CBS finally says "You're Fired"

After much delay, CBS finally released their report on the whole Memogate incident.

As expected, the report said that the high zeal to be the "first" to report on possible discrepancies in Bush Junior's National Guard service record caused CBS executives to ignore questions and suspicions on the veracity of the story, and thus were completely unaware that the memos in question were forgeries.

Oh, and no, there wasn't any "political agenda" being carried out here... oh, no, never! Perish the thought!

But they did find "the appearance of" political bias when the story's producer, Mary Mapes, contacted a senior official in the Kerry/Edwards campaign about the story prior to its airing. Yeah, "appearance of", but no "actual" political bias. Right.

The long and short of it is that Mapes and three others involved with the story were fired.

Unfortunately, Dan Rather himself will not be touched. He gets to leave under his own terms in March. That is the real injustice of the situation. He's the guy who continually challenged the detractors and demanded that President Bush, quote, "answer the question". His underlings get the axe, but he doesn't get touched!

And, to be honest, the recommendations that this report makes to CBS on how to prevent future journalistic embarassments will probably not go very far. Today's media is more about showmanship and the spreading of certain messages than it is to INFORM the public about anything substantive. "Standards and Practices" are more concerned with boobs being exposed than the truth! Remember that this is the same network that fired a producer for interrupting the last five minutes of CSI to give a REAL news story!