White House has bigger credibility problem than CBS

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05012/440801.stm

What happens when you base a big project on questionable information?

Well, if you work for CBS News, you get a pink slip. If you work for George W. Bush, you get a promotion or a medal.

It's telling that this should be so, given that the stakes in the cases at hand are so wildly uneven.

The use of unverifiable documents for a story about Bush's National Guard service 30 years ago was a huge blunder, to be sure, and CBS did what it had to do for the sake of its damaged credibility. It sought an outside investigation by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press President Louis Boccardi; the network adopted their recommendations and also fired the four people it held most accountable.

Yet in the hierarchy of screw-ups with serious repercussions for the country, that incident pales next to the bad intelligence and flawed assumptions that have informed our war in Iraq and all the fruit of its poisoned tree.

[Stand and Fight]

1. Thanks for posting.

Great article. There is certainly a lot more people to be held accountable -- both in the White House and in the MSM, namely Fox News and CNN and the like.

[shraby]

2. Let her know you approve.

There's an email addy there.

[RamboLiberal]

3. That would be nice - Sally Kalson is a local Pittsburgh writer

and last year she was battling a serious illness. I missed her writing.

[Skittles]

4. DAMN STRAIGHT

add the Armstrong scandal and several others - amazing is Rove's ability to get conservative assholes to concentrate on bullshit while they pull of the most heinous things

[AZCat]

5. It's called bribery

Rove doesn't have brains or ability, he just has money and power that he uses to get the media to focus on the wrong thing. Got a problem with some documents showing your newest project is a sham? Get your buddies to tout it's "finer points" by dropping a cool quarter of a mil.

Got a problem with some documents that might show a certain Texan didn't show up for duty? Fund a group that attacks the opposition candidate for his service in Vietnam (where Bush wasn't) and get your buddies in the media to recycle the aggregious attacks over and over while "analyzing the campaign" or some B.S.

Got a problem with your claims about a certain Middle-Eastern country? Just buy up a certain NYT reporter and get her to slather the front page with articles shrieking about Saddam's WMD.

Simple, easy, and so blatently obvious that the only reason the MSM wouldn't be reporting it is if they are in on the deal.

[rodeodance]

6. I wrote her an email (address below)

...What accounts for this contrast in responsibility-taking? The answer is one I've argued in this space before: Americans demand a higher standard of truth from the news media than they do from their political leaders. They expect politicians to lie, mislead and dissemble, and they expect the news media to catch them.

But even when reporters uncover such transgressions, it doesn't necessarily translate into changes in policy or admissions of guilt. That has certainly been true of this president, who values loyalty above competence and evidences not the slightest inkling of his own fallibility. Now that the voters have seen fit to re-elect him, the nation can expect the same, only more so.

We can only imagine what kind of report Thornburgh and Boccardi would assemble on the administration's conduct of the war. Five'll get you 10 they'd find a lot more guns smoking in the White House than they ever did at CBS.



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(Sally Kalson can be reached at 412-263-1610 or [e-mail].)