Open CBS postmortem thread
Feel free to comment on the admission of error on by CBS on its 60 Minutes II story on Bush’s National Guard duty — and its ramifications for the election, the mediasphere, and the blogosphere — here. Joe Gandelman has some commentary that’s worth excerpting: [B]y issuing this statement CBS has at least stopped the ...
Feel free to comment on the admission of error on by CBS on its 60 Minutes II story on Bush's National Guard duty -- and its ramifications for the election, the mediasphere, and the blogosphere -- here. Joe Gandelman has some commentary that's worth excerpting:
Feel free to comment on the admission of error on by CBS on its 60 Minutes II story on Bush’s National Guard duty — and its ramifications for the election, the mediasphere, and the blogosphere — here. Joe Gandelman has some commentary that’s worth excerpting:
[B]y issuing this statement CBS has at least stopped the massive bleeding — but not the bleeding. It waited so long it’s credibility has been damaged; this wasn’t just a case of bloggers but other key media outlets going after the veracity of CBS. If it had just been a case of bloggers CBS’ retraction wouldn’t have come. In fact, many journalists were dismayed by how this story ever got on the air, given the strict standards of confirmation on major stories practiced by not only most news outlets (including local papers) but also taught in journalism schools. PREDICTION: This will likely increase interest in the media for more information on George Bush’s military history. There were two issues here: the validity of the documents and whether forgeries were being held up as real, and questions about Bush’s military history.
I’ll only add two thoughts:
1) The statement implies that the documents got through the process because their source — Bill Burkett — lied to CBS about their provenance. This fails to mention the fact that their own document experts raised serious doubts. 2) CBS can mock the blogosphere all it wants, but it’s worth pointing out the partisan (meant in the best sense) Kevin Drum recognized the dubious quality of Burkett as a source long before the nonpartisan staff at CBS: “I talked with Burkett at length back in February, and speaking as someone who believes his story about Bush’s files being purged, I still wouldn’t trust him for a second if he suddenly produced a bunch of never-before-seen memos out of nowhere.”
UPDATE: One of the ironies of this case is that earlier this year Jack Shafer had praised CBS and 60 Minutes in Slate for admitting error in a prior report. Of course, that was Lesley Stahl instead of Dan Rather. ANOTHER UPDATE: Laura McKenna has a must-read post on media and blogger biases.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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