J$P Instant Transcript! Michelle Malkin and Bob Zelnick on RatherGate.

From Fox News Live, September 19, 2004:

GREGG JARRETT [FOX NEWS]: [Dan] Rather and CBS under scrutiny for a report on President Bush's military service, that story based on questionable documents from a questionable source. But, while Dan Rather politely avoided the question, he later took a swipe at Fox News.

VIDEO CLIP [DAN RATHER AND FOX REPORTER]:
DAN RATHER [CBS NEWS]: Glad to be in Dallas. Glad to meet you. Glad to see you're with Fox.
REPORTER: Glad to have you back.
RATHER: Thank you. Always a pleasure to be back.
REPORTER: Do you feel like you were duped at all?
RATHER: I'm very glad to see you. Do you feel like you were duped at all, by the way, working at Fox as you do, you feel that way?
REPORTER: There's times where I have.
RATHER: There are times when I have as well. Nice to see you; take care of yourself. Thank you, hope your head's OK. Take care of yourselves; good to see you. Bye-bye.

JARRETT: Let's talk about the ethics of CBS's conduct. Joining us now, Michelle Maklin, she's a syndicated columnist, Fox News contributor; Bob Zelnick, Chairman of the Department of Journalism at Boston University, also a former ABC News correspondent. Welcome to both of you. Bob, let me begin with you. When CNN came under fire for the Operation Tailwind report in '98 I believe it was, they brought in from the outside Floyd Abrams, distinguished first amendment attorney to investigate. But CBS is conducting an internal probe. Is that a little like cops policing cops?

BOB ZELNICK {BOSTON UNIVERSITY]: Well, I think it is, but I can't imagine it will reach any conclusion other than that the documents were phony, or that CBS relied prematurely on the documents, because it's so evident from all the other circumstances. Number one, that they went to air before the documents had been fully authenticated. Number two, they ignored the advice of their own authenticators. Number three, they then misstated the facts and said they had fully authenticated the documents. Number four, they attacked critics as partisan, even though the critics included ABC News, the Washington Post, and many other organizations. Finally, they said the thrust of the report was accurate. Well, without the documents, there was no thrust to the report. There was nothing that would have made a show like 60 Minutes or the CBS Evening News or any other show. The documents were the story.

JARRETT: Michelle, if CBS was defrauded by fake documents, is the network still under a journalistic obligation to protect the source that defrauded them?

MICHELLE MALKIN [FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR]: I don't think so. I think that by any measure of mainstream media ethics, CBS has failed on all fronts, both before the story aired and afterwards. If they were in fact duped by a source, we need to know whether or not CBS had taken due diligence to make sure that it was careful. And it's not entirely clear that they were. If you look at the Society of Professional Journalists ethics code, it has four pillars. And the first is that all journalists, whether they be in broadcast or print media, seek out the truth and report it--

JARRETT: Right.

MALKIN: --that they minimize harm, that they act independently, and that they be accountable. And on all of those fronts, CBS gets an "F".

JARRETT: Well Bob, there is some evidence that the source is Bill Burkett. Shouldn't the story have revealed a couple of things: first of all, he's a Democrat, and second of all, he's been long critical of President Bush--thus disclosing the source's bias without disclosing his name?

ZELNICK: Well you know, you mentioned the CNN report on Operation Tailwind that involved alleged chemical weapons used in Laos in kill American defectors was totally false. But one of the things Floyd Abrams found in assessing where CNN went wrong, was that their mindset was so fixed that it rejected any kind of information that didn't comply with its image of what this story was about. And it edited selectively as it went along. And I think in that respect we're going to find that CBS News committed many of the same journalistic sins as CNN.

JARRETT: Yeah--

ZELLNICK: Of course they haven't been as forthcoming after being challenged, but I think that's exactly what happened.

JARRETT: Michelle, Dan Rather has conspicuously been doing all of the follow-up reports since the initial story. He has clearly become a part of the story; should he have recused himself? I mean, he can hardly be objective when he's interviewing other people about his story.

MALKIN: Right. I think that's absolutely right, Gregg, and he should have stepped aside. Clearly this guy's emotionally attached to this story, and I think it's to CBS's discredit that they weren't willing enough to stand up to this single anchor and say look, you've got to step aside and we need somebody else to handle this.

JARRETT: Bob, real quickly, if your source had a major axe to grind, and you also knew that that source had told reporters that he had had a mental breakdown in the recent past, would you have used that source at all? Or would you have just said, you know, I can't trust this guy?

ZELLNICK: I would have been skeptical to the point of a rebuttal presumption that he should not be used, unless there was an enormous amount of evidence that he was credible on the issue. But essentially, I would go into the situation saying this is not the guy we want to verify a story of this consequence.

JARRETT: Spoken like the lawyer that you also are; Bob Zelnick thanks so much for being with us. Michelle Malkin, thank you as well.