New CBS Reporting Standards Really Help

The axe has fallen in the Rathergate investigation. Too bad it hasn't helped their ability to air accurate reports.

CBS News is now reporting (ed. note: link since changed, read update at bottom of page) that:

Four CBS News employees, including three executives, have been ousted for their role in preparing and reporting a disputed story about President Bush's National Guard service.

The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with "rigid and blind" defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report.

Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard's deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Betsy West. The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated.

CBS might want to fact check this, as firing Betsy West twice, as the paragraph above seems to indicate, doesn't mean they fired four employees. I'm glad to see their standards of journalistic integrity haven't been affected by the shakeup.

NOTE: CBS will probably find ths soon enough, at which point I'll redirect to the PDF of the original CBS News story.

Update: PDF format won't work with my current limited image options. A GIF of the relevant section of the PDF I captured is available here. Email me if you want the full-screen PDF of the original CBS News page.