If this is true, if 60min coordinated with the DNC to smear Bush, then CBS is pretty much done for. What we would have is a major news organization coordinating with a certain politcal part to influence the outcome of an election. And that, my friends, is illegal in this country. As is one party faking information and using a major network to smear a sitting President.
Who knows where it goes from here, or how deep it will go. But they have put together an independant panel to investigate. But is too much damage already don? Howard Kurtz thinks it's possible:
Bob Zelnick, a former ABC correspondent who now chairs Boston University's journalism department, faulted CBS's apology, saying: "There's one word I haven't heard so far: retraction. They've yielded inch by inch on the authenticity of the documents and the reliability of the source, but without the documents there was no story." Until CBS retracts the story and apologizes directly to Bush, "it mitigates the potential beneficial effect of an independent board."Read the whole thing.
Watergate anyone?
