Duped CBS regrets airing disputed Bush memos

10.00am


NEW YORK - In an enormous blow to its credibility, CBS News on Monday said it had been deliberately misled over the authenticity of documents it aired in a story challenging US President George W Bush'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 US 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 apologise for a scandal that blurred the lines between news and advertising.

Experts said the controversy damaged the credibility of what was once America's premier broadcast organisation as well as 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 objectivity.

In a separate statement, Rather apologised 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.

The four memos, purportedly written and signed by the late Air National Guard Lt Col Jerry Killian, said 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 CBS aired the original report, Bush supporters and competing news organisations challenged the authenticity of the documents.

They said 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 dogged him during earlier political races but became more prominent this year as his Democratic rival John Kerry 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 chorus of experts and so-called bloggers saturated the internet with criticism of the documents' authenticity.

"At this point they look like dupes and that's not good for any news organisation, especially CBS," said Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota.

She predicted further fallout at CBS, and said the whole affair would give more evidence to those who see a "liberal bias" in mainstream US media outlets.

Republicans said the network's public acknowledgment did not settle the issue, and said the source of the documents still needed to be established.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie called for an investigation of possible criminal activity by anyone who "attempted to use a news organisation to affect the outcome of a Presidential election in its closing days."

Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communications at Dartmouth College's business school, said it could cost Rather his job, something he said would be a shame given the journalist's long record.

"If you're going to go on a witch hunt you better make damn sure your sources are correct," Argenti said. "Dan Rather ought to know better."

- REUTERS