I'm not sure if I want to laugh, cry or swear over CBS News' handling of the Bush/National Guard story...
I suspect there will be fallout for years to come over this shabby performance...It's no wonder that the public ranks in no particular order journalists, lawyers and politicians, as the three least trusted professions in the US....
For the first time in my 30 years in the business, I have very serious questions about the objectivity of the main stream media. For a person who's had it hammered into his head for three decades: be objective, objective, objective, it's diffucult to watch television news, particularly today's cable sources. At the request of my good wife, I no longer swear at the tv while watching the news, but I often have to get up and leave the room. The slant these tv clowns put on stories is hard to stomach...Unfortunately, the reporting of this presidential election by the NY Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe, three papers I've respected my entire professional career, has been slanted and disappointing.
Dan Rather is taking all the serious heat in the CBS fiasco, but really he's not much more than a talking head in this mess....That shouldn't come as a surprise....The real problem, and the person most responsible for this story is CBS star producer Mary Mapes...Two months ago she was a star for breaking the Iraq prison abuse story. Then, somehow she suffered a journalistic brain cramp and violated a rule every kid learns by his third week in journalism school: Don't report anything until you've checked the facts...then check 'em again...I read a tremendous quote this morning by Geneva Overholser, former editor of the Des Moines Register and now a prof at University of Missouri: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." CBS News did just the opposite.
My reaction to cry and/or swear is the result of learning that Mapes hooked up the secondary source of the documents with one of John Kerry's campaign aides....For that move alone, Ms. Mapes should never hold a job in journalism again.
I had hoped that journalism had cleaned up up its act after Janet Cook in the 1980s....But then along came Jayson Blair and now Mary Mapes.
We all make mistakes. Unfortunately, standing up and admitting an error and taking the bullet doesn't seem to be enough today. The public wants to see heads roll. But, when you start out to nail someone as high profile as the president of the United States, you d*mn sure better have your sources in line and your facts correct. Mary Mapes what in the world were you thinking?