"Mud in Their Eye" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Mud in Their Eye

CBS has fired four staffers in connection with the oops report on their Wednesday Sixty Minutes report last September that told of special treatment for The Bush Boy during his days in the Texas Air National Guard. The report, anchored by soon-to-retire Dan Rather, said Bush was given a virtual pass on a chunk of his guard obligation.

It wasn’t a major revelation; the facts had been reported by many news outlets, including the mainstream, for years. The fact that CBS was reporting them in prime time was significant. Unfortunately, while they had the facts, they had gotten them from an unreliable source. Their documents, it turned out, could not be substantiated; indeed, some might have been forged.

The bottom line, however, was that the facts were true. The story was true. Bush did not complete his guard service, and it was because he was his well-connected father’s son that let him get away with it. Had CBS run with the facts of the story, had they done the due diligence in the first place and gotten their information from other sources who were unimpeachable, their reportage might have meant something, perhaps even a different outcome in the November election.

But they didn’t. They mea culpa’d their errant research and let the story get away from them. Then CBS went so far as to appoint two notables to investigate the error of their ways. The results, announced Monday, was the chopping off of four heads -- a couple were actually allowed to resign -- they were sacrificed on the altar of public relations. The charge was excessive zeal in trying to be first with a report.

It’s kind of ironic because the news culture is all about being first. Had the report not been challenged, CBS would have been preening. They care almost nothing about the content, unless they get caught, and it has to be political rather than moral before they react. They’re only worried about holding onto a secure place within the power structure so they can continue to feed mindless babble to the mindless masses.

The once-mighty CBS News has been failing for more than two decades, delivering pap instead of journalism. If they’d been doing serious news during that time, they wouldn’t have stumbled over a real story.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.