Shaping Up CBS:A Case Study in Intimidation
Knoll, Erwin
Shaping Up CBS: A Case Study in Intimidation by ERWIN KNOLL "The Vice President is incredible. I feel I should write him a letter. He's amazing, what he has done to the media—-helping it to reform...
...Convinced now that it was the target of an orchestrated Government attack, CBS had prepared an elaborate filmed rebuttal of the Government's allegations, but there was disagreement within the network about whether the rebuttal should be aired...
...There is the story of what some Government personnel are up to in leaking and smearing to cast doubt on the credibility of news organizations the Government finds unpalatable...
...Cronkite, who had expected the press to take an interest in the affair, was reported by associates to be "quite bitter" about the newspapers' performance...
...What I am saying is that there is no official investigation, that there has been no involvement on the part of the White House in regard to this...
...The White House denied that the resignation was connected in any way with the CBS affair or any other controversy...
...Some executives felt it would only call further attention to the charges against the November 3 news program...
...In a letter to Cronkite on May 22, Senator J. W. Fulbright of Arkansas, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged that the Pentagon had been guilty of precisely the "fraudulent press practices" that it had alleged against CBS...
...He acknowledges he talked to several reporters and columnists regarding it...
...In fact, of course, news fakery is not unheard of, and CBS had taken extraordinary precautions with the atrocity reports...
...He also mentioned two other newsfilms that had been carried on the CBS evening news—one broadcast on February 17, 1970, showing South Vietnamese troops applying the water torture to a prisoner, and another, dating back to October 9, 1967, depicting an American soldier attempting to cut an ear off a dead enemy soldier...
...The film, Webster said, did indicate the presence of a weapon nearby, though it did not show the prisoner reaching for it...
...For reasons not entirely clear, the White House has engaged in an undercover campaign to discredit CBS News by alleging the story was faked...
...I don't want to say anything on the record," he replied, and suggested that I check with Ziegler or Klein, the White House director of communications...
...The psychology is, 'We'd better make damn sure not to make a mistake.' And when you start thinking that way, when you start playing it safe, you stop doing your job...
...This has been done by prompting receptive reporters and columnists to publish White House and Pentagon suspicions about the authenticity of the report...
...military adviser...
...CBS is flat wrong," Mollenhoff told a reporter for Television Digest, a trade newsletter, on May 22...
...There is no intention to have anything of that sort...
...If I had a company of Sergeant Mots, I think everybody would go home over here in . . . within the next year . . . without a doubt...
...We do not know why...
...The New York Times carried no story at all—at least in the edition that reached Washington...
...The FCC is interested, a House committee is interested...
...For the next seven minutes—an unusually long segment for a television news show—Don Webster reported further on the atrocity incident...
...CBS is considered to be totally irresponsible, indefensibly hiding behind a freedom-of-the-press screen a bald fraud on the public...
...CBS will be tempted to try harder to shape up...
...Two events on Thursday, May 21, convinced CBS to put its rebuttal on the air...
...Anderson repeated the Saigon Embassy's description of the November 3 broadcast as a "cut-and-paste job," cited the two other broadcasts that had been mentioned by Wilson, and added a few more that he said were mentioned in the "caustic White House memo"—including the allegation that CBS had "staged incidents of police brutality" during the 1968 Democratic convention...
...The view inside the Nixon Administration is somewhat more drastic...
...the story was ignored or buried almost everywhere...
...Mollenhoff no longer with the White House...
...The suspicion at CBS was that interest in its atrocity report was not confined to the Pentagon's audio-visual branch but extended to high levels in the White House...
...But when they are portrayed on television— brought to some seventeen million viewers by the Cronkite program—the Government tends to take offense...
...And most dramatically, he showed the Vietnamese soldier who had done the knifing—Sergeant First Class Nguyen Van Mot, who, as it happened, had been named Soldier of the Year for 1969 in III Corps...
...What was new in the Register's news story on April 12 was the suggestion that the CBS atrocity report was not authentic...
...I think they've taken a second look...
...You can't underestimate the power of fear...
...CBS President Frank Stanton said Agnew's attack was "an unprecedented attempt...
...And tomorrow, in 620 newspapers, columnist Jack Anderson will repeat the substance of a White House memo containing those charges...
...We must jealously guard our role as journalists," he had affirmed...
...In The Washington Post it was headed: "White House Memo Cites CBS Faking," and began: "A caustic White House memo, intended for internal use only, accuses the Columbia Broadcasting System of 'irresponsibility' and questions whether the Federal Communications Commission should investigate...
...Finally," he concluded, "I would note that there are important stories here on which you have not touched...
...Some suggested a private showing of the rebuttal film to Mollenhoff, Presidential Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, and the White House director of communications, Herb Klein...
...We stand by the accuracy and authenticity of our reports as broadcast...
...He is forceful to a degree, but this is necessary since the information we can gain out here firsthand is most important to us, and ah . . . he . . . ah . . . can definitely get his point across to the prisoner...
...But instead they chose to circulate unwarranted and easily dis-provable charges about Australian helicopters, training film, etc...
...A few years ago, when television news-film showed an American "Zippo squad" setting fire to a Vietnamese village, network executives were summoned to the White House for a tongue-lashing from President Johnson...
...And what seemed ominous to CBS was that the suggestion first appeared in the Register...
...I would like to know what Mr...
...Despite the flights of First Amendment rhetoric so common at editors' conventions, the working motto appears to be, "I'm All Right, Jack...
...The facts could have been checked here...
...The Washington Post reported the CBS response as a brief shirttail to the Anderson column...
...It began: "The Columbia Broadcasting System has been under investigation for allegedly faking horror scenes from Vietnam but is standing its ground in refusing to supply the Defense Department with requested information which might help to determine if war crimes were committed...
...I asked him to clarify his role in the CBS affair...
...Most of the newspapers of May 22— those that carried the Anderson column and those that didn't—demonstrated that CBS need not have worried about what day the newspapers would have more space available for coverage of its rebuttal broadcast...
...Ziegler: In relation to the suggestions and reports regarding Mr...
...Q: Who is Mr...
...the special counsel was returning to the Des Moines Register in mid-July as Washington bureau chief, succeeding Wilson, who was retiring...
...I'm a close watcher of newspapers and television...
...As far as I am concerned, the White House was not involved in it...
...Freedom of press and speech is not so much involved as the integrity of television broadcasting, which is already suffering from a credibility gap...
...His responsibilities do not include the investigation of news organizations...
...Mollenhoff's status is in this...
...Every American who has served in Vietnam, either as soldier or as correspondent, knows that such barbarous acts are not uncommon...
...On Thursday, too, CBS learned that Jack Anderson, whose syndicated "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column appears in more than 600 newspapers, was about to devote his Friday column to the Administration's charges against the network...
...Wilson, who may or may not have been reflecting Mollenhoff's views, took one more swing at CBS on May 25 with a column that The Washington Star headed "CBS Rebuttal on Horror Leaves Central Issue...
...Richard Wilson, whose column appears in sixty newspapers, has printed those charges...
...And this sorry affair raises, too, the question whether the Government personnel involved were not more interested in smearing us and trying to disprove what we reported—accurately— than in finding out the facts to uncover possible wrongdoing by the military or our allies...
...Last fall, when the Nixon Administration declared war on the news media in Vice President Spiro Agnew's celebrated Des Moines speech, the CBS response was swift and vigorous...
...Mollenhoff did give out information and as a matter of fact called some reporters in and gave them information and declined to give CBS the same information...
...Q: Is Mr...
...It is the story of a story first broadcast here about six months ago...
...Sergeant Mot typifies, I think, the hard-nosed, hard-core . . . what you might say, Vietnamese soldier," said First Lieutenant Richard Showalter, a U.S...
...I am aware of the report that ran last night and I don't intend to discuss it or amplify on it in any way...
...In a five-page letter to Wilson, Salant presented a detailed defense of the three atrocity stories as broadcast on the CBS evening news...
...Clark Mollenhoff, special counsel to the President, confirms that he has investigated the CBS News Vietnam story but refused to say who ordered the investigation...
...Furthermore, the network had deleted some of the more gruesome footage...
...Since Vice President Agnew's attack upon the television networks, CBS has been the boldest about continuing its criticism of the Nixon Administration...
...After the strong stand CBS took on the Cronkite show, the word will be out: 'Let's be supersafe, let's be supercareful, let's not give anyone a chance to say, "." told you so...
...Klein told some reporters—who did not quote him by name—that the White House memo on CBS was strictly "a Mollenhoff production...
...Pentagon officials acknowledge that this does not necessarily mean the man was already dead, but the fact that there was not even an involuntary jerk of the man's body during the stabbing has aroused their suspicions...
...There was some discussion about whether to air the CBS defense on the Cronkite program Thursday evening, in advance of the Anderson column, or Friday evening, following it...
...What is the effect of such episodes as the spring offensive against CBS...
...Some aides fear, therefore, that an FCC investigation would look like an attempt to intimidate CBS...
...They have been described, from time to time, in some of the print media...
...Klein also dissuaded Mollenhoff at the last minute from dispatching a long and angry letter to CBS...
...training film...
...The spring offensive against CBS also began, by mere coincidence, in Des Moines...
...Helicopters, described in the broadcast narration as American, bore an insignia that "probably is the kangaroo insignia used on Australian helicopters, a defense official said...
...Mollenhoff...
...There are indications, they say, that battle segments depicted in the film actually may be training maneuvers, and that the prisoner already may have been dead before the stabbing...
...These might be stories you might find worth pursuing, as we intend to do...
...Mollenhoff's involvement in the CBS report last night, I don't have the details to give you on that...
...He's amazing, what he has done to the media—-helping it to reform itself...
...Mollenhoff working for...
...The Register's article went on to itemize some of the "discrepancies...
...That story, from Vietnam, showed an atrocity such as occurs, from time to time, on both sides in any war...
...The Wilson column, which appears in some sixty newspapers, bore this headline in the Washington Evening Star: "CBS Stand in War News Probe Is Questioned...
...The Register's story aroused suspicions of another sort at CBS, although the Pentagon's interest in the atrocity film came as no surprise...
...Mollenhoff works for the White House and you are aware of his responsibilities...
...But," the story added, "audio-visual experts in the Pentagon also are questioning the genuineness of the film itself, pointing out what they say appear to be discrepancies in the story...
...As Tricia Nixon—who appeared on CBS a few nights later as hostess to a charming tour of the White House— says, "You can't underestimate the power of fear...
...You keep out of trouble that way...
...There was concern at CBS—concern about adverse publicity at a time when network profits were lagging, concern about a new wave of protests from patriotic Middle Americans who had already been aroused by Vice President Agnew's attacks—but there was also indignation...
...to intimidate a news medium...
...The station manager of a Texas affiliate had reported receiving a strange call from Clark Mollenhoff—a call devoted to a discussion of the network's Vietnam coverage...
...In brief off-the-record conversation, Mollenhoff shed no further light on my question, but left me with the distinct impression that regardless of what he may or may not have said about CBS, he wasn't retracting a word of it...
...He said he had killed the prisoner in self-defense because he was reaching for a rifle...
...Ziegler: Mr...
...The film broadcast on November 3 had been received several weeks earlier and had been held up until the circumstances were thoroughly checked out...
...If I read Wilson right, that "central issue" was that CBS had an obligation to "cooperate" with the Government by furnishing information requested of it...
...The Army, Hatch informed Salant, was finding it difficult to identify the time and place of the incident and the Americans who might have been present...
...ABC is now known in the trade as "the silent majority's network," and some NBC newsmen complain openly that their network has become "careful" to the point of distorting the news...
...What has happened since then tells something about the Government and its relation with news media which carry stories the Government finds disagreeable...
...Citing the testimony of an Army sergeant, Fulbright accused the Defense Department of palming off on the networks three staged training films in the guise of actual combat footage...
...ERWIN KNOLL, the Washington editor of The Progressive, has been a White House correspondent during the last three Administrations...
...We broadcast the original story," Cronkite concluded, "in the belief it told something about the nature of the war in Vietnam...
...There had been previous reports, officially denied, that one of Mollenhoff's White House chores was to investigate unfriendly newsmen...
...CBS executives did not need to be reminded that Clark R. Mollenhoff, a special counsel to President Nixon known as the Administration's "House Dick," had formerly served in the Register's Washington bureau as a prize-winning investigative reporter...
...It did show, Webster added, "that Sergeant Mot stabbed the prisoner a second time, when the prisoner did not seem to be resisting or threatening his captors...
...I'm not stimulating any investigation...
...Cronkite had introduced it as an example of "savagery," and Don Webster, a CBS correspondent in Vietnam, had referred to it on the air as "one of those atrocities that take place from time to time in Vietnam...
...Tricia Nixon It must be said for the executives of the Columbia Broadcasting System that they saw it coming...
...At the time, the network was also fending off requests for out-takes from Attorney General John Mitchell's Justice Department...
...I'm interested...
...This spring Salant found out how right he was...
...I had my own telephone interview with Mollenhoff, and found him cordial but uncommunicative...
...But that simply isn't true...
...He showed the First Air Cavalry Division patches on the American advisers on the scene...
...Wilson went on to refer to the November 3 broadcast, reporting that "its authenticity was challenged in a report from the American Embassy in Vietnam on November 13 as a 'cut-and-paste' job involving different locales and personnel and including an Australian helicopter as well as some U.S...
...Out-takes, like a reporter's notebook, are sacrosanct...
...In a letter to Mollenhoff, the President said he "has alerted us to many potential problem areas and has been important in demonstrating that good government can be good politics...
...There are some fine points here but CBS's judgment can be questioned in not cooperating, both as a matter of self-examination and in the interest of punishing American officers for any complicity in war crimes...
...He is co-author with William McGaffin of "Anything But the Truth" and "Scandal in the Pentagon...
...As early as November 14, eleven days after the broadcast on the Cronkite program, Salant had heard about it from Norman Hatch, chief of audio-visual services at the Pentagon...
...The decision was made to go ahead on Thursday, because the Friday audience was smaller...
...At the regular briefing for White House correspondents on the afternoon of May 22, Press Secretary Ron Ziegler flatly declared that "there is no investigation of CBS, or for that matter any other news media...
...All that holds back the White House from referring the charges to the FCC, an aide told this column, is concern that the motive might be misunderstood...
...Salant, in a letter to Wilson, wrote of the atrocity stories: "I give you my assurance that we are convinced that they are authentic and accurate and that the charges which are being circulated by the Government are false...
...The first lesson of the CBS episode, therefore, was that while the Government can readily enlist some segments of the media to undermine the credibility of others, the media under attack can't count on much help from their colleagues...
...I think this is a matter that can be worked out between the news organization and the Pentagon and Mr...
...Let's just say I am interested...
...By that time, however, suspicions at CBS had been confirmed from another quarter...
...The prisoner who was stabbed "is not seen to move in the film, either before or during the stabbing...
...If he finds a prisoner or anything in a bunker or anything . . . ah, if we can get some first-hand information from him, Sergeant Mot's the man to find him and the man to get the information...
...as I have stated, the Government has immense investigative resources...
...The suspicion was confirmed on May 11 in a syndicated column by Richard Wilson, the chief of the Register's Washington bureau...
...As Anderson pointed out in his column, "CBS has been the boldest about continuing its criticism of the Nixon Administration" since the Agnew crusade began...
...According to the Registers, report, the Pentagon was trying to find out whether American officers had actually witnessed the atrocity without trying to prevent it and without reporting it afterward...
...In one of the more curious journalistic exercises, The Milwaukee Journal, in a story compiled "from press dispatches" and headed, "CBS Replies to Charge of Fakery," managed to repeat the Administration's charges against CBS without reporting the substance of the CBS rebuttal...
...The Saigon bureau of CBS had refused a request for information and "out-takes"—unused film footage—on the grounds that "identification of the camerman would endanger his security...
...CBS, he concluded, has an obligation "to reassure the public on this point...
...We do not know if he was alive at that time...
...The Anderson column appeared the next day, May 22...
...The first was a telephone interview with Mollenhoff conducted by Dan Rather, the CBS White House correspondent, in which—according to Rather—Mollenhoff conceded that he had discussed the CBS affair with "several reporters," and added: "I'm not initiating any investigation...
...Fulbright's assertions were checked out, and a report was prepared for the CBS evening news—but it was never run...
...A week later, the White House suddenly announced Mollenhoff's resignation...
...This was the exchange that followed: Ziegler: I am not addressing myself to that, nor do I intend to take a great deal of questioning on this...
...Army was investigating "a television newsfilm that purports to show two South Vietnamese soldiers stabbing a prisoner to death in the presence of American military advisers...
...The private showing, it was argued, would persuade the Administration to call off its campaign...
...Sergeant Mot, interviewed through an interpreter, had no trouble recalling the stabbing, or the presence of a CBS camera crew...
...187th Assault Helicopter Squadron...
...The easy answer is that it will have no effect at all," one able and prominent television correspondent told me...
...the media under attack can't count on much help from their colleagues...
...Cronkite, who has long been an outspoken critic of Government attempts at news manipulation, was particularly incensed about the aspersions cast on Don Webster, whom colleagues describe as a "gungho reporter" more sympathetic than most to the American military effort in Vietnam...
...Wilson, presumably reflecting "the view inside the Nixon Administration," wrote that atrocity reports raise the question of whether television news is "authentic, exaggerated showmanship or just plain fakery...
...Richard Salant, the president of CBS News, found Agnew's speech "terribly disheartening," and predicted that it would prove to be the opening gun in a major Administration campaign...
...In a reply to Hatch on December 15, Salant had supported the position of the Saigon office...
...If we make a mistake now, they'll jump all over us.' "Everybody in television—and I include myself—will be just a bit more cautious...
...Although he had accused the network of "indefensibly hiding behind a freedom-of-the-press screen," Wilson declined, in a subsequent interview with a CBS correspondent, to divulge his own sources for the Administration's "view...
...You start reporting the news the way the Government wants it reported...
...In fact, Mollenhoff's version of what was said during the May 21 phone conversation with Rather differs markedly from Rather's version...
...They're afraid if they don't shape up...
...What follows is unusual for the CBS evening news," Cronkite began on Thursday night...
...The film had been shown last November 3 on Walter Cronkite's CBS evening news program...
...That is the fact...
...Like Wilson, Anderson gave no source for his White House intelligence...
...As the official spokesman for the White House, on this subject, which we are not involved in, I am not going to discuss it...
...When the network implies "that what really is at issue is freedom under Pentagon pressure to tell it like it is," Wilson wrote, "credulity begins to drop...
...And after the stabbing, a picture we did not show before . . . the body of the prisoner was slit open...
...A white flag shown in a combat scene was of a kind "normally used to mark simulated enemy locations in combat training maneuvers...
...He showed close-ups of the disputed helicopter insignia, demonstrating that it was the mark of the U.S...
...According to the Digest, he "denied leaking any anti-CBS stories to newsmen or telling CBS reporter Dan Rather that he had done so, as claimed by Rather...
...He showed that the white flags were not training devices but scarecrows commonly used in Vietnamese rice fields...
...On Sunday morning, April 12, the Des Moines Register —"The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon'*—bannered an exclusive story on its front page: "Probe TV's 'Atrocity.' " In a copyrighted dispatch from its Washington bureau, the Register reported that the U.S...
...Robert Pierpoint of CBS News, acknowledging "a certain interest" in the matter, told Ziegler: "I know for a fact that Mr...
...You seem to imply that he was not involved and we know that he was...
...The Washington Evening Star had four paragraphs...
...Network executives felt they had done enough fighting for a while...
...A second lesson, which surely needed no reinforcement at this late stage, was that the ways of the White House are mysterious...
...It was felt, too, that Friday's newspapers would have more space than Saturday's to report the story...
Vol. 34 • July 1970 • No. 7
