CBS fiasco doesn’t let Bush off the hook

For years, it was the proudest name in broadcasting. Today, it is the most disgraced, and rightfully so.

Journalistically, there is no way to defend CBS. They accepted documents from Bill Burkett – a questionable witness and known Bush-hater with a longstanding beef against the Texas National Guard. They certified the documents as authentic without talking to the original source. They ran their story without submitting it to the levels of fact-checking standard at “60 Minutes.” They put their one contact in touch with the Kerry campaign. And they stuck to their guns even when it became apparent that they’d been snookered.

If there’s no defending the network, there’s no defending Dan Rather, either. He took responsibility for the story. He personally reported it. He put his credibility behind it. Whether out of desire to hurt President Bush, or sheer incompetence, he failed to do the background checks even a cub reporter would do before going on television.

Like the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, ABC, NBC, CNN and other news organizations caught with their knickers down, CBS will survive over time. But Rather and CBS President Andrew Heyward may not. Certainly, heads should roll at CBS – and not just that of producer Mary Mapes.

What’s bad news for CBS, however, is not necessarily good news for President Bush. True, no sooner had the network fessed up than White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett and Press Secretary Scott McClellan popped the champagne corks. This exonerates President Bush’s National Guard service, they crowed. And this proves it was all a political sting coordinated by the Kerry campaign. Nonsense. Their celebration was premature, and their claims are false.

Unlike the so-called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” which is clearly a front group for the Bush campaign – organized, funded and directed by Bush supporters – there is no evidence of any link between the Kerry campaign and preparation of the CBS story. The Kerry campaign neither forged the documents nor leaked them.

Yes, after she’d already vetted her story for Dan Rather, producer Mapes called Kerry spokesperson Joe Lockhart and asked him to call Burkett. Mapes was wrong to do so. CBS should not have been pimping for the Kerry campaign. But Lockhart’s call, made after CBS had already produced its story for air, had nothing to do with the timing or substance of the broadcast. Lockhart, told that a former top Guard official had advice he wanted to give the campaign, wouldn’t have been doing his job if hadn’t made that call.

But most importantly, the forged CBS documents in no way clear President Bush of charges that he failed to fulfill his service in the Texas Air National Guard. It’s all on the record.

We know he got special treatment to get out of going to Vietnam by joining the Guard. Once in the Guard and certified to fly, he got special treatment to work on a Senate campaign in Alabama – where he never showed up for duty and ducked his required annual physical. Back in Texas, he again got special treatment to leave five months early to attend graduate school in Massachusetts – where, once again, he failed to show up for Guard duty. Bush was a draft dodger and a slacker.

On Bush’s Guard service, the CBS flap changes nothing. The same questions remain unanswered: Why didn’t he show up for duty in Alabama? Why didn’t he take his physical? Why didn’t he report for duty in Massachusetts as required? And how dare he encourage others to question John Kerry’s service in Vietnam – when he, in fact, chickened out?

There’s one other reason why President Bush should not exult at CBS’ misfortune. It sets a dangerous precedent – for him. Consider: CBS got in trouble for using fraudulent documents to mislead a nation about whether or not a member of the National Guard once disobeyed a direct order to take his annual physical. That’s serious enough. But how much more serious for a president of the United States to use fraudulent documents – about yellowcake uranium, mobile weapons labs and weapons of mass destruction – to mislead an entire nation into going to war?

If CBS fires Dan Rather, then we should fire George W. Bush.