CBS just doesn't get it. It's not enough to say you're sorry when your network's most prominent and trusted journalists tried to influence the outcome of an election. And make no mistake, that's what Dan Rather and his associates at "60 Minutes" tried to do on Sept. 8, when they aired a story claiming George W. Bush disobeyed a direct order from his commander in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
On Monday, the network admitted that "CBS News cannot prove that the documents (alleging Bush's malfeasance) are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."
Mistakes were made. We're sorry. But don't worry; we'll investigate what went wrong. Let's move on. Trust us.
But why should we? Dan Rather can profess he's a "fact-finder" and "truth-teller" 'till armadillos fly, but his actions belie those sentiments. In interviews following his admission that he should not have used the discredited documents -- which virtually everyone now agrees are forgeries -- Rather still maintains that the thrust of his reporting on Bush's National Guard service was true and accurate.
"We were not right in every detail," he told WCBS reporter Marcia Kramer on Monday, but "We had a wealth of information. We knew the basic information was true."
Knew it was true? How? President Bush has ordered that all records related to his service in the National Guard be released. Although some records may have been lost -- they are 30 years old, after all -- literally hundreds of pages have been released, and there is nothing in them that even hints that George W. Bush ever disobeyed a direct order or used political influence to secure his place in the Guard. To the contrary, the documentary evidence and most credible contemporary witnesses have contradicted both allegations.