Liberty's Blog: The CBS Report is in, Finally

Monday, January 10, 2005

The CBS Report is in, Finally

CBS Fires 4 in response to the long awaited report.

Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated.

The report is availalable in PDF form here. Although the report upon first examination places some responcibily on those who deserve it. They haven't outright canned Dan Rather, and there is a little bit of whitewashing within:

The piece was aired during a tight and hotly contested presidential race between Mr. Bush and Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry. The timing of the story prompted charges of political bias against CBS News.

While the panel found that some actions taken by CBS News encouraged such suspicions, “the Panel cannot conclude that a political agenda at 60 Minutes Wednesday drove either the timing of the airing of the segment or its content.”

To claim that there wasn't outright bias in the motivation is totally silly.

The CBS article claims:

Some critics said the documents were most probably forgeries prepared on a modern word processer. Other critics questioned whether Killian would have - or could have - written them.

The documents are proven and definate fakes. To imply that there is any other possibility is pure whitewash.