CBS and bias: answer elusive

Exhaustive, independent and thorough though it may be, CBS’ official report on what went wrong in Dan Rather’s now-infamous “60 Minutes Wednesday” segment on President Bush’s Air National Guard service has one thing in common with that original broadcast.

Just as Rather and his colleagues were unable to prove their allegations that official favoritism allowed Bush to avoid fulfilling his military obligations, so the network’s outside investigators were unable to satisfactorily answer the scandal’s central question: What part, if any, did political bias play in this debacle?

Of all the questions facing the independent investigators -- former Republican U.S. Atty. Gen. Richard L. Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, retired chief executive of Associated Press -- none was more difficult, nor more crucial than this. The allegation that CBS News’ conduct in this matter was not merely incompetent but also motivated by politics is the crux of the issue.

It is what ignited the rhetorical firestorm that drove Rather into early retirement and, Monday, forced the network to discharge not only Mary Mapes, who produced the segment, but also Betsy West, senior vice president; Josh Howard, executive producer of “60 Minutes Wednesday”; and Mary Murphy, his top deputy.

Unfortunately, while the 224-page Thornburgh-Boccardi report meticulously documents the details of what already is known -- that CBS ignored the basic journalistic practices and its own policies to rush the segment onto the air -- it adds little of value to our understanding of whether political bias was at work at any level of the process.

The 5 1/2 pages the investigators devoted to the question are contained in Section X: “Whether There Was a Political Agenda Driving the September 8 Segment.”

In it, the authors acknowledge that “the question of whether a political agenda played any role in the airing of the segment is one of the most subjective, and most difficult, that the panel has sought to answer.... The panel does not find a basis to accuse those who investigated, produced, vetted or aired the segment of having a political bias. The panel does note, however, that on such a politically charged story, coming in the midst of a presidential campaign in which military service records had become an issue, there was a need for meticulous care to avoid any suggestion of an agenda at work. The panel does not believe that the appropriate level of care to avoid the appearance of political motivation was used in connection with this story.”

According to the investigators, one of the ways they determined that there was no basis for accusations was by putting “the political agenda question ... directly to Dan Rather and his producer, Mary Mapes, who appear to have drawn the greatest attention in terms of possible political agendas. Both strongly denied that they brought any political bias to the segment. The panel recognizes that those who saw bias are likely to sweep such denials aside.”

Gosh, you think so?

Might that be because there’s a cadre of convinced partisans out there who believe Rather wakes up thinking of new ways to get the president? Or maybe it’s because in his memorandum accompanying the report, CBS Chairman and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said that Mapes was being fired, in part, for giving investigators conflicting statements.

Anti-Bush agenda denied

Further into that portion of the report, the authors list factors that “might suggest a political agenda” and those that do not. Among the former, they note that “many of the sources of information that were used for the September 8 segment had an anti-Bush political agenda.” However, this “only becomes problematic if the political bias of the source is allowed by the reporter to affect the fairness of the story.” This, the investigators concluded, did not occur.

And how do they know?

Well, “the panel asked Rather directly to comment on whether he was motivated in any way by a political animus in pursuing the September 8 segment. He responded: ‘absolutely, unequivocally untrue.’ ”

For her part, Mapes “told the panel that she was motivated by ‘proximity, not politics.’ Mapes has lived in Texas for 15 years and at least six of her 30 ’60 Minutes Wednesday’ stories before the September 8 segment had a Texas nexus.”

Let’s see, that’s 20% of her work. Hard to sweep aside an overwhelming trend like that.

Further on, Thornburgh and Boccardi note that CBS News President Andrew Heyward, Howard and West ordered specific changes to the segment to guarantee fairness and balance. It’s a fair and constructive point, but hardly decisive, since as the panel had said earlier in its report, Rather and Mapes were the focus of the bias charges.

None of this shows that either Rather or Mapes is a biased journalist. What it does show is that all their best efforts and good intentions notwithstanding, CBS’ investigators failed to answer the most serious and damaging question raised by this affair. They amply documented journalistic incompetence and, in their executive summary, characterized those involved with the segment as acting with “myopic zeal.” That sounds a lot like a working definition of bias, though the overall level of professional failure at work in this affair may render it impossible to formulate a distinction that makes a difference.

Earlier this month, Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported that Heyward and CBS Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner had met with White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett “in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration.” It said Heyward wanted to make the case that neither CBS nor Rather “had a vendetta against the White House.”

It’s a pity for CBS and its once-storied news division that this report was unable to convincingly do the same.