Truth and Balance at CBS News

...Onlelevision TRUTH AND BALANCE AT CBS NEWS BY MARVIN KITMAN Xhave a few comments on a recent Star Chamber proceeding at CBS News On trial was a CBS Reports documentary presented the night of January 23, "The Uncounted Enemy A Vietnam Deception," narrated by Mike Wallace and produced, written and reported by George Cnle In April, a TV Guide article entitled "Anatomy of a Smear" attacked the show Van Gordon Sauter, the new head of CBS News, apparently eager to demonstrate that he is a serious news type and not just a former sports executive and local station manager, took TV Guide seriously He appointed an inspector general who launched a six-week investigation Last month CBS News found itself innocent of the charges—and pledged not to do it again I think both the magazine and the network news organization were guilty of a wrongdoing here "The Uncounted Enemy" was a highly pointed documentary about the mystery of how we were always winning the war of numbers in Vietnam It is a matter of public interest whether the Viet-cong's troop strength was deliberately underestimated In exploring the question, the show proved to be the most powerful television I've seen on Vietnam since the helicopters were being pushed off aircraft earners in the final days of that terrible war Crile's fascinating account of how the order of battle—the official estimate of the enemy being faced—was tampered with at the time of the Tet offensive (1968) brought back memories of body counts on the evening news, a feature then almost as routine as basketball and baseball scores All too few viewers wondered at the time how we could keep on killing so many and still not reach the end of General William Westmoreland's tunnel It was the age of lying Lyndon Johnson perjured himself about many things regarding the escalation Next, Richard Nixon lied to us about Watergate Still, it made my blood boil to see General Westmoreland telling his tale again, sweating, his tongue darting nervously in and out You have to ask where this kind of TV was 14 years ago when we needed it The networks were accepting the distortions coming out of Vietnam that they are now documenting The television industry wanted to believe the government in the late' 60s Watergate made it stop believing What particularly distinguished Crile's effort was that it actually reached some conclusions Usually TV documentaries recycle news, with the one who does it fastest winning the awards If they recycle Harper's or Mother Jones instead of the New York Times, they get more prizes George Cnle's documentary, by contrast, was real reporting It did not merely give us, "The Washington Post learned " or "We have two sources, one of whom didn't say no " Every accusation was backed up by somebody who came on camera and spoke, officers broke the military's code of silence That was the awesome part of it After 14 years top Intelligence people were telling the truth It was unprecedented, thrilling to watch and somehow scary Not surpnsingly, the people Crile charged with mucking up the order of battle are the same ones who began complaining after the program was aired in January They were upset with his finding that the military was doing more than look at reality through rose-colored glasses Crile, a respected reporter, is the closest thing we have to a Lincoln Steffens in TV His other work includes the brilliant "CIA The Secret War," concerning that agency's attempts to destabilize Castro He spent four years researching the Vietnam story and persuading the network to go ahead with it At CBS News they are hardly wild-eyed, long-haired gonzo journalists trying to stir up trouble They are super cautious Before they put this one on the air, you can be sure, their lawyers and editors combed through it very carefully Indeed, the TV Guide piece, written by Don Kowet and Sally Bedell, didn't try to refute Crile's contention that enemy troop strength was deliberately underestimated Its quibble was with the way the documentary was done The article listed 18 allegations, most of them concerning lack of balance and the omission of facts strengthening the other side's arguments Ironically, in their condemnation Kowet and Bedell used the very techniques they were criticizing, citing only what buttressed their charges They noted, for example, that CBS News had a "blue paper" outlining "The Uncounted Enemy" before it was made Therefore it was biased in advance The truth is that CBS News would not permit any filming until the reporter had researched the bulk of the story This is Catch 22—Kowet and Bedell certainly wouldn't want Cnle to go off half-cocked, and yet because he did his homework he is blamed for prejudging matters TV Guide further pointed to transcripts of the various interviews as evidence of quoting out of context But TV transcripts are very tricky reading The absence of body language aside, no reporter is going to confront a fibbing interviewee with an accusation like, "Colonel Smith, you are a bare-faced liar," even when that may be the case The reporter lets the he pass for the moment and continues asking questions Such good manners are also politic There's little point in getting thrown out on your ear for setting the record straight A transcript can be filled with lies that shouldn't necessarily be included in the final product Viewing its discoveries as another Watergate, TV Guide went crazy over the material leaked to them by a disgruntled CBS News staffer They have no tradition of independent reporting at that magazine, and were misguided On the other hand, CBS News was wrong to have gotten so flustered It should have simply said, "The documentary is one of many shows we have put on the air We stand by the story, but we are studying the process of reporting with camera, as always Thank you very much for your concern Now go away " Van Gordon Sauter seemed out of his depth with this one He overreacted to TV Guide, forgetting that nobody pays attention to its exposes I remember TV Guide's huge cover story claiming everything on That's Incredible was rigged Then there was the famous cocaine piece by Frank Swert-low that had everybody except the chimp in BJand the Sew doing cocaine out there in Hollynose The thing was 84 pages long, and it did not mention a single name The usual reaction (o 7...

...Nothing short of Sauter carrying Crile around the anchor desk on the CBS Evening News would have vindicated "The Uncounted Enemy " The real victim here is investigative reporting, which is difficult enough to begin with It is slow, painful, tedious work First you have to find the story, and then convince your superior to run it Ankles are going to be bit It's much easier to do a report that doesn't take sides So-called vente is less demanding You turn the cameras on for 60,000 feet and come up with a formless, rambling hour without anybody knowing where the documentary stands "You have just seen everything we could find on this subject—you decide what we want to say " The best reporting is fair, not "balanced " The CBS News memorandum is very complex Now everyone is thoroughly confused and bogged down in details The network's tepid support of Crile will never catch up with the impression left by TV Guide's commercials for "Anatomy of a Smear," suggesting that CBS News tricked us in some wax By dragging the investigation out tor six weeks, Van Gordon Sauter made the front page of the New York Times But he also told the enemies ot TV reporting that CBS News listens to their barks With this tear ot being bitten, it's hard to see the network's future commitment to vigorous journalism...

...Guide exposes is, So...

...Sauter, however, trembled and had Senior Executive Producer Burton Benjamin read 20 hours of transcripts, plus interview 38 principals and unprinciples Everybody marched in place while CBS News examined its own navel The results of the self-examination were released July 8, in an eight-page memorandum that went to all CBS News employees (a copy will be furnished to anyone interested) This was an abridged version of Benjamin's 62-page report, said to have been seen by only two people They probably looked at it with one eye apiece The summary of the 62-page document had more written between the lines than on the lines—more facets than Pubik's Cube The crux of Sauter's Cube, as it could be known someday in journalism schools, is that no one did anything wrong—but there are about 106 violations On page two, Sauter's Cube stands firmly behind "The Uncounted Enemy", on page three, it says the documentary would have been better "if," and offers a hundred suggestions The Cube goes on to announce that there are now new rules for making documentaries at CBS News, that there will be a new show on Vietnam to counteract the first one, and that a new vice president will check all documentaries and news shows so that what didn't happen the first time won't happen again What a ringing vote of confidence for George Cnle ^^do not mean to make light of methodological problems in TV The question of manipulation is subtle and important But the question of how interviews and other material are edited is not peculiar to TV As Reuven Frank, President of NBC News, has observed, " Newspapers do not run whole speeches every time they cover a story They take out a piece here and there, what they consider important Every day in a newspaper you see a Congressman reported doing or saving something If you want the whole thing, you have to subscribe to the Congressional Record " What TV Guide started, and Sauter has encouraged, is a reopening ot the "editing is a conspiracy" debate in TV news that marked the Nixon-Ag new years No documentary could survive such scrutiny Edward R Murrow's Harvest of Shame flunks the same bias test The farm owners under paying then-workers no doubt condemned that pioneering documentary as a smear In fact, there probably isn't any piece of hardnosed reporting m print that would pass muster either There is a larger issue at stake The trial at CBS News was a charade It did not matter that none of Crile's witnesses recanted No one said, "I was drugged, I didn't know what I was doing when I spoke the truth finally after all these years " Crile was deemed guilty to begin with—why else would he be subjected to an investigation...