The Report is out, and there is a lot of talk out there about what this report says.

Jeremy-Gilby-dot-com will attempt to discern the important points.

For those of you who came in late, the “Report” of which I speak is the report of the investigation into the CBS Debacle with the fraudulent memos. The investigation was lead by Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi.

• Upon the release of the Memo, CBS announced they were Firing Four Executives from the 60 Minutes Wednesday News Magazine, who were responsible, including Mary Mapes, the producer of the story, in question, where fraudlent memos were used to accuse former-Lieutenant George W. Bush of disobeying orders while in service with the Texas Air National Guard.
  With that announcement, the world started to take this 238 page report more seriously.
• The Report notes the following in its executive summary (These are probably the most quoted texts of the day on the Blogosphere)
  

  The most serious defects in the reporting and production of the September 8 Segment were:

  1. The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner;
  2. The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the Segment;
  3. The failure of 60 Minutes Wednesday management to scrutinize the publicly
     available, and at times controversial, background of the source of the documents, retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett;
  4. The failure to find and interview the individual who was understood at the outset to be Lieutenant Colonel Burkett’s source of the Killian documents, and thus to establish the chain of custody;
  5. The failure to establish a basis for the statement in the Segment that the documents “were taken from Colonel Killian’s personal files”;
  6. The failure to develop adequate corroboration to support the statements in the Killian documents and to carefully compare the Killian documents to official TexANG records, which would have identified, at a minimum, notable inconsistencies in content and format;
  7. The failure to interview a range of former National Guardsmen who served with Lieutenant Colonel Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents;
  8. The misleading impression conveyed in the Segment that Lieutenant Strong had authenticated the content of the documents when he did not have the personal knowledge to do so;
  9. The failure to have a vetting process capable of dealing effectively with the
     production speed, significance and sensitivity of the Segment; and
  10. The telephone call prior to the Segment’s airing by the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry – a clear conflict of interest – that created the appearance of a political bias.

  Once questions were raised about the September 8 Segment, the reporting thereafter was mishandled and compounded the damage done. Among the more egregious shortcomings during the Aftermath were:

  1. The strident defense of the September 8 Segment by CBS News without adequately probing whether any of the questions raised had merit;
  2. Allowing many of the same individuals who produced and vetted the by-then
     controversial September 8 Segment to also produce the follow-up news reports defending the Segment;
  3. The inaccurate press statements issued by CBS News after the broadcast of the Segment that the source of the documents was “unimpeachable” and that experts had vouched for their authenticity;
  4. The misleading stories defending the Segment that aired on the CBS Evening News after September 8 despite strong and multiple indications of serious flaws;
  5. The efforts by 60 Minutes Wednesday to find additional document examiners who would vouch for the authenticity of the documents instead of identifying the best examiners available regardless of whether they would support this position; and
  6. Preparing news stories that sought to support the Segment, instead of providing
     accurate and balanced coverage of a raging controversy.

  The Panel expresses the earnest hope, however, that the failures identified in this Report will not induce timidity at CBS News or chill its investigative reporting. Done accurately and fairly, investigative reporting serves a critical role in a free society. Done inaccurately, it can cause great harm. The recommendations made by the Panel at the end of this Report will, we hope and expect, strengthen 60 Minutes Wednesday and CBS News’ capacity to fulfill this role.

  I have a feeling that these “defects” will haunt the Mainstream Media for a little while. (Hopefully, we’ll see more media groups like “FOX Newswatch” holding all news networks accountable to the above standards.)

  But think about this for a moment. #2 in the first group and #3 in the second groups suggests that Dan Rather LIED.

• And did Mary Mapes coordinate with the Kerry Campaign on this story?
  

  The Panel is unable to resolve definitively the conflict between the accounts of Howard and Mapes concerning whether permission was given to speak with a representative of the Kerry campaign in connection with the TexANG story. Whether or not permission was given to Mapes, the Panel finds this contact to be highly inappropriate. The September 8 Segment had a strong political focus and it was to air in the middle of a hotly contested presidential campaign.

  While it is certainly proper to receive information from a variety of sources, this contact crossed the line as, at a minimum, it gave the appearance of a political bias and could have been perceived as a news organization’s assisting a campaign as opposed to reporting on a story.

• Were the documents forgeries or not?
  

  The Panel has not been able to conclude with absolute certainty whether the Killian documents are authentic or forgeries.

  The report does not say.

• Was there a political agenda involved?
  Jonathan Last points out that the report says No:

  IN A DOCUMENT shot through with agnosticism, perhaps the most agnostic section of the CBS Report is a six-page segment toward the end titled, “Whether There Was a Political Agenda Driving the September 8 Segment.”

  The Panel acknowledges that some sectors of the media had imputed political bias to Rathergate. So diligence required that the panel ask both Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, directly, whether or not they had been politically motivated: “Both strongly denied that they brought any political bias to the Segment.”

  Surprising? Not really. It seems unlikely that either Rather or Mapes would even perceive their own political bias–and even more unlikely that they would cop to it if they did perceive it. Yet for Thornburgh and Boccardi, their denial is enough, since “The Panel will not level allegations for which it cannot offer adequate proof.” And here the CBS Report continues its modus operandi: It enumerates, in damning detail, CBS’s mistakes, and then throws its hands in the air.

  To wit: The report tells us that Mapes and Rather had pursued the story for five years; that they used a number of anti-Bush sources as key components of the story; that they tried to use a “gratuitous” and “inflammatory” interview with Colonel Hackworth; and that Mapes attempted to put Bill Burkett in contact with the Kerry campaign.

  Thornburgh and Boccardi view all of these facts and then turn away saying that there is no “persuasive evidence of a political agenda;” and that they do “not believe that evidence exists to demonstrate” that political leanings of the anti-Bush sources influenced the story; and that they “cannot conclude that this proposed use of Colonel Hackworth was part of any political agenda.”

  The only counter-evidence the report offers on this score are Mapes’s and Rather’s denials. “Absolutely, unequivocally untrue,” Rather thunders. It was “proximity, not politics,” Mapes demurs.

  The CBS report can find evidence of political bias–they admit and document as much; they just can’t reach any metaphysical conclusions about why that evidence exists. The esteemed panel has a journalist and an attorney general. Perhaps they should have included a philosopher, too.

• Conclusions made?
  

  As the Panel goes back to the beginning, it is not difficult to identify a litany of missteps
  that doomed the effort:

  • A sometimes controversial source with a partisan point of view gave 60 Minutes Wednesday the documents. Only the most cursory effort – one unsuccessful attempt to contact the original source by telephone – was made to establish the chain of custody.
  • Efforts at authentication failed miserably. Hired document examiners whose views went against the rush to air were cast aside. The four original document examiners became two and ultimately one, who opined only on one signature in one document. Nevertheless, the Segment contained an unsupported declaration of authenticity.
  • Competitive zeal – the desire to be the first to break what was seen as a significant story – fed the rush to air to the point where holding the story to vet it more thoroughly became unthinkable because some other news organization might surely break the story.
  • The person relied on as the so-called “trump card” to confirm the content of the
    Killian documents was not shown any documents before the Segment aired. He was
    merely read some or all of the content of the documents over the telephone. The
    Panel finds this unacceptable as a basis for provenance of a story that turned on the
    authenticity of pieces of paper. In the rush to air, basic reporting suffered.

So what do I think all this means.
The report says two things to me:

1. 60 Minutes Wednesday really screwed up here. And CBS has taken action to recify that, at least with firing most of the people responsible.
2. The report does not want to say that there is a partisan bias with the Mainstream media. (Its what a lot of people want to hear, but really, I don’t think this is what the purpose of this report is.) This report was to find any defects in the investigative news reporting process, not identify any political leanings of the people invovled in the production of the news. (That is another investigation and another report at another time.)
   We all know that the MSM is biased. And we know where, and to whom, they are biased towards. Its no secret. No one in the upper echelons of media or government wants to admit it yet.

   And I’m fine with that.