CBS Memo-Gate Maims Heartland America's Trust
By Kevin Fobbs
September 22, 2004

CBS admitted that it was duped? There are probably millions of Americans wondering what took them so long to admit what apparently was obvious even to one of their own; 60-Minute's Andy Rooney, who admitted as much last week.

Former President Ronald Reagan, if he were around today would probably say, "Well, there they go again." After all of the hand-wringing is done at CBS, the network will still have many un-answered questions, and to many conservatives and supporters of the President it will also seem like one more attempt by the network known for its large eye, to have given itself one more black eye, similar to the one it received last year after CBS had planned to air a telefilm of former President Ronald Reagan's life.

Last year it was Hollywood detractors who wanted to hijack the truth about President Reagan's life and replace it with what they had hoped would have been entertaining and revisionist historical hokum -- in other words a televised fictionalized account masquerading as truth about Ronald Reagan.

Well the heartland of America fought back. On behalf of our bonafide celebrated heartland Hollywood hero who as President helped to remind Americans that we could all endeavor to find that "Shining City on a Hill" in our own hearts and in our own communities across this nation, and defeated communism and preserved democracy on his watch.

Well as it turns out the Hollywood elite, it now appears it is at it again. This time with billionaire George Soros backed Bush bashing ads, and their anti-Bush Hollywood money war machine grinding out political 527 slime daily, CBS launched a new "news story and aimed it straight into the heartland of America.

Fast forward a couple weeks, and the fiction is revealed, the fact checkers have said the documents are awash in fabrication and now the reporter has become the story. So now we have CBS admitting that the news source was a fake, the story was a fraud and the scheme was a carefully designed fabrication.

The truth has been marginalized in order for the fiction and fabrication to prevail. The American public are the consumers of the daily news and the news organizations are the producers of this news product. Between the two there is a very tenuous connection. That unique balance should always be maintained. So in times of national crisis or in times of national debate, the news viewer, listener, reader must place their trust and faith in the skills and abilities of the checker and reporter of facts.

Almost 30 years ago in journalism school, many of us who were going through that turbulent time in our nation's history were being bombarded with all types of challenges to our developing journalistic craft. We had the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the developing Women's Movement and the event which defined the 70s for most of us or at least gave us the motivation to become journalists: the Watergate scandal.

So there we were with a literal smorgasbord of political ideologies, and events swirling around and pushing the expanding perimeters of our craft. We were learning how to get the story, understand just what was the story, as well as how to develop the story, and equally important pursuing the nailing down of the sources. As heady as it was during those years as budding journalists we were expected to divorce our feelings, emotions, political leanings from writing the story and to focus on getting to the essence, the provable facts that supported the story. Why? Because, we had a public trust..., which meant the public put its trust in us.

Interesting... Pride in our journalistic craft, for a somewhat jaded public now appears to be taking on an ugly specter of revisionist partisan news gathering. CBS's actions only serve to solidify the fear that American news consumers are seeing the gradual marginalization and quite frankly, the demonization of fair and balanced news coverage by partisan news gathers.

So instead of the old Jack Webb adage on Drag Net of "Give me the facts just the facts," instead they are witnessing the brooming out the truth and sweeping in of the fiction, or as some pundits are calling it the "Rather bias".

What have we learned from all of this after the fall-out?

Well, whether the news is being gathered in the middle of a hurricane or the middle of a presidential election coming down to the wire, news reporters and news anchors don't make up news facts to fit a story.

As journalists we already know that you should check at least three sources and validate it more than a casual nod, which seems to have happened with faxed-gate. We do not know that you don't lift quotes from someone else's probable memories, which you have not directly witnessed, nor had the ability or opportunity to at least verify. Therefore, you don't just rush to judgment because the alleged factual information proves part of an assumption you may have or a premise you would like to prove.

It goes back to the basic J-School days where my journalism mentor professor Stadfedlt focused our budding minds on being relentless about going after and securing the facts, and being suspicious of a developing story that was developing a little too easily.

Now, with the onset of the "gotcha journalistic practices, and un-disciplined and in many instances untrained pseudo journalists who would rather get it out first than getting it out right, we have the un-raveling of the profession, and of the fair and balanced focus of news gathering by the 4th estate.

So America does have a right to feel a degree of cynicism about news gathers. Journalism is a craft, an art form, a practice and a discipline. The Internet has given rise to many Internet news organizations, and they can like CBS fall victim to the get it out first, before you get it out right syndrome. In order for the public trust to be restored we as journalists and journalists organization be it on-line, cable, or print and radio, have to police our own. In addition, there will have to be a tightening of professional standards or in some cases a development of a code of professional standards so that the still new and developing web news organizations are not also caught up in the same broad brush which will be used to marginalize the integrity of all news reporting and gathering sources?

Who should the public now trust? How should the American public put its' reliance in news gatherers when issues, political races, developing domestic crisis are developing? Is the public's need to know being carefully measured by the ever-shortening publication, print or broadcasts deadline? Those are questions, which have to be addressed, so that even the hint of political bias can be ferreted out of news stories as well as in the broadcasts.

The trade, this craft that we as journalists pursue is something which is most rewarding when we have done all the fact checking, talked to as many sources, and subsequently -nailed the story. As my old journalism professor said to me almost 30 years ago, "It's not news fit to print unless the print fits the facts and the facts are fit to print."

It's a lesson for all of us who are journalists and especially for those who were duped at CBS to follow.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.