Editor's Notes at EditorsNotes.com

Saturday, September 25, 2004

CBS Newtered


NYT:

CBS News said yesterday that it had postponed a "60 Minutes" segment that questioned Bush administration rationales for going to war in Iraq.

The announcement, in a statement by a spokeswoman, was issued four days after the network acknowledged that it could not prove the authenticity of documents it used to raise new questions about President Bush's Vietnam-era military service.

[...]

CBS said last night that the report on the war would not run before Nov. 2.

"We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election," the spokeswoman, Kelli Edwards, said in a statement.

It's inappropriate to examine the policies of a president a month before the election? Do they think that spreading such a dangerous idea is better than admitting the real reason why they're bumping the story? Either CBS News is admitting it has lost the credibility to criticize the president, or they're admitting their embarrassment at the piece's focus on forged documents (about uranium from Niger).

I hear that if you give a broken stopwatch a good shake, it'll start ticking again.