocked her. Mr. Moonves, it appears, was also shocked--in particular, he told the press that same day, at the CBS team's investigative failures.

The first matter to leap out at readers of the report would be its refusal to deliver judgments on certain questions. Chief among these: the matter of whether the Bush National Guard broadcast had been motivated by political bias. The report's authors--Dick Thornburgh, former U.S. attorney general, and Louis D. Boccardi, former head of the Associated Press--concluded they had no basis for such a finding.

The subject chewed up considerable airtime Monday night as pundits, roundtable guests and plenty of other people wondered how such indicators as producer Mary Mapes's five-year pursuit of the National Guard story--zeal of this sort doesn't come along every day--could have been overlooked, in this regard, or explained, as the report does, simply as a matter of a producer having waited, all those years, for the right proof. The producer thus described as one who had cautiously refrained from going forward with that story without adequate proof is, after all, the same Ms. Mapes who, a few months ago, gave false assurances about the reliability of her chief source and committed offenses against fairness and accuracy--described in merciless detail in the panel's report--in order to get the segment on the air.

Ms. Mapes's faith that the documents on which the program was based are authentic endures to this day. Indeed, she pointedly noted Monday, the panel had not concluded that they were false--a wonderfully revealing testament to the mind behind the broadcast. The panelists had decided, as they said, that they could not prove the documents false and so would not make the charge. To Ms. Mapes, to whom cautions of this kind may seem quaint, it was a corroboration of her claims.

She is not alone. Dan Rather, too, continues to believe in the authenticity of the documents on the ground, as he told the panel, that no one provided evidence the documents were not authentic. The anchor's interviews with the panel on this, as well as his various and complicated public apologies for the segment--which the panelists are moved, twice, to call "troubling"--stand among the most intriguing features of this report. (Mr. Rather announced yesterday that he would keep its lessons in mind.)

The Independent Review Panel's report is, indeed, the liveliest investigative document to come along in a long while. A good thing, given the considerable number of Americans not normally inclined to worry their heads over behind-the-scenes network mysteries who followed this affair during the amazing 12-day period in which the network stood by its story, even when its last shred of respectability was clearly gone; that saw, indeed, Dan Rather--reporter on the "60 Minutes'' segment in question--claim that political adversaries were behind all the attacks on the piece.

The public following all this seemed to know that it was witnessing something exceptional and strange--namely, the spectacle of one of the most powerful media organs in society apparently willing to stand exposed to the world, day after day, as it issued a series of responses clearly revealing that what mattered to CBS News, above all, was a successful defense of its story. The obviousness of this raw purpose would be, in the end, the most memorable feature of this saga. As criticism of the "60 Minutes" broadcast increased, the "CBS Evening News" itself weighed in with reports asserting the story's legitimacy--reports prepared and delivered by the very personnel responsible for the "60 Minutes" story.

All this, the panelists contemplate in crisp, unsparing terms. One of the e-mails they quote nicely captures the wartime atmosphere at the network, with executives hanging tough in support of the documents' authenticity. Gil Schwartz, executive vice president for CBS Communications, sends a Sept. 13 message titled "Total Red Alert" to CBS News head Andrew Heyward. It says, "Our entire reputation as a news division now rests on our fielding a couple of experts on our side TODAY. BY PRESS TIME. Tomorrow will be TOO LATE. . . ."

Monday, the authors did a long round of television interviews in which they evidenced a tone notably more benevolent than any to be found in their 223-page work. Television has a way of inducing such tones in guests--these were no exception--and a way, not equally harmless, of reducing matters to simple points. Encouraged to provide a main reason for CBS's handling of the story, Mr. Thornburgh obliged, telling host Terence Smith of the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," "If you're looking for a villain in this story, we have one. It's haste."

The villainy that the panel's report had unearthed concerned, of course, matters infinitely more complicated, subtle and dark than this answer suggests. Nor is it easy for anyone acquainted with the case to imagine that more time would have produced a different story--the producer had the story she wanted. Possibly, to be sure, some executive might in time have overcome the problem of the diffidence generally accorded producer Mapes and Dan Rather long enough to demand verification of the charges CBS was about to air. Decidedly iffy propositions, these. Neither does haste explain the most extraordinary aspect of this history--namely the behavior of the network, which had, it would appear, no end of time to devote to its stonewalling.

The panel's authors otherwise used their media interviews to their advantage, not least in their responses to the most often raised questions put to them: Why had they come to no conclusion about the authenticity of the documents on which CBS relied for the segment? And why had they decided they could find no basis for political bias? Their answer to both questions was clear--they had no wish to emulate the producers responsible for the "60 Minutes" report by making allegations for which they could offer no proof.

It would be difficult to argue with this position, however tempting it might be. The panel's report did take note of the producers' clear failure to avoid the appearance of political motivation in the Bush National Guard story.

Messrs. Thornburgh and Boccardi deserve credit for their report. Among all the reasons cited, one could also add their failure to succumb to any temptation to universalize CBS's offense, their disinclination to meditate on the nature of journalism and the frailties of its practitioners. They focused on facts, uncovered evasions and lies without averting their eyes, confronted all the significant issues stemming from this saga, and did it all in eminently lucid and astringent prose. It's hard to ask for much more. There will be, in our future, other stories like the one that gave birth to this drama--investigations driven by zeal, political and otherwise, devoid of proofs, reported by journalists interested only in testimony supportive of their charges. But it will be some while, we may guess--and not only at CBS--before a producer will be able to undertake one without apprehension about some blogger waiting to pounce, or, more simply, the memory of the National Guard story and its aftermath. The ghost of "60 Minutes," Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2004, could be around to do its haunting for a long time to come, and a good thing it will be.