Wednesday, September 15, 2004
CBS, The Mystic, and The Typewriter Repairman
Aw heck. You know what I’m going to say if you’ve been watching the news. CBS’s “experts” were one typewriter repairman and a guy who started his career by trying to predict, from a woman’s handwriting, whether she’d be frisky in the sack.
Good work if you can find it. But hardly the stuff of legendary sleuths.
This has, however, gone beyond the stage where CBS’s fellow news organizations are pointing and laughing. There seems to be some rather uncomfortable, self-conscious, nervous chuckling. I get the distinct impression that even they are more than a little alarmed at how persistently CBS is drenching itself in kerosene and fumbling for the lighter.
Strange, isn’t it, that CBS is now talking about a “group of experts.” Their initial response, last Friday, featured Horny Handwriting Expert, Marcel Matley. But he is now backing away from the documents, claiming only to have verified the signature, though he admits that a photocopy is not a sufficient basis on which to verify a document (or Lt. Col. Jerry Killian’s libidinousness, either, I guess).
Here’s a quote from ABC that, if you think about it, really puts the journalistic knife in:
Why didn’t CBS include the contrary evidence in their story? Isn’t that what journalists are supposed to do? Present both sides and let the viewer decide?
Oh. I’ve already been spoiled, I guess, by other news organizations
The real problem for CBS is that they may be hoping for all this to “blow over.” But each attack on the documents’ credibility causes CBS to put forward yet another self-serving excuse for their sloppiness. And more obfuscation.
As long as they do that this will not go away.
In times past, the other mainstreamers would want this to “go away” out of a sense of general camaraderie with CBS. But they no longer really have that option. With Fox, talk radio, and the bloggers out there, the story will go on until CBS admits its culpability or the story reaches the end of the New Media news cycle, wherever in the future that is (one of the things only soon-to-come experience will teach us – when will the bloggers decide that they’ve made their point?).
Either way, CBS is out of the political race. They will no longer be taken seriously on any future hatchet-jobs against Bush. Not in this election, anyway.
Time to coin a new word:
Aw heck. You know what I’m going to say if you’ve been watching the news. CBS’s “experts” were one typewriter repairman and a guy who started his career by trying to predict, from a woman’s handwriting, whether she’d be frisky in the sack.
Good work if you can find it. But hardly the stuff of legendary sleuths.
This has, however, gone beyond the stage where CBS’s fellow news organizations are pointing and laughing. There seems to be some rather uncomfortable, self-conscious, nervous chuckling. I get the distinct impression that even they are more than a little alarmed at how persistently CBS is drenching itself in kerosene and fumbling for the lighter.
"CBS News did not rely on either Emily Will or Linda James for a final assessment of the documents regarding George Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Ms. Will and Ms. James were among a group of experts we consulted to assess one of the four documents used in the report and they did not render definitive judgment on that document. Ultimately, they played a peripheral role and deferred to another expert who examined all four of the documents used," the network said in a statement.” (link: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/bush_guard_documents_040914.html)
Strange, isn’t it, that CBS is now talking about a “group of experts.” Their initial response, last Friday, featured Horny Handwriting Expert, Marcel Matley. But he is now backing away from the documents, claiming only to have verified the signature, though he admits that a photocopy is not a sufficient basis on which to verify a document (or Lt. Col. Jerry Killian’s libidinousness, either, I guess).
Here’s a quote from ABC that, if you think about it, really puts the journalistic knife in:
Emily Will, a veteran document examiner from North Carolina, told ABC News she saw problems right away with the one document CBS hired her to check the weekend before the broadcast.Check that last sentence again. In a situation where most, if not all, of CBS’s “experts” showed some misgivings, CBS not only went ahead with the story, but even failed to delay long enough to find other experts to verify or deny the authenticity of the “documents.”
"I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter," she said.
Will says she sent the CBS producer an e-mail message about her concerns and strongly urged the network the night before the broadcast not to use the documents.
"I told them that all the questions I was asking them on Tuesday night, they were going to be asked by hundreds of other document examiners on Thursday if they ran that story," Will said.
But the documents became a key part of the 60 Minutes II broadcast questioning President Bush's National Guard service in 1972. CBS made no mention that any expert disputed the authenticity.
Why didn’t CBS include the contrary evidence in their story? Isn’t that what journalists are supposed to do? Present both sides and let the viewer decide?
Oh. I’ve already been spoiled, I guess, by other news organizations
The real problem for CBS is that they may be hoping for all this to “blow over.” But each attack on the documents’ credibility causes CBS to put forward yet another self-serving excuse for their sloppiness. And more obfuscation.
As long as they do that this will not go away.
In times past, the other mainstreamers would want this to “go away” out of a sense of general camaraderie with CBS. But they no longer really have that option. With Fox, talk radio, and the bloggers out there, the story will go on until CBS admits its culpability or the story reaches the end of the New Media news cycle, wherever in the future that is (one of the things only soon-to-come experience will teach us – when will the bloggers decide that they’ve made their point?).
Either way, CBS is out of the political race. They will no longer be taken seriously on any future hatchet-jobs against Bush. Not in this election, anyway.
Time to coin a new word:
Ratherism.
n.
The act of performing a nakedly partisan, though transparently weak, attack against a candidate, while hiding behind the façade of journalism in an environment where this used to be du rigeur behavior, but is no longer acceptable.
Comments:
Post a Comment
