Airing Bush Memos a 'Mistake,' Embarrassed CBS Says



By Greg Frost

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In an enormous blow to its credibility, CBS News on Monday
said it had been misled over the authenticity of documents it aired in a story
challenging President Bush (news - web sites)'s military service.



"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are
authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using
them in a report," CBS News said in a statement.



"We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret," the
network said, adding that it had launched an internal investigation of the
matter.



The announcement marked a dramatic and embarrassing reversal by the network
that just five days ago said it was satisfied with the accuracy of the
documents first aired earlier this month in a "60 Minutes II" segment.



The scandal put CBS on the list of American journalism icons tainted in recent
years by lies masquerading as truth. Other casualties include The New York
Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, the New Republic, CNN and NBC. The Los
Angeles Times has also had to apologize for a scandal that blurred the lines
between news and advertising.



The admission by CBS News on Monday called into question both the credibility
of what was once America's premier broadcast organization and that of its
leading newsman, Dan Rather.



Rather has anchored the CBS Evening News since 1981, when he succeeded Walter
Cronkite -- dubbed "the most trusted man in America" for his perceived honest,
objective and level-headed approach to news.



In a separate statement, Rather apologized for what he called a "mistake in
judgment" and said CBS News had been misled on the key question of how its
source for the documents had obtained the papers.



'MILESTONE' IN AMERICAN MEDIA



The four memos, purportedly written and signed by the late Air National Guard
Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, said that he was under pressure from his superiors to
"sugar coat" Bush's service record after Bush, then a Guard pilot, was grounded
for his failure to perform to standards or to take a physical.



Immediately after the original report aired, Bush supporters and competing news
organizations challenged the authenticity of the documents.



They said that comparisons of the Killian memos with other documents from
Bush's National Guard service revealed inconsistencies in terminology and word
processing techniques.



Bush has never fully accounted for his service during the Vietnam War, when he
was given a much-coveted place in the National Guard while many of his peers
were drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam.



The matter has dogged him during earlier political campaigns but this year blew
up into a major issue as his Democratic rival John Kerry (news - web sites)
made much of his own decorated service during the war.



Orville Schell, dean of the graduate school of journalism at the University of
California-Berkeley, called CBS's admission "a milestone moment in American
media, a clash between the old and the new."



He explained that even as CBS stood by its story, a growing chorus of experts
and so-called bloggers was saturating the Internet with criticism of the
documents' authenticity.



Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota,
predicted further fallout at CBS News, although she said the situation appeared
different from recent cases of journalists' deception at The New York Times and
USA Today.






"At this point they look like dupes and that's not good for any news
organization, especially CBS," she said. "It all underscores the idea that the
major news media, at least some of them, have lost their system of checks and
balances to verify, to authenticate."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the network's public acknowledgment
did not settle the issue.

"We appreciate that they deeply regret it but there's still serious questions
that need to be answered," McClellan told reporters at a Bush campaign venue in
Derry, New Hampshire. He said the source of the documents needed to be
investigated.