CBS Collaborates in Torture

by emptywheel

The most interesting thing about the Dan Rather complaint, IMO, is the description it gave of CBS and Administration attempts to spike the Abu Ghraib story.

In late April 2004, Mr. Rather, as Correspondant, and Mary Mapes, a veteran producer, broke a news story of national importance on 60 Minutes II--the abuse by American military personnel of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison. The story, which included photographs of the abusive treatment of prisoners, consumer American news media for many months.

Despite the story's importance, and because of the obvious negative impact the story would have on the Bush administration with which Viacom and CBS wished to curry favor, CBS management attempted to bury it. As a general rule, senior executives of CBS News do not take a hands-on role in the editing and vetting of a story. However, CBS News President Andrew Heyward and Senior Vice President Betsy West were involved intimately in the editing and vetting process of the Abu Ghraib story. However, for weeks, they refused to grant permission to air the story, continuously insisting that it lacked sufficient substantiation. As Mr. Rather and Ms. Mapes provided each requested verification, Mr. Heyward and Ms. West continued to "raise the goalposts," insisting on additional substantiation.

Even after obtaining nearly a dozen, now notorious, photographs, which made it impossible to deny the accuracy of the story, Mr. Heyward and Ms. West continued to delay the story for an additional three weeks. This delay was, in part, occasioned by acceding to pressures brought to bear by government officials urging CBS to drop the story or at least delay it. As a part of that pressure, Mr. Rather received a personal telephone call from General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urging him to delay the story.

Only after it became apparent that, due to the delay, sources were talking to other news organizations and that CBS would be "scooped," Mr. Heyward and Ms. West approved the airing of the story for April 28, 2004. Even then, CBS imposed the unusual restrictions that the story would be aired only once, that it would not be preceded by on-air promotion, and that it would not be reference on the CBS Evening News.

By my count, we've got:

• A description of a craven CBS and Viacom hoping to "curry favor" with the Bush Administration
• Heyward and West postponing a scoop for three weeks and thereby allowing torture to continue unabated
• Personal knowledge of the scandal by Richard Myers ... and personal intervention on his part to hide a scandal
• The deliberate refusal to publicize a huge news story

I recommend not just a blogger ethics conference, but an entire college curriculum.

Sad thing is, you could effectively replace "CBS," "Dan Rather and Mary Mapes," "Mr. Heyward and Ms. West" and "General Myers" with the words "NYT," "James Risen and Eric Lichtblau," "Pinch Sulzberger and Bill Keller," and "Dick Cheney," and it'd all make perfect sense. .And let's not forget how the NYT refused to publish the NSA story until Risen threatened to scoop his own paper, and the NYT buried the most alarming parts of the news in the black news hole of a Saturday Christmas Eve. Rather's complaint paints a picture of a media outlet that willfully allows itself to be the Administration's propaganda tool--but that's clearly not unique to CBS.

And this is the background to the whole TANG episode: Dan Rather managed to expose the Administration's torture prisons, in spite of all of the efforts on the part of CBS to bury the story for the Administration.

Comments

[Darclay]

That is the problem with this country that the news media is complisit in propaganda put out by the WH. Seems like we need to overhaul the monopoly laws especially since ma bell merged again and we have the news media owned by a handfull of moguls who pander to the WH.

[Neil]

Rather's complaint paints a picture of a media outlet that willfully allows itself to be the Administration's propaganda tool--but that's clearly not unique to CBS.

Not just ant media outlet, THE TIFFANY NETWORK. If Rather can't make news as a journalist and network anchor, he'll make it news as a plaintiff.

[William Ockham]

Man, I thought the NY Times sitting on the warrantless wiretapping story was bad. This is sickening. I mean that literally. I feel like throwing up.

[Neil]

I still think Rather got setup with the forged memo on Bush's reserve duty record. Like the "look my political opponent bugged my office" trick one week before the election, the forged Bush AWOL memo served to consolidate the base in a fight against the "dirty tricks liberals". Sadly, it worked.

[John B.]

It only worked in one way...it kept Bush in office and he was "re-elected."

But, most people know that the story was true.

The same 30% that still support this pResident are the same 30% who thinks he served honorably in the TANG, and that don't "believe" in Global warming, don't "believe" in evolution,
think Saddam Hussein planned and helped in the 9-11 attacks, think we found WMD in Iraq, think he was elected fairly in 2000 and think we ought to pre-emtively bomb Iran.

I call them the 30 percenters.

[Mary Stromberg]

"Media Outlet" is a misnomer.....it's really a Sublet; it owns the forum and is renting it's sound bytes out to the highest bidder.

[bmaz]

JohnB - No reason to pull punches and be nice, call them what they really are now. 25 Percenters.

[OrionATL]

ah, this is excellent.

thanks dan rather.

maybe this will begin the era of stories about how media bosses censored information for the benefit of the bush admin.

as an aside, what do you call it when a plaintiff's lawyer takes the times to make a very interesting and embarrassing (for the defendant) story out of the plaintiff's complaint?

blackmail - no.

greymail - no.

red(-faced)mail - not very good.

revengemail?

[Dismayed]

The very root of our nation's problems is exhibited here. And network news wonders why ratings are down?

Media corporations need to be free standing operations with no outside ownership.

When are we going to wake up and realize that at the end of the day corporate america is our real enemy?

So much yabbering about the symptoms, no one seems focused on the disease.

We need a fire wall between corporations and government. A free press is just one part of the equation.

[Ken Muldrew]

Neil, I don't think Rather was set up with the TANG memo. The most damning evidence of forgery has always been the proportional font in the memo and the claim that this couldn't have been produced by word processors of the 70s. That claim was shown to be false shortly after CBS caved and threw Rather to the wolves by an FOI release. Take a look here:

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/

and especially note "Documents Released on September 24, 2004" under "other documents". The memo on page 6 of that pdf uses a proportional font identical to the Rather memo, clearly showing the times-roman trope to be false.

It now looks like CBS brass was probably in collusion with the noise machine to bring Rather down, so he was toast even though he had the real goods.

[Ishmael]

I think Rather will get his money, the same way Imus got his - Imus could prove that the bosses wanted him to be a racist boor because it got ratings and the suits did not want this to be publicized - his racist diatribes were not a bug, they were a feature. I expect that the discovery process in Rather's suit will establish the same thing, that there is no independent "news" division at CBS, and CBS will not want to disclose that the real editors are at the White House, RNC, and AEI. If Rather is in this for the money, it will settle quickly. He could do a real public service by taking this to trial.

[Gary]

Ishmael, I don't think he's in (just) for the money. There's pride, honor, reputation at stake. And the man is a journalist. He wants this story to see the light of day.

[bmaz]

Gary - I agree, and Rather is going to have the full backing of Mark Cuban to do this too. This suit will generate tons of publicity, will poke sticks in the eyes of the broadcast networks, and will be a thorn in the side of the Bushs. All very good things for Mark Cuban.

[scribe]

The complaint's description, quoted above, of events at CBS relative to the Abu Ghraib photos is accurate. Here's some more detail which I think you'll appreciate.

A friend of a friend (F2) was the person at CBS who clicked the mouse and let the Abu Ghraib photos out. F2 told me, to my face, (a) about doing that, (b) about the numerous meetings in which senior managment was tying to tamp down the story, (c) about the more than a few calls from senior government officials (IIRC, not just Myers, but maybe also Rumsfeld), (d) the flood of calls from other media outlets which (1) knew CBS had the Abu Ghraib photos, (2) knew what those photos were, (3) wanted them so they could run with them and (4) were vainly trying to get permission from CBS to run with them but were denied until after CBS ran them first.
The Abu Ghraib story was no secret in the media - it was just that CBS got their hands on the pictures first.

Apparently, it was a very high-stress story in a high stress environment - the news business is (I suppose) pretty much all running around with your hair on fire all the time, but this story was exceptional, not only for the number of meetings but also, apparently, for the number of back-and-forth and, apparently, for the amount of journalistic soul-searching which went on inside CBS. The back and forth of "should we run it" vs. "should we hold it" may never have been more intense.

There are, I was told, a lot of emails in the CBS system (or were) that go through this whole episode. F2 told me that, on the day the photos came out, there were so many into F2's box that F2 stopped opening them, and (IIRC) went with the last one read. That one said it was OK to run the pictures, so that's what F2 did.

That's how the story got out, and how close it came that the Abu Ghraib photos would not have seen the light of day. And, because (IIRC) CBS had subsequently said not to run with them, they got in a real bind with the Admin when the photos did in fact come out and the story ran. I think the Admin thought they had a deal.... So, Rather got it in the neck through a setup on the Bush National Guard story.

F2 asked me, if I thought what went on at Abu Ghraib was a war crime. My response was that we were long past crossing that line.

[bmaz]

Scribe - Wow. Excellent. Please buy your friend a couple of drinks from me. My hat is off to F2 for their work here, and to you for letting us know. So, am I reading this correct that you have no question but that the TANG story was a setup to take out Rather?

[John B.]

The Pentagon was ordered to release the second batch of photos that supossedly showed very heinous awful stuff; rape, sodomy of young boys, rape and worse of women and girls associated with suspects, etc...and they never have come out. WTF?? What the hell happened? Do you guys remember that? Maybe two to three years ago???

[John B.]

George senior always hated Dan Rather, that is well known... and Junior is a miserable revengeful fucktard so with the setup you get one bird revenge for two bushes....

[scribe]

I surmise from what I've said in the comment above and what I know (the two are pretty much the same - I've left out irrelevant personal details) that the sequence went something like this:
Admin thinks they have a deal to quash Abu Ghraib story;
Story runs;
Admin pissed;
(here's where the surmising starts)
All sorts of non-public hell breaks loose, probably in Redstone's lap;
Redstone stands up for CBS/Rather publicly, but "gets the message" that the head of someone big has to roll over this for the Admin to be mollified - IIRC, Redstone said he did his campaign contribs for what was good for CBS;
Rove's/GOP's operatives cook up bogus document to back up the (accurate) Bush National Guard story (probably very accurate - I wouldn't be surprised if, rather than shred 43's records, they reside in someone's private file cabinet for handy reference) and the story gets pitched to 60 Minutes;
Rather and the 60 Minutes crew bite on the bait and swallow it whole, not noticing (or not caring) that the document was done on a wordprocessor;
Rathergate;
Redstone and CBS can make nice with Republicans by ceremonially axing Rather, and do.

Consider, if you will, that the axing of Dan Rather was just a campaign-contribution-in-kind from CBS to Bush.

[mighty mouse]

FYI: Froomkin today refers to Marcy's Rather post...

[litigatormom]

Not surprisingly, the coverage of the Rather lawsuit this morning, even on rival networks, was "Why is Dan Rather bringing this all up again, it's been years?"

Do you think its because anyone who expressed sympathy with Rather would have been switched to the local affiliate in Bumfuck, North Dakota?

[Nell]

This is consistenly one of the most informative blogs out there. Thank you, emptywheel, and all the other contributors and regular commenters.

[orionATL]

i am a fan of hauling the asses of media corporations up before congress, under oath, and asking them questions related to

their abetting the lies of the bush administration

proactively -

e.g., judy miller's and michael gordon's obliging war stories in the nytimes and the many, many interviews of pumpkin head, tweetie, and wolf blitzer, and the editorial page page of wapoop)

and

protectively (suppressing info that reflected badly on the bush admin),

e.g., the abu ghraib photos which the rather suit discusses and the nytimes suppression of the admin's spying on americans noted above.

there really must to be a complete public accounting of how the owners, corporate leaders, managing editors, producers, etc, co-operated with the bush admin in ways that allowed it to get away for six long years,

with conduct that has been persistently illegal and way outside the bounds of american political traditions.

i's be especially interested in a congressional review of rupert murdoch's conduct vis-a-vis fox news. i think his behavior warrants revoking his american citizenship and sending him back to australia.

[Mary]

Thanks for sharing that scribe.

Even with just the Rather revelations (about the high up calls to quash) I have to wonder just how it is that Paul Clement manages to say that he had no idea about anything like the Abu Ghraib situation (and Taguba and others say that the MPs were the tip of the iceberg and MI did all this and much more and with knowledge, reports and orders) when he was making his "the US does not torture or do things like torture" argument to the Sup Ct - within hours of the ultimate release of the Pics.

I really have to wonder in my heart of hearts how much those pics did affect the Court's deliberations. And knowing that the the rep of the Executive branch in their court that argued before them pretty much had to know about it or else his client pretty much had to have been involved in an all out fraud on their own lawyer.

[lysias]

While CBS delayed airing the Abu Ghraib photos, then Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement gave false assurances to the justices of the Supreme Court that they could be confident the executive branch would not torture detainees. In fact, he gave them this assurance in the Hamdi oral argument, earlier in the day on the evening of which CBS finally broadcast the photos.

I believe the failure to fully inform Solicitor General Olson's office what was going on was a lot of the reason why Olson reasoned a month or two later.

[lysias]

Judges hate to be lied to. As someone who once clerked for a federal judge, I've got to believe the Abu Ghraib photos played a large role in Supreme Court deliberations in the Hamdi case.

(Even if Clement was telling them what he believed was the truth, that just means that his superiors had lied by omission to him, and, through him, to the justices.)