September 25, 2004

Another Botched Call by CBS

First they give the president a true gift from above (or if the conspiracy theorists are right, possibly Karl Rove) in sending out the impression to millions of Americans that the president completed his Guard service (as has been noted here and elsewhere, as it currently stands it appears that he did not), and now comes this. They don't want to run a report that may be critical of the administration because it is so close to the election (which of course is still several weeks away). I'm truly flabbergasted at this reasoning. I'm really at a loss for words. If that's really their criteria they should probably get out of the news business altogether.

Posted by armand at September 25, 2004 01:47 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics


Comments

Armand,
I think you missed the heart of the article you cite here. Read this paragraph:
"The Newsweek article said the segment was to have included the first on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italiam journalist who was given the fake documents and who provided them to a United States Embassy for verification. The documents were sent to Washington, where some officials embraced them as firm evidence that Iraq was aggressively trying to make nuclear weapons."
They're not holding back on the story because it's close to the election, they're holding back because they'd come off like even bigger hypocrites, criticizing the Bush administration for making the exact same mistake they made.

Posted by: at September 25, 2004 09:31 PM | PERMALINK

Sorry, forgot to put my name on that.

Posted by: Morris at September 25, 2004 09:32 PM | PERMALINK

So? I think the workings of the government are vastly more important than the workings of CBS, and if they want to be a serious "news" outlet they should follow important stories no matter how silly it might make them look. This is an extremely important matter related to the war in Iraq that's never received any real attention from the US media and they're not going to cover it b/c they think they'll look a little silly? Too bad, suck it up, play the report. The workings of the government are what matter to the lives of the viewers - not which producers do or don't get fired at CBS.

And besides, I don't think it's "exactly the same" mistake at all, and that election line was said.

Posted by: Armand at September 26, 2004 11:14 AM | PERMALINK
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