Posts
Ex-60 Minutes Producer: "Discredited Story Aimed at Obsessed Benghazi Conservatives"
By Heavy Mettle on Sat Nov 09, 2013
CBS was trashed and people lost their jobs over the George W. Bush National Guard story and conservatives still use this incident to prove the supposed liberal media bias, even though Bush's record was not in question - just the document's authenticity.
Now a former 60 Minutes producer who lost her job over that incident has spoken out about 60 Minutes' Benghazi scandal: pushing a story whose main witness turned out to be a liar:
Former 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes, who was fired for her role in a controversial 2004 story about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard, accused CBS News of pandering to a right-wing audience with her former program's recent Benghazi report, for which the network has been criticized and forced to retract."My concern is that the story was done very pointedly to appeal to a more conservative audience's beliefs about what happened at Benghazi," Mapes said by telephone from her Texas home. "They appear to have done that story to appeal specifically to a politically conservative audience that is obsessed with Benghazi and believes that Benghazi was much more than a tragedy."
Still, Mapes stressed that "what is concerning to me is the reason they went after that story in the first place. ... It so concerns me that it appears that story was done to appeal to a conservative element in the audience; that's not the way you should choose your stories."
CBS seems to have really gone off the deep end in pursuing a right wing audience. You know it's bad when Fox has to correct a completely phony Obamacare "horror story".
CBS stonewalled for over a week about this story, refusing to retract it until it was forced to by reporting from the New York Times
It was only when the New York Times last night reported that there were even deeper discrepancies in the report that Fager and CBS conceded mistakes were made with regards to its star witness. It wasn't until today's edition of CBS' This Morning that the network's Lara Logan finally admitted that the nearly two-week-old report had been a "mistake" and explained that CBS News had failed to fully vet that witness.and is inconsistent with CEO News Chairman Jeff Fager's own previous pronouncements about how to deal with mistakes:
CBS's defensive, slow-footed response was difficult to match up with Fager's previous pronouncements. "When you do make a mistake, boy oh boy own up to it," Fager told Arizona State University journalism students in 2011. "Go out of your way to own up to it." He added: "Credibility is what we sell."Meanwhile, it took Fox, who lavished praise on this report for the mainstream media 'finally catching on', until 11PM that day to devote 26 seconds to inform viewers that the story was full of it:
By the end of Fox News' regular programming schedule at 11 PM EST on November 8, the network had acknowledged the fact that CBS pulled its 60 Minutes report in only one 26-second segment. On Special Report, host Bret Baier stated, "CBS is backing off a report on 60 Minutes -- we told you about last week -- that relied on a source whose credibility has crumbled."Jeff Fager has finally admitted that this story has been one of its worst mistakes ever, but not until after
The network's irresponsible reporting quickly became fodder for the Benghazi-obsessed conservative media, aiding and abetting the right-wing's Benghazi hoax.
CBS's new business plan seems to be modeled on Fox's, believing that telling the rightwing nutjob crowd what it wasnt to hear will increase viewership.
Heads rolled for the National Guard story, and they damn well better for this one if CBS wants to maintain it is a credible news outlet.
Originally published on Daily Kos
