Karl BRAD AND JEN ARE SPLITSVILLE: A NATION MOURNS. People magazine rushes a full issue to newsstands four days ahead of schedule; Us Weekly is publishing a day early. Rumors of disagreement over whether to have children and interference by Angelina Jolie swirl. Not that there's anything wrong with a swirling Jolie, mind you.
KID ROCK may perform at a youth concert at the presidential inauguration, upsetting some Bush supporters. Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom is not one of them and much funnier to boot.
THE ATKINS DIET, as practiced by Dr. Atkins, apparently included a steady diet of his female patients. Now that's low-carb.
THE DAILY REFILL links to Quicktime movies of Wilco, including a rendition of “Love Will Keep Us Together.”
KARL MUELLER: Rockcritics.com presents its Best Music Scribing Awards for 2004. one of the winners was an article about Soul Asylum bassist Karl Mueller's battle with throat cancer. A Soul Asylum live CD is out today, commemorating happier times. A benefit for Mueller almost reunited the Replacements, according to Paul Westerberg in an interview chock full of 'Mats dish, including plans to reissue expanded editions of their entire catalog. An addendum to that interview has Bob Mould picking his fave 'Mats moments.
PORN DRIVES TECHNOLOGY: It's being proved again. one of the next big issues in which pornographers could play a deciding role is the future of high-definition DVDs.
COLUMBIA HOUSE GOES PORNO, launching an adult video club with Playboy Entertainment.
FILMOCULOUS has the year in lists.
OSAMA BIN LADEN: The CIA’s recently departed executive director thinks that the world may be better off if OBL remains at large. Which may explain why he's recently departed.
THE NEW YORKER reports that the Iraq war is “producing the creative and flexible junior officers that the Army’s training could not.” These officers grew up with the Internet, and have created websites for sharing information that the Army does not control. “Instead of looking up to the Army for instructions, they are teaching themselves how to fight the war. The Army, to its credit, stays out of their way.”
IRAQ: Multi-national forces capture three of four senior terror masters in Mosul.
SASHA FRERE-JONES is lovin' U2, the Pixies, REM and Bowie live.
PERFECT SOUND FOREVER features an oral history of the Long Ryders and Paisley L.A., as told by members of the Long Ryders, the Dream Syndicate, etc.
THE BOSTON GLOBE reports that pop songs killed the radio jingle. Glad I'm not the only one to notice.
COLIN FARRELL praises prostitution, likening it to ordering pizza for delivery. But one's not free if it takes more than 30 minutes.
LOW CULTURE decodes Michael Moore's new look.
FRANCE is calling for a “new relationship” with the United States and says its first test will be the capacity of President Bush and his European allies to advance a Middle East peace within the next six months.
I'LL BE A DENTIST: They now make more money on average than general physicians.
“HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A HOLLYWOOD LESBIAN SCORNED.” That's the opening sentence to a London Times article reporting that the former girlfriend of Ellen DeGeneres is considering legal action against both the comedian and her new lover, the Arrested Development and Ally McBeal actress Portia de Rossi. How could I not link?
THE AXE FALLS AT CBS: 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. For a summary of the report's findings, with more links, analysis and just a wee bit of ranting, you can click on the “Read More” link at the bottom of today's links.
The firings at CBS News were 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. According to the report, the most serious defects in the reporting and production of the story were: (1) the failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner; (2) the false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the Segment; (3) the failure of 60 Minutes Wednesday management to scrutinize the publicly available, and at times controversial, background of the source of the documents, retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett; (4) the failure to find and interview the individual who was understood at the outset to be Lieutenant Colonel Burkett’s source of the Killian documents, and thus to establish the chain of custody; (5) the failure to establish a basis for the statement in the Segment that the documents “were taken from Colonel Killian’s personal files”; (6) the failure to develop adequate corroboration to support the statements in the Killian documents and to carefully compare the Killian documents to official TexANG records, which would have identified, at a minimum, notable inconsistencies in content and format; (7) the failure to interview a range of former National Guardsmen who served with Lieutenant Colonel Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents; (8) the misleading impression conveyed in the Segment that Lieutenant Strong had authenticated the content of the documents when he did not have the personal knowledge to do so; (9) the failure to have a vetting process capable of dealing effectively with the production speed, significance and sensitivity of the Segment; and (10) the telephone call prior to the Segment’s airing by the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry – a clear conflict of interest – that created the appearance of a political bias.
After questions were raised about the segment, the reporting thereafter was mishandled and compounded the damage done. Among the more egregious shortcomings during the aftermath were: (1) the strident defense of the Segment by CBS News without adequately probing whether any of the questions raised had merit; (2) Allowing many of the same individuals who produced and vetted the by-then controversial segment to also produce the follow-up news reports defending it; (3) the inaccurate press statements issued by CBS News after the broadcast of the Segment that the source of the documents was “unimpeachable” and that experts had vouched for their authenticity; (4) the misleading stories defending the Segment that aired on the CBS Evening News afterwards, despite strong and multiple indications of serious flaws; (5) the efforts by 60 Minutes Wednesday to find additional document examiners who would vouch for the authenticity of the documents instead of identifying the best examiners available regardless of whether they would support this position; and (6) preparing news stories that sought to support the Segment, instead of providing accurate and balanced coverage of a raging controversy.
Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
TV NEWSER suggests that the coverup was worse than the crime, which is ironic in light of the degree to which Dan Rather made his rep on Watergate. TV Newser also suggests that the purpose of the independent panel may have been to help shield Rather and Andrew Hayward.
WERE THE KILLIAN MEMOS FORGED? The main report states: “While the panel said it was not prepared to brand the Killian documents as an outright forgery, it raised serious questions about their authenticity and the way CBS News handled them.” However, a reading of Appendix 4 discloses that the expert hired by the panel concluded that “the Killian documents were not produced on a typewriter in the early 1970s and therefore were not authentic.”
In addition, even if one was unconvinced that the documents are forged, the burden of proof generally falls on the party making the claim. CBS News had to be able to say the documents were real, not that they might be real. That's why CBS hired expert document examiners in the first place. A reading of the report shows that Rather still does not understand this basic burden of proof, which seems troubling.
WAS POLITICAL BIAS INVOLVED? The panel's conclusion is at 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.” However, the report discloses that on August 31 — eight days before the story aired — Michael Smith (a freelancer who was working on the story along with producer Mary Mapes) and Mapes were trying to persuade Bill Burkett to give them the documents that they had heard he possessed. Smith sent an e-mail 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.” (Emphasis added.)
That Mapes was willing to sanction covert pocketbook journalism of the sort normally practiced by the tabloids might suggest something beyond mere competitiveness. The panel also might have noted that of the 16 major defects identified by the panel, none favored President Bush, which is quite a coincidence. Relying on a source like Bill Burkett for a story this controversial, while failing to interview other National Guardsmen who served with Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents, would further suggest that those involved had a certain point of view.
It's also interesting that the panel that was so reluctant to draw the obvious inference about a possible motive (and contrary to the premise of the report, there need not have been a sole motive for doing the story) had no reluctance in stating that the 60 Minutes Wednesday story was almost immediately subjected to “attacks, mostly by bloggers with a conservative agenda, challenging the authenticity of the documents.” The use of the word “attacks,” instead of a word like “criticism,” may say something about the mindset of the authors of the report, particularly when one considers that the bloggers got it more right than CBS did on balance.
Moreover, Jeff Jarvis (a Kerry voter who frequently blogs his criticisms of Michael Powell's performance at the FCC) notes that an agenda can take many forms. That Rather was involved in a heated on-air argument with then-Vice-President George H. W. Bush during the 1988 campaign might suggest a personal bias, for example.
Nevertheless, for a report of this type — one produced at the behest of a corporation beset by scandal — the report issued by Baccardi and Thornburgh is often tough and sufficiently comprehensive in presenting the results that the reader may draw his or her own conclusions. For that, they deserve a fair degree of credit. Whether CBS News deserves much credit is another matter. Firing the lower-level people involved while giving Andrew Hayward's poor management a pass and letting Rather off because he's near retirement and on the ground that he basically just read the script will be seen by some as perpetuating the old-boy network, particularly when three of the four fired were women.
