CNN split-screen segment compares Obama and crack-smoking Toronto mayor
CNN on Saturday filled nearly ten minutes of airtime by discussing how President Barack Obama was like crack-smoking Toronto Rob Ford.
“The Most Trusted Name in News” began the segment with a split-screen image of Obama and Ford. The network then likened Obama’s recent admission that he was “not a perfect man” because of the health care reform roll-out to Ford’s insistence that he did not have oral sex with a staffer.
After asking which politician had the better approach, CNN host Don Lemon wondered if it was even appropriate to make the comparison.
“No, it’s not fair to compare them at all, it’s totally different,” damage control specialist Don Goldberg noted. “But it’s fun for people like myself.”
“It is fair to make a comparison for the simple fact that both of them are in trouble,” clinical psychologist Jeff Gardere disagreed. “With President Obama, certainly it’s a little bit different because here’s a person who’s really concerned about what the people really have to think. He is the leader of the free world — the leader of the world, many would say — whereas, Mayor Ford, this guy is a caricature. He really didn’t care what people thought.”
“We know the two crises are both very different,” Lemon said at the conclusion of the segment. “But it’s about how do you manage those crises? That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
‘Leave of Absence’ for Lara Logan After Flawed Benghazi Report
By BILL CARTER Published: November 26, 2013
CBS News announced Tuesday that it had imposed a leave of absence on its correspondent Lara Logan and her producer, Max McClellan, in the wake of an internal investigation that found serious errors in their report on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans died in the attack, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
The moves follow weeks of criticism directed at “60 Minutes" for the report, which aired on the program and was based on an interview with a hired security agent, Dylan Davies, who CBS News later said lied to them in the report.
Beyond Ms. Logan, the review could have implications for the leadership of Jeffrey Fager, the chairman of CBS News, who is also the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” Mr. Fager sent an email to the staff Tuesday, saying: “As executive producer, I am responsible for what gets on the air. I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through and it shouldn’t have.”
He added: “We are making adjustments at ’60 Minutes’ to reduce the chances of it happening again.”
The review, conducted by CBS News’s executive director of standards and practices, Al Ortiz, was unstinting in its evaluation of the report, which Mr. Ortiz called “deficient in several respects.”
Perhaps chief among the deficiencies, according to Mr. Ortiz’s review, was that the account Mr. Davies gave to Ms. Logan and Mr. McClellan differed from versions he had provided both to his employer, Blue Mountain, and to the F.B.I. This discrepancy, Mr. Ortiz writes, “was knowable before the piece aired.”
CBS’s previous defense had been that it relied on Mr. Davies and was taken in by him. Mr. Ortiz contradicted that defense by saying CBS could have, and should have, been able to verify his account before presenting him as a reliable source.
“The wider reporting resources of CBS News were not employed in an effort to confirm his account,” Mr. Ortiz wrote. He concluded: “Logan and producer Max McClellan told me they found no reason to doubt Davies’s account and found no holes in his story. But the team did not sufficiently vet Davies’s account of his own actions and whereabouts that night.”
The report also criticizes Ms. Logan for not adequately substantiating her conclusion that Al Qaeda took part in the attack and for making a speech in October 2012 that took a position on the attack, and then participating in a story in which she would have been expected to be objective about the facts of the attack.
“From a CBS News standards perspective, there is a conflict in taking a public position on the government’s handling of Benghazi and Al Qaeda, while continuing to report on the story,” Mr. Ortiz wrote. The report also took “60 Minutes” to task for not disclosing on the air that a book written by Mr. Davies about the incident was published by an outlet owned by CBS.
The “summary of findings” from Mr. Ortiz, and the email sent to the staff by Mr. Fager follow.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
My review found that the Benghazi story aired by “60 Minutes” on Oct. 27 was deficient in several respects:
• From the start, Lara Logan and her producing team were looking for a different angle to the story of the Benghazi attack. They believed they found it in the story of Dylan Davies, written under the pseudonym, “Morgan Jones.” It purported to be the first western eyewitness account of the attack. But Logan’s report went to air without “60 Minutes” knowing what Davies had told the F.B.I. and the State Department about his own activities and location on the night of the attack.
• The fact that the F.B.I. and the State Department had information that differed from the account Davies gave to “60 Minutes” was knowable before the piece aired. But the wider reporting resources of CBS News were not employed in an effort to confirm his account. It’s possible that reporters and producers with better access to inside F.B.I. sources could have found out that Davies had given varying and conflicting accounts of his story.
• Members of the “60 Minutes” reporting team conducted interviews with Davies and other individuals in his book, including the doctor who received and treated Ambassador Stevens at the Benghazi hospital. They went to Davies’ employer Blue Mountain, the State Department, the F.B.I. (which had interviewed Davies), and other government agencies to ask about their investigations into the attack. Logan and producer Max McClellan told me they found no reason to doubt Davies’ account and found no holes in his story. But the team did not sufficiently vet Davies’ account of his own actions and whereabouts that night.
• Davies told “60 Minutes” that he had lied to his own employer that night about his location, telling Blue Mountain that he was staying at his villa, as his superior ordered him to do, but telling “60 Minutes” that he then defied that order and went to the compound. This crucial point — his admission that he had not told his employer the truth about his own actions — should have been a red flag in the editorial vetting process.
• After the story aired, The Washington Post reported the existence of a so-called “incident report” that had been prepared by Davies for Blue Mountain in which he reportedly said he spent most of the night at his villa, and had not gone to the hospital or the mission compound. Reached by phone, Davies told the “60 Minutes” team that he had not written the incident report, disavowed any knowledge of it, and insisted that the account he gave “60 Minutes” was word for word what he had told the F.B.I. Based on that information and the strong conviction expressed by the team about their story, Jeff Fager defended the story and the reporting to the press.
• On Nov. 7, The New York Times informed Fager that the F.B.I.'s version of Davies’ story differed from what he had told “60 Minutes.” Within hours, CBS News was able to confirm that in the F.B.I.'s account of their interview, Davies was not at the hospital or the mission compound the night of the attack. “60 Minutes” announced that a correction would be made, that the broadcast had been misled, and that it was a mistake to include Davies in the story. Later a State Department source also told CBS News that Davies had stayed at his villa that night and had not witnessed the attack.
• Questions have been raised about the recent pictures from the compound which were displayed at the end of the report, including a picture of Ambassador Stevens’s schedule for the day after the attack. Video taken by the producer-cameraman whom the “60 Minutes” team sent to the Benghazi compound last month clearly shows that the pictures of the Technical Operations Center were authentic, including the picture of the schedule in the debris.
• Questions have also been raised about the role of Al Qaeda in the attack since Logan declared in the report that Al Qaeda fighters had carried it out. Al Qaeda’s role is the subject of much disagreement and debate. While Logan had multiple sources and good reasons to have confidence in them, her assertions that Al Qaeda carried out the attack and controlled the hospital were not adequately attributed in her report.
• In October of 2012, one month before starting work on the Benghazi story, Logan made a speech in which she took a strong public position arguing that the US Government was misrepresenting the threat from Al Qaeda, and urging actions that the US should take in response to the Benghazi attack. From a CBS News Standards perspective, there is a conflict in taking a public position on the government’s handling of Benghazi and Al Qaeda, while continuing to report on the story.
• The book, written by Davies and a co-author, was published by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, part of the CBS Corporation. “60 Minutes” erred in not disclosing that connection in the segment.
Al Ortiz
Executive Director of Standards and Practices
CBS News
EMAIL FROM MR. FAGER
By now most of you have received the report from Al Ortiz about the problems with the “60 Minutes” story on Benghazi.
There is a lot to learn from this mistake for the entire organization. We have rebuilt CBS News in a way that has dramatically improved our reporting abilities. Ironically “60 Minutes,” which has been a model for those changes, fell short by broadcasting a now discredited account of an important story, and did not take full advantage of the reporting abilities of CBS News that might have prevented it from happening.
As a result, I have asked Lara Logan, who has distinguished herself and has put herself in harm’s way many times in the course of covering stories for us, to take a leave of absence, which she has agreed to do. I have asked the same of producer Max McClellan, who also has a distinguished career at CBS News.
As executive producer, I am responsible for what gets on the air. I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through and it shouldn’t have.
When faced with a such an error, we must use it as an opportunity to make our broadcast even stronger. We are making adjustments at “60 Minutes” to reduce the chances of it happening again.
There is a lot of pride at CBS News. Every broadcast is working hard to live up to the high standard set at CBS News for excellence in reporting. This was a regrettable mistake. But there are many fine professionals at “60 Minutes” who produce some of the very best of broadcast journalism, covering the important and interesting stories of our times, and they will continue to do so each and every Sunday.
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