They knew better. Last September's CBS 60 Minutes report on President
Bush's National Guard service provides plenty of examples for
journalism classes -- examples of the "don't do this..." variety.
If you haven't been following the story, today's New York Times
report is a good place to start. In a phrase, it says the CBS story was
"both factually discredited and unprofessionally produced.":
Viacom,
the network's parent, dismissed the veteran
producer who prepared the segment, and demanded resignations of several executives. Here's the CBS story.
For other treatments, see Fox, CNN -- and many more at the Poynter Institute.
Online journalism note: Most sites, like the Times, have excerpts from the report and links to PDF files of the full document and the CBS response.
From the "there must be better news..." department: The Boston Globe's ombudsman, Christine Chinlund, reports a major reduction in errors
by her paper in 2004, when compared to 2003. Although 2003 was
the worst year ever and 2004 wasn't that much better, there's still
room for optimism, Chinlund said:
So what does all this tell us? That the Globe staff was more
accuracy-conscious in '03 than the year before? Probably. That it was
still more error-prone than it was in, say, the 1990s... or just that, with time, it's more willing to run
corrections? Maybe, on both counts.
It's impossible to know what drives the annual fluctuations,
although a lower tally is certainly a good thing, given that the paper
corrects all known errors. The Globe's news library staff made that report possible, and the NewsLib Blog pointed me to the story. Reporters are lucky to have news librarians, and it's great to see them get credit for their work.
9:08:34 AM 
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