When something big goes wrong in the media, reporters around the country almost always call Poynter faculty for comment.
As the latest developments broke in the CBS story Monday, Poynter's Bob Steele took calls from CBS Radio in New York and Los Angeles, NPR, MSNBC, WBZ in Boston, and the
Wall Street Journal, among other media outlets.
Steele is the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values. Here's some of what he said in the interviews:
CBS has taken a serious credibility hit. In many ways, CBS and Dan Rather failed journalistically. They failed ethically. They did not do the appropriate reporting at the front end and they failed to apply rigorous oversight and checks and balances in the process and to the product.
They appear to have been weak in the way they did their sourcing, putting too much confidence in a single source and apparently failing to skeptically challenge that source and what appears to be another original source of the documents.
CBS failed to heed the warnings of some of the experts that CBS consulted concerning the legitimacy and authenticity of the documents. After airing the story CBS moved into a defensive position that may have prevented the network from properly re-examining quickly enough its methods and the story itself.
Dan Rather and CBS News president Andrew Heyward wear the biggest shoes in that newsroom. They must hold themselves accountable for the failures in this case. They must not only initiate but totally support the independent review of CBS's work on this story that Heyward says will take place.
At the same time, it is both appropriate and essential that CBS News continue to report on the original story about President Bush and his tenure in the National Guard. That is increasingly difficult. The people at CBS have self-inflicted wounds. Their blood is in the water, with lots of sharks swimming all around them.
Jill Geisler, a former TV news director who heads Poynter's Leadership faculty, was interviewed by the
Chicago Tribune about
the impact on CBS News and TV news in general.
Asked about CBS' credibility, Geisler said she believes the thoroughness and transparency of the CBS investigation will be key to the preservation of its credibility.
She said she believes people are seeing this situation through partisan lenses. Supporters of President Bush are more likely to view it as a media conspiracy, she said, and supporters of Kerry are more likely to argue that the authenticity of the memos is less critical than the truthfulness of what the memos allege.
Geisler points out: "As journalism faculty, our role is to ask questions about the systems at CBS and how they led us to this juncture. Our questions about what went wrong are about journalistic process, not partisan politics."
Discussing the impact on broadcast journalism, Geisler told the Tribune she believes it is a shame that as we have moved to a time when many cable organizations are TALKING about news more than doing original reporting, that a network still committed to reporting finds itself at this difficult juncture.
Poynter Vice President and Senior Scholar Roy Peter Clark talked about the controversy with a group of international journalists visiting Poynter as part of a U.S. tour. Clark's report:
I walked into a classroom this afternoon to meet a group of journalists visiting from Iraq. I held in my hand the statement from CBS News that they could not authenticate documents that called into question the president's service in the National Guard. Here is a paraphrase of what I told them:
I did not plan on talking to you about this, but you are news people from Iraq, and here is some news. CBS is the news organization known for its credibility, first in radio, then in television, exemplified by the work of Walter Cronkite, a legendary journalist who was succeeded by Dan Rather.
Recently, CBS reported a major story reporting that President Bush was given preferential treatment in the National Guard because his father was an important figure in American life. This story was based on documents from the 1970s, documents that now cannot be authenticated.
This is a major journalistic scandal. There have been many other such scandals. The bigger the news organization, the bigger the scandal. But this one seems to have special qualities. It concerns the President of the United States. It occurs weeks before a national election. And it was reported in an environment where accusations of political bias in the media are rampant.
Questions about the documents emerged right after the story broke, and they came from bloggers, so that the role of the Internet as a check upon conventional news may become a culture-changing event for the news business.
When any organization does something wrong and tries to cover it up, it only makes things worse. Many news organizations have responded to scandals by unleashing investigative sources, by policing themselves, both in the public interest and for public relations reasons. The catchword for this now in America is "transparency." You can't show everything, of course. But you can create a window. And through that window you can learn "how this happened" and "what we are doing about it."
Why did this happen? This is just my opinion now, but I don't think anyone at CBS acted with malice. Maybe someone will find a Dan Rather e-mail saying, "Let's nail the President." Now that would be malice -- and bias. I think the key word is competition. Competition is the greatest virtue of capitalism, and, on occasion, its greatest vice. In a highly competitive news environment, Dan Rather had in his hands documents that showed that the sitting Commander-in-Chief was a derelict soldier. The guy who gives the orders wouldn't follow orders.
I've been tempted many times in my life in many different ways and have too often given in. I'm not sure if I were in Dan Rather's chair that I could have held this story. But he should have. He should have worked harder at authenticating the documents. And he should have taken into greater account the possible biases of the sources.
Welcome to the messy world of American democracy and American journalism.
Al Tompkins is the Broadcast/Online Group Leader for Poynter. He spoke with the
Houston Chronicle and other media outlets about the CBS News situation. Here is some of what he said:
I hope that all journalists use this cautionary tale as a reminder that we need much stronger protocols before we use confidential sources.
A few years ago, Poynter's Bob Steele and I drafted this four-part test. In order to allow a source to remain confidential, a journalist should fulfill all of the following criteria:
- A story that uses confidential sources should be of overwhelming public concern.
- Before using an unnamed source, you must be convinced there is no other way to get the essential information on the record.
- The unnamed source must have verifiable and firsthand knowledge of the story. Even if the source cannot be named, the information must be proven true. If you are unsure the information is true, admit it to the public.
- You should be willing to reveal to the public why the source cannot be named and what, if any, promises the news organization made in order to get the information.
Then consider these questions:
- What does the use of a confidential source mean to the factual accuracy and contextual authenticity of your story?
- Does this source deserve the protection of his/her identity?
- What legal obligations do you incur by promising not to reveal this source's name? If you are sued, are you willing to go to jail to protect this source? If you are sued, will the source come forward and be named? Is the reluctance justifiable?
- What is your agreement about confidentiality if the source turns out to have deceived you or later is shown to have lied?
- How would readers/viewers/listeners evaluate the same information if they knew the source's name and motivations?
- What have you done to help the source understand the risks he/she is taking by giving you information?
- If you promised to protect a source's identity are you using production techniques that will ensure the protection you promised? What if a lawyer subpoenas notes or raw tapes? Would the person be identifiable in the notes or tape outtakes?
You should understand your newsroom's policy on confidentiality before you make promises to sources. You may need the consent of an editor and/or you may have to, by policy, reveal a source's identity to a supervisor. Your source should be told you might have to identity them to others in your newsroom.
If CBS used these criteria, they would have demanded to know -- and be able to report -- the identity of the source who had firsthand knowledge of the memo's origins.
CBS would have also told the public why the source could not be named, which would have gone a long way toward answering the conspiracy theorists who wonder out loud who fed CBS information and why.
I also believe that CBS only fanned the flames of this situation by being so reluctant to question its information. On September 10, CBS was still saying that it had no internal investigation in motion and none was planned -- that despite a growing body of evidence that the memo was questionable.
Many reporters have asked me if I think Dan Rather should be fired. I hope he isn't -- at least not right away. Let's discover more about how this happened and what CBS (and other journalists) need to learn from this incident. Firing people right away might feel like a strong and decisive act, but it also can be a way of quickly washing one's hands of a situation that requires a much more introspective reaction.
Rather has had a long and often distinguished career. Unlike some anchors who stay chained to desks, Rather has continued to report and search for the big story. I would hate to see a career ended this way.
No journalist has anything to celebrate with this story. We all get tarnished a little, just as we all were harmed by Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley. But Dan Rather is no Jayson Blair and he is no Jack Kelley. He didn't make things up, he tried to report a story and he should have been more careful whom he trusted.
I still hope that journalists will press for answers about George Bush's military service. That will be a difficult story for any journalist to pursue now. But we still need to know what parts of the story that CBS reported are true, even if the memo was not. The President deserves to be cleared or the public deserves to know the whole story of preferential treatment during his military service, whichever is true.
