Another Challenge To CBS' Benghazi Report (from McClatchy News) - Media Matters
Last edited Fri Nov 15, 2013, 04:01 PM - Edit history (2)
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/11/13/another-challenge-to-cbs-benghazi-report/196888McClatchy News has offered a damning critique of 60 Minutes' now-retracted story on the September 2012 Benghazi attacks, pointing out that several aspects of the story feature minimal sourcing and contradict the statements of experts.
The report comes as CBS News discloses that a "journalistic review" of the heavily criticized October 27 segment, which featured a since-discredited "witness" and promoted his book on the attacks without disclosing that the book was published by a CBS division. CBS has declined to explain who is conducting that review, how it is being conducted, and whether its findings will be public.
During the segment, correspondent Lara Logan made a number of claims about the attack and its perpetrators, often sourced only with the statement "[w]e have learned" or with nothing at all. McClatchy News Middle East Bureau Chief Nancy Youssef's reporting suggests that these claims were also inaccurate. Given that the report's sources included a man whose account CBS News has already acknowledged was fraudulent, it's fair to question the sourcing of other claims in the report.
A full, complete, and independent investigation of the segment could provide answers to these and other questions about CBS News' reporting.
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Link to McClatchy article:
Questions about ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi story go beyond Dylan Davies interview; CBS conducting ‘journalistic review’
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/13/208446/questions-about-60-minutes-benghazi.html
[font size="3"] Yeah, but Lara Logan looks so sexy in her standard low cut, form fitting dress (the dress looks like a second skin!!) , who cares if it's legitimate journalism or not.. [/font]
= new reply since forum marked as read
Excuse me? So "60 Minutes" is a modified peep show now, too? MAN how far they fall. Remember when CBS used to be called "The Tiffany Network"? The news division was above reproach, its integrity without question. As a matter of fact, the early CBS News titans wrote the book, as it were, on broadcast journalism. "Gotcha" journalism originated, officially, with Mike Wallace and what was then called "ambush journalism." Back when grizzled male reporters sat in a harshly-lit studio, often with a live cigarette in their fingers. "60 Minutes" was the gold standard. The brass ring. If you were hired as a "60 Minutes" correspondent, you were a giant in your own right, a heavyweight, an A-lister, a star. You had credibility oozing out of your pores. Your integrity was beyond question but then again, you were held to the highest of high standards. The revered and feared executive producer Don Hewitt was a task master and a stern and driven leader, and he managed some mighty egos. But then again, you were on Mount Olympus. I was a news reporter for a number of years and at one point or other we all fantasized about being a "60 Minutes" correspondent, the same way most of the women I met or worked with when I was still working - at one point or other aspired to be the next Barbara Walters. A position like that was where you wanted to be. Among the greats. It meant you just might be one of them. And the pay and perks were fabulous too!
But sheesh, "60 Minutes" was an amazingly ground-breaking show, with heavyweights like Morley Safer who'd earned distinction and awards galore covering the Vietnam War. His and other coverage played a role in starting to turn the American public against the war - and I think it was Nixon who lamented that when he lost Walter Cronkite he'd lost the war. Dan Rather - who was not just there in Dallas on that day and that moment and phoned it into the newsroom first, covered that war and more, jousted with several presidents live on TV and was in Afghanistan before anybody. Harry Reasoner, elder statesman-type correspondent who jumped ship to become evening news anchor on ABC. (It used to make me chuckle that almost everybody on "60 Minutes" had to have the letters "er" at the end of their last names.) The aforementioned Mike Wallace. That his son went to Pox Noise - preplexing to say the least. It was like a news version of Murderers Row. "60 Minutes" had the original "Crossfire"-type program with Shana Alexander and James J. Kilpatrick. They shared a segment called "Point/Counterpoint," she the liberal, he the conservative, that was famously spoofed by Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd on "Saturday Night Live" (the bit wherein Aykroyd would open with "Jane, you ignorant slut,..."
Several more distinguished correspondents would follow, including Ed Bradley and Andy Rooney. After that, though, it felt to me as though it started to run out of steam. But for YEARS, "60 Minutes" wasn't just the number-one news show in the Nielsens, it was the number-one prime time show PERIOD. It was Olympus. Now, it's WAAAAAAYYY down in the gully below.
I never thought I'd see the day when people's opinions of "60 Minutes" turned into rolled eyeballs and comments of "I don't trust them anymore." Now, on every one of these articles, I see it again and again. Amazing. Cronkite, Reasoner, Wallace, and Edward R. Murrow whom they all idolized, would all be spinning in their graves. The House Murrow Built has now been completely torn down. Most lately by a pretty little blonde with a wrecking ball. And I'm not talking Miley Cyrus, either.
it was the McClatchy people who got the story correctly. It was like this one voice yelling out WAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY over on the sidelines, but they called it on the WMD and everything.
I'm enthralled by the comments! Intriguing that the first one up top (besides others, throughout) focuses on the inevitable take-away for lara logan's next presumptive career move. Quoting: "Coming soon to the Faux News lineup, Lara Logan." And "She'll be on the FOX & FRIENDS couch in no time showing off her legs and telling us the sun revolves around the Earth, adding that the Earth is flat, of course, and only 6000 years old."
OUCH!!! 
