Like many of you, we were anticipating CBS' report on the "60 Minutes Wednesday" story about President Bush's National Guard service. The story, reported by Dan Rather and produced by
Mary Mapes, included documents which were not authenticated. The report was released Monday morning, following a probe by
Dick Thornburgh, a former governor and Attorney General, and
Louis D. Boccardi, retired president of the Associated Press.
Here are the questions we were asking as we read the report. (
Questions contributed by: Scott Libin, Kelly McBride, Bob Steele, Al Tompkins, and Julie Moos)
Did the problems with this "60 minutes" story have a chilling effect on investigations of this sort? Will this panel's report have a simililarly chilling effect?
Will there be changes in internal standards and practices at CBS? Will there be a role at CBS for someone who monitors these issues?
Where is
Andrew Heyward in all this? What effect might we see on his role and future at CBS News?
In what ways is this analogous to the situations at
The New York Times and
USA Today? Were there questions raised about the credibility of other stories worked on by Rather and/or Mapes? Should there have been? Were there internal investigations as there were at the two papers? Both the
NYT and
USA Today had full teams of their own reporters investigating. Did CBS? Why or why not?
Is this a legitimate review? Who is the intended audience for this report?
What does this report say about media bias and credibility?
What are the affiliates thinking about this? What effect might the report have on local CBS stations, both those that are owned and operated by the network and those that are independent but carry CBS programming?
Scott Libin raised questions about what other news organizations can learn from this. What internal systems might they have or need to address similiar situations? He writes:
I hope that journalists will read the report on CBS News with an eye toward their own newsrooms and their own actions. I hope they will resist the temptation to say that what happened at CBS "could never happen here."
I hope newspaper editors won't resort to stereotypes about broadcast journalism as inferior to the purer print form. I hope other network news organizations won't succumb to competitive urges that might obscure the lessons to be learned. I hope local broadcasters won't sniff self-righteously about the arrogance of the so-called media elite. I hope bloggers and other new-media practitioners won't be too busy basking in the glow of their own popularity to ask themselves a few tough questions of the kind they so enjoy aiming at others.
Newsroom leaders have a special obligation at times like this to check their own systems for sourcing, vetting, quality control, and ethical decision-making. Dismissing the misfortunes of others as irrelevant tempts fate. The findings on CBS should find a way onto the agenda at management and editorial meetings in newsrooms everywhere. Here are a few of the questions I hope will come up:
- What specific safeguards do we have in place to keep something like this from happening to us?
- How can we make those systems stronger?
- When was the last time we reviewed our standards, practices, and protocols with staff members?
- What could we do to ensure everybody understands?
- How do we react when someone challenges a story, from within our organization or outside of it?
- Whose voices do we need to hear more often and more clearly?
- How can we improve the way we explain to readers, viewers, or users the way we make decisions?
