Too little, too late

On tonight's broadcast of CBS Evening News (which I did not, for the record, watch), Dan Rather and CBS finally admitted that they could not verify the authenticity of the Killian memos used in the Sept 8 broadcast of 60 Minutes Wednesday, and apologized. The segment included an interview with retired Texas ANG Lt Col Bill Burkett, who admitted that he intentionally misled CBS producer Mary Mapes into believing that the memos were authentic, "giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."

From the official CBS statement:

CBS News and CBS management are commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken. The names of the people conducting the review will be announced shortly, and their findings will be made public.

CBS should have done this a week ago, and this late, grudging admission does not answer a number of important remaining questions. For one, who was the "actual source"? Does this source, as has been suggested before, have ties to the DNC and the Kerry campaign? And while we're advancing conspiracy theories, does anyone really believe that CBS "was misled"? This seems like a thinly veiled attempt at passing the buck; the reality in my opinion is that CBS was so set on breaking an "explosive" story that they ignored all reasonable objections raised by their own experts and went to press with the story anyway.

If a whole bunch of people at CBS do not resign or are not fired over this (Dan Rather, Andrew Heyward, Josh Howard and Mary Mapes, just to name a few), I'll be disappointed, although not, to tell the truth, surprised.