CBS sacks four over faulty Bush story

NEW YORK - CBS News has fired four employees over a faulty story about US President George W. Bush's military service record.

The sackings come after an independent panel report that found a "myopic zeal" led the network to disregard basic journalism principles.

The panel was convened after a September 8, 2004, report by anchor Dan Rather on the "60 Minutes II" news program claiming Bush won special treatment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. It found CBS failed to determine the accuracy of key documents used in the report.

CBS then waged a "strident" defence rather than probe the heart of the matter, it said. It allowed the same staff who produced the original report to produce follow-ups, it said.

"These problems were caused primarily by a myopic zeal to be the first news organization to broadcast what was believed to be a new story ... and the rigid and blind defence of the segment after it aired despite numerous indications of its shortcomings," said the panel report. The panel was headed by former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, retired head of the Associated Press.

Twelve days after the segment aired, CBS News retracted it and Rather apologised, saying they were duped by bogus documents. Rather later said he would step down in March.

The CBS News segment relied on documents allegedly written by one of Bush's commanders, now dead. The panel said it had not determined whether the documents were real or forged.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "CBS has taken steps to hold people accountable and we appreciate those steps."

The scandal deals another blow to credibility in journalism, adding CBS News to a list of media tainted by sloppy or false reporting. Other casualties have included The New York Times, USA Today, the BBC, Washington Post and CNN.

Leslie Moonves, chairman and chief executive officer of CBS and co-president of parent company Viacom Inc., said in a statement: "There were lapses every step of the way."

"The bottom line is that much of the September 8 broadcast was wrong, incomplete or unfair," Moonves said, promising to adopt changes to improve CBS' credibility.

Among other suggestions, the report proposed CBS News appoint a "standards executive" and not assign coverage of any challenge to its reporting to the original reporting staff.

It also suggested CBS News not allow competitive pressures to prompt airing of a story before it is ready. "It would have been better to 'lose' the story ... to a competitor," it said.

Kent Collins, chairman of the broadcast news department at Missouri School of Journalism, said the report may have been bad news for CBS but good news for journalism as a whole.

"We all have to suffer this kind of thing to stay honest in a business that is self-policed. I worry that it goes on a lot more than it is revealed, certainly at lesser levels, and at the local level stories are rushed to air and rushed to print," he said. "There is such an appetite on air and in print and on the internet for stuff, we risk our credibility on trying to feed that ferocious appetite too quickly."

The panel said it found no evidence of "a political agenda" in the timing or content of the story, which ran ahead of November's US presidential election.

The panel placed blame on the trust placed in producer Mary Mapes, one of those let go in the aftermath, as well as a "vast deference" given to Rather and the decision to rush, or "crash," the story to beat out any competition.

A month after making the retraction, Rather, 73, said he would step down as anchor on March 9, his 24th anniversary in the job.

- REUTERS