• by David Kaplan , January 11, 2005

Longtime "60 Minutes" Producer Mary Mapes has been fired--and three associates have been asked to resign--as a result of an independent investigation sought by CBS executives in connection with the September 8, 2004 segment on "60 Minutes Wednesday" that relied on false documents that cast a negative light on President George W. Bush's national guard service in the early 1970s.

Aside from Mapes--who had just received plaudits for helping break the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal--Josh Howard, a CBS News veteran who most recently rose to the position of Don Hewitt's deputy on the original "60 Minutes" that airs Sundays, has been asked to resign from the news department. He has been the executive producer of "60 Minutes Wednesday" since June 2004, and this was his first big story.

Howard's "right hand," Mary Murphy--the senior broadcast producer on the show and a broadcast journalist at CBS News for more than 17 years--was also asked to resign from the network's news department.

Betsy West, the senior vice president for prime time, was the representative of CBS News management in this matter, with direct supervisory responsibility for the entire "60 Minutes Wednesday" broadcast. She's been in network news for nearly 30 years--23 at ABC and six at CBS-- and she too has been asked to tender her resignation for not exercising enough oversight on this report.

In addition to the dismissals being ordered and sought, CBS, as per the recommendation of the panel, will immediately create a position of senior vice president of standards and special projects, reporting to the president of CBS News, the network announced.

Before an investigative report proceeds, the standards executive will review the use of confidential sources; will determine the completeness of the authentication and/or chain of custody of materials received from outside sources, ranging from documents to video to photos; and will approve all hidden-camera investigations.

Stepping into this new post is Linda Mason, who has been named senior vice president of standards and special projects, reporting directly to the president of CBS News. Mason joined CBS News in 1966. She has won 13 Emmys, two Peabodies, a Dupont, and various other awards.

CBS called the panel into creation on September 22, 2004, two days after Dan Rather--who was the reporter on the segment--apologized on the air for what he conceded was misleading reporting, after strongly defending it for the previous two weeks.

The panel was headed by Dick Thornburgh, the former U.S. Attorney General under the first President Bush, and Louis D. Boccardi, retired president and CEO of the Associated Press.

On Monday, the panel issued a 234-page report detailing the development of the story, as well as several recommendations for CBS to ensure that such egregious lapses of journalistic practice don't reoccur.

"Through the commissioning and publication of the panel's report, and the subsequent actions taken today, we hope to address those failures fairly, fully, and responsibly, and to set CBS News back on its rightful path as a news organization of great depth, integrity, and purpose, stronger than it was before," said a statement from Leslie Moonves, co-president and co-chief operating officer of Viacom and chairman and CEO of CBS.

The panel traces the path of the report from days leading to the September 8 broadcast through September 20, the day that Rather and CBS News President Andrew Heyward acknowledged that the memos upon which the story was based could not be authenticated and therefore should not have been used to buttress the report that President Bush had received special treatment in the Texas Air National Guard.

Both Rather and Heyward were admonished in the panel's report, but neither was asked to leave. Rather announced he was leaving the "CBS Nightly News" anchor chair two months ago, although he will continue to report for CBS News outlets such as its "48 Hours" broadcast news magazine.

In terms of what went wrong, the panel found that the report was "crashed"--rushed onto the air--to beat the perceived competition, and it further says "the fact is that basic journalistic steps were not carried out in a manner consistent with accurate and fair reporting, leading to countless misstatements and omissions."

"As far as the question of reporting is concerned, the bottom line is that much of the September 8th broadcast was wrong, incomplete, or unfair," Moonves' statement said. "The panel found that the producer of the segment, Mary Mapes, ignored information that cast doubt on the story she had set out to report--that President Bush had received special treatment more than 30 years ago, getting into the Guard ahead of many other applicants, and had done so to avoid service in Vietnam. As the panel found, statements made by sources were ignored, as were notes in Mapes' own files."

Furthermore, the panel also addressed Mapes' ongoing contention--later proven to be false--that the documents used in the story were authenticated and had been obtained from a "rock-solid" source. The panel concluded that the memos had in fact "a questionable chain of custody." The panel also found that Mapes presented half-truths as facts to those with whom she worked when questioned about the veracity of her reporting.