CBS and Tracey

Good definition, Cherokee.

Mrs. Brady, in the old days, could be called a blogger. She was one of the first, at least, reporting on a criminal case. She was a web log pioneer.

 

I've had the new Henry Lee book for a month but had so far only read the JBR section of it. Last night I started reading about the Penney Serra murder, which was finally solved after many years and new technology with the help of Henry Lee.

Lo and behold, but what did I see, but a juicy little segment about CBS's 60 Minutes doing a show on the Serra murder. And, guess what? They implicated the wrong guy. Penny's ex-boyfriend, with whom she had remained friendly after their split, had been considered a suspect at the time of the murder; however, he had a rock-solid alibi, plus his blood type didn't match the killer's. That didn't stop CBS, though. Years after, when Henry Lee picked up this cold case, CBS dragged the ex-boyfriend's name through the mud once again. It didn't matter to them that he had been cleared.

It seems to me that CBS's 60 Minutes and 48 Hours need to clean up their acts. How many others have been falsely implicated in murders or other criminal acts because of CBS's failure to get all the facts? Or is it that they would rather sensationalize their stories to draw the viewers in with no thought whatsoever to the damage they do to the innocent?

 

“How many others?†Who knows?. I know at least two others.
Going back to the 70s, (CBS - I’m pretty sure it was 60 minutes)
did a story on a particular nuclear plant. Although I presently
don’t recall his name or position, I happened to know someone
affiliated with the plant operation. He personally brought to my
house many pages of documentation that branded the 60 minute
report as fabrication and distortion. - And they have the gall to
call it “news.†We all know about their “news†in regard to the
Ramsey case.

 

Talk shows and no spin zones

The previous problems with fabrications and misrepresentations has been due to the monopoly of the liberal media. They've been able to get away with saying anything they wanted because there was no one else to say, "hey wait a minute, where's your proof?" Except, perhaps for Rush Limbaugh; but because he was basically the only one out there, he was branded a nut or whatever and no one paid any heed.

Today it's different. Rush isn't alone. And contrary to popular belief (by liberals), the majority of Americans aren't liberal. This is obviated by the overwhelming success of conservative talk radio (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Laura Ingram, etc.) as well as the demise of the liberal Air America headed by left wingnuts Al Franken and Janeen Garafalo. And as far as FOX news is concerned, the rest of the media market (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC) can't stand it and will do or say anything in an attempt to discredit FOX.

So when you add together, conservative talk shows, no spin zone TV (FOX News) and the new age lobbying group known as bloggers, the monopoly of the liberal media has been crushed.

The problem now is that the liberal media still hasn't accepted the fact that it's lost its control over the airwaves and its impact on Americans' thinking.

If you REALLY want to read about the fabrications and abuses by CBS, most especially 60 Minutes, a former 60 minutes producer wrote a book (can't think of her name offhand) about a story she tried to get 60 Minutes to produce and was refused. It's called "Kiss the Boys Goodbye", about American POWs left behind in Vietnam. This is the tell-all book of how CBS had a hand in hushing up the fact that as late as ~15 years ago, thousands of American POWs were sighted and known to be still alive and tortured in VN. I seriously doubt that anyone coming out of reading that book will still believe CBS simply made a mistake with this memogate debacle. Trust me...lies, deception, fabrications, the whole kitandkaboodle is simply business as usual for CBS.

 

I too think acts needs to be cleaned. Before we got direct tv, NBC was my favorite. And come every Sunday evening, I'd be watching 60 Minutes. Still do for that matter, except for the re-runs.

 

OK, ...but every Sunday evening I'd be watching 60 Minutes.

 

Ginga, I agree with you 100%.

Here's a copy of an e-mail I sent to CBS News today. I was moved to act after reading an editorial about the recent scandal.

Re: Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, and why we don't trust CBS News

General Manager
CBS News


Dear Sir:

The general public in America is fed up with the liberal bias of our news media, in particular, the obvious bias of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes. We are tired of being forced fed a diet of elitist propaganda thought to be good for us by this media since it is presumed we don't know the difference between real news and slanted commentary.

What if Internet bloggers hadn't been savvy to the incorrect fonts of the forged documents? What if Killian's family hadn't come forward and said he never wrote the memos. What if Killian's secretary hadn't stated she never typed them?

CBS News would have been guilty of committing fraud on the general public, and would have gotten away with it. No amount of backpedaling, and apologies, can erase the knowledge that without honest people coming forward, CBS News would have reported, and then stood behind, a forged pack of lies.

Most of us grew up with Walter Cronkite on the evening news. We trusted him, and we liked him. We cannot say the same about Dan Rather. Many of my generation quit watching his newscast many years ago when his personal political bias began to be very evident, and his newscasts took on a sanctimonious and patronizing tone.

It is obvious, even to those who are not die-hard Bush fans, that Dan Rather let his personal political feelings get in the way of his judgment. He rushed a story to press without verifying it because he wanted it to be true. He broke a cardinal rule of journalism. Instead of reporting the truth, Dan Rather tried to invent it, and his hell-bent need to smear President Bush made him ignore the warning signs of a distorted story.

Dan Rather's credibility is gone, and no half-hearted, left-handed apology will bring it back. The problem is, to most of America BEFORE this fiasco, his commitment to unbiased reporting was suspect. It is now completely non-existent.

As for Mary Mapes, she is guilty of a serious breach of ethics, and should never produce another show at CBS. As part of the deal with Bill Burkett, she agreed to have a Kerry staff member contact him. Her loathing of the Bush family is well known, and she is obviously trying to influence the coming election, not educate the public with informative news.

You wonder why the Internet and cable news networks are taking over the news media from the big networks?

I'll tell you why.

Because we can't trust you anymore. You have sold your good name for a mess of pottage. You have patronized us one too many times with your shoddy reporting, and extreme liberal bias. If we want the truth, we go elsewhere, because we know your "truth" is packaged with a slant towards your own personal politics and pursuit of high ratings.

When you start respecting us enough to realize you can't pull the wool over our eyes anymore, and when you begin to accurately report the news without prejudice, then you've taken the first steps to regaining our trust. These steps include the firing of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, and the installation of people who can report the news fairly and accurately, and without obvious bias.

If you think anything less will negate the effects of this scandal, then you are as blind to the truth as those who brought it about.

 

Cherokee you rock girl! Fantastic email.

 

Hi guys--this is one of my favorite topics. When I worked for the Austin American Statesman I would get in arguments almost dialy with snotty, phony, aging hippie liberal types. They would openly mock conservative white males who'd call in, and then turn around and say they weren't biased. The arrogance was disgusting. One day I got in a huge fight with the editor over this piece he was writing about how terrible the influence of the internet was going to be on the unwashed masses, because people would pick and choose for themselves what information they'd read--and of course without the enlightened Statesman staff filtering what they read, they'd all devolve into drooling racist retards. I mean this was the attitude these people had. Any time a story even remotely involving a black person hit the news, the reporters would contact the same two or three self-appointed leftist black "leaders" to get the opinion of all black people. That INFURIATED me. I told the editor that no sane person would say Michael Moore and George Bush had the same views on all subjects, and likewise they'd never go to either one to get the "white" POV--so why did they do this with blacks? The black people I knew, you know, in the real world, didn't act like these idiots the staff loved to quote.

But by contacting the same two leftist blacks, the paper was promoting and legitimizing that anti-cop, anti-white nonsense as the view of all blacks and after a while I got so fed up that I walked out. Thank God for the internet where people can actually speak openly and honestly without having the PC thought police butting in.

I can't stand Bush, and I think we should get the hell out of Iraq and concentrate on sealing our own borders, but what Rather did to him was disgusting. If you have to lie and distort just to shove your out-dated, tired politics down our throats, then maybe you oughtta look at your own politics. Maybe people are sick of it.

 

If I remember correctly, that Erin Mohriety from 48 Hours did some questions and answers with Jayelles. I did think it was nice that she would interact with the public but she evaded answering everything -- and I think went off in a huff?

Anyway, I stopped watching 48 Hours when they did a show on a case that was very close to me for reasons I do not wish to get into. It ended up showing a hospital in my city which I am very familiar with, and siad some things about it which were so totally inaccurate, including what part of the city it was located in! I wonder if anyone bothered to check the facts.(or a map)

Tracey and CBS are a good pair. Reckless reporting without any care if it's true or not. I am glad CBS got caught with their pants down this time. They deserve it.

 

Not me. Wasn't it CN2000? Mapek?

 

"Reckless reporting without any care if it's true or not."

I think the use of the documents and reporting was reckless. Yet/and/but I do think Dan Rather and CBS cares if the reporting is true or not.

 

JC, don't you think that if they cared then they would have verified facts before reporting? especially on something as important as this.

 

They do not seem to care that some of their reporting on shows such as 48 Hours are inaccurate. Either that, or they are too lazy to check facts.



Jayelles, I just remembered-- it was Rose who fielded the questions. Maybe it was Rose who went off in a huff and not Erin. Anyone remember? I'm not even sure which forum it was.

 

Rose

I do remember that Rose organised a Q&A with (I think) two different people. Now I'd have to dig in my archives to find that and the machine which holds my archives is currently in storage for the building work. We're very nearly completed that now and I expect normal service to resume in the next 2-3 weeks so I shall look for that whenever I get my machine up and running (assuming it still works!).

Now my memory is stirring. I think the Q&As were on WS and I think Rose collected questions and passed them to the people and then reported the answers back on the forum. Was it Erin Moriarty? Or was it Judith Phillips? I'm thinking the other person might have been Michael Tracey (ROFL) actually.

Is Erin Moriarty the news anchor? I don't recall ever posing any Qs to her. That's why I think it may have been Mapek on CN2000 because they've had loads of Q&As with different people but I've never participated in any of them.

EDITED TO SAY: I'm more certain than ever that Rose's female Q&A person was Judith Phillips because I remember my question! I asked whether Ann Margret's "Nedra" was convincing. I hadn't imagined Nedra being like the way Ann-Margret portrayed her in PMPT.

 

Hi, Freebird - I think that the authenticity of the documents should have been verified. I don't think that because it was not, they do not care.

 

JC, I understand what you're saying, but the problem is Dan Rather and Mary Mapes cared more about damaging Bush's reputation than they cared about verifying the truth of the story. The proof is that THEY contacted Bill Burkett, and THEY went after his fake documents. They wanted the story to be true, so they tried to make it so.

The point is, their judgment was clouded by their personal vendetta against the Bush family. They, like all other Americans, are welcome to their own political viewpoint, but when it interferes with the unbiased reporting of national news, then it becomes a problem.

Mary Mapes committed a serious violation of journalistic ethics when she agreed to Bill Burkett's demand for contact with the Kerry campaign in exchange for his story and forged documents.

Dan Rather and Mary Mapes do not clean carpets for a living, or work in a grocery store. They are journalists, and as such, they are held to a high standard of impartiality. It is this breach of impartiality that is the problem, and once that trust is broken, it is almost impossible to regain.

How do we know the next story they report is factual? How do we know the documents they present aren't forged? How do we know their own personal bias is not inserted into what is presented as news?

We don't.

But Dan Rather and Mary Mapes are just the tip of the iceberg. The media is rife with bias on both sides of the political aisle, and as we've seen with the Ramsey case, they often report only one side of the story. When that bias is presented in the open, such as with Al Franken or Rush Limbaugh, we know it is their opinion whether we agree with it or not, and the prejudice is known. It is the HIDDEN prejudice in big media that is the problem.

We deserve to have our news reported in a fair and truthful manner, instead of being given a slanted version of reality by those who would try to control us with their own personal and political agendas.

In regards to this, I've excerpted some of the following story below.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Entertainment/ap20040921_1756.html

CBS Producer on Thin Ice After Guard Story

The Associated Press

NEW YORK Sept. 21, 2004 — The fallout from CBS's doomed story about President Bush's National Guard service most endangers a woman few viewers know ...

-----

Mary Mapes, a veteran producer at CBS News, reported most of the National Guard story, including obtaining the documents CBS now says it can't authenticate. She also passed on the phone number of her source, former Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, to the Kerry campaign.

----

Mapes ... made no secret of her liberal political beliefs.

-----

John Carlson, a former commentator at KIRO-TV who is host of a conservative radio talk show in Seattle, remembers Mapes as a talented producer with whom he often argued politics in the newsroom.

Mapes was "quite liberal" and disliked the current President Bush's father, he said.

-----

Carlson spoke with Mapes about the National Guard story a week ago, and said that he believes she "put so much time into it that she wanted something to come of it."

"This was a woman with a good reputation," he said. "The mistakes she made were so obvious. This was a story that was rushed because they clearly believed it was true. They wanted it to be true."

Rather acknowledged Monday that Burkett didn't come to CBS. The network approached him about the documents, knowing he had been trying for several years to discredit President Bush's military service record, he said.

In a USA Today story, Burkett said he agreed to turn documents impugning Bush's service widely considered now to be fake over to CBS on the condition CBS would help arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign ...

CBS acknowledged Mapes passed on Burkett's number to Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart, and Lockhart called him ...

-----

It's particularly damaging when news coverage is being scrutinized by both sides of a bitter political divide, said Frank Sesno, former CNN Washington bureau chief and professor at George Mason University. Even before this story, Rather and CBS News were targets of groups concerned about an anti-Republican bias in the media.

The Lockhart contact "is going to cast more doubt on not just the practices, but the motives behind the story," Sesno said.

-----

 

I agree Cherokee. There seems to be this attitude in the world today--and you see it in people like Michael Moore and Dan Rather--that if you don't like a certain political candidate then the ends justify the means. The means run from blatant lying (Michael Moore) to not checking out sources with the same vigor you'd apply to, say, a Democrat (Dan Rather). This is WRONG.

I mean isn't there enough to dog Bush about without resorting to underhanded tactics?

 

I am upset over this, but I am just as upset with the fraud that has been perpetrated on the American people by 48 Hours and 60 Minutes in other instances, as well. The same reasoning used here can be applied to the JonBenet Ramsey coverage they have presented over the past eight years - all slanted, much of it just wrong. What personal stake did they have in that or other cases that they have completely mangled? What politics were involved, there? I don't appreciate being force fed false information as if I were an imbecile. I hope this so-called investigation goes a lot deeper than just the Rather/Bush debacle, but I'll bet it doesn't.