“Blogs 1, CBS 0”: 60 Minutes and the Killian Memos Controversy

This chapter begins with 60 Minutes alleging that President Bush shirked National Guard duty in the 1970s in a story based on documents provided by an unnamed source. Immediately after it aired, conservative bloggers charged that the piece was a deliberate attempt to discredit Bush with fake documents two months before the 2004 election. CBS News spent two weeks defending its reporting before Dan Rather apologized and retracted the story. The incident hastened Rather's retirement and led to the firing of senior news producers. Discussions of what happened resulted in conservative claims of widespread liberal bias, concern by journalists over competitive constraints on news work, and a consideration of how the growing influence of new media challenged journalists' use of unnamed sources in their prosecution of controversial subjects.