The network has to thoroughly investigate what went so terribly wrong with the ill-fated 60 Minutes segment on the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
And it has to be totally transparent about what it finds.
The network's initial response to the broadcast's problems hardly is cause for optimism. It played defense for nearly a week before conceding the obvious, that the report was fundamentally flawed. It still has a chance to do the right thing.
But that thing must be much, much more than the largely detail-free apology and correction by correspondent Lara Logan we have seen so far. CBS has acknowledged it made a big mistake by relying on security guard Dylan Davies, the "eyewitness" who had told his employer and the FBI that he had in fact been nowhere near the scene.
But it needs to determine and explain how it came to be that the broadcast ended up relying so heavily on such a slender reed to support such an explosive story. And it has to address a wide array of other questions that have been raised about the report.
Rem Rieder is a media columnist for USA TODAY.(Photo: USA TODAY)
Make no mistake: This is a big deal. 60 Minutes has long been a television jewel. It's a bastion of serious broadcast journalism, a commodity of which there is not necessarily a surfeit. CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager, who is also executive producer of 60 Minutes, told The New York Times that the Oct. 27 fiasco was "as big a mistake as there has been" in the program's 45-year history. (USA TODAY ran a story quoting extensively from the broadcast.)
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And it had real-world consequences. The broadcast reignited the Repu! blican effort to use the Sept. 11, 2012, episode, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed, as a club to batter the Obama administration.
(Benghazi is one of a number of scandals or "scandals" the GOP has flogged in an effort to score points against President Obama — think Operation Fast and Furious, the IRS — but none has gained serious traction. The party could have saved its energy. Team Obama has given its foes an opportunity beyond their wildest dreams with the disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act.)
CBS says it has launched a "journalistic review" of the train wreck but has provided no details. When I asked 60 Minutes spokesman Kevin Tedesco to supply some, he replied via e-mail, "We decline to comment."
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When it does get around to commenting, CBS News needs to elucidate the book tie-in. Threshold Editions, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster, published a book by Davies titled The Embassy House: The Explosive Eyewitness Account of the Libyan Embassy Siege by the Soldier Who Was There. The book was written under the pseudonym "Sergeant Morgan Jones," the name Davies also used on the broadcast.
Guess who owns Simon & Schuster? Yep, CBS Corp. After the 60 Minutes story self-destructed, Threshold announced that it was suspending publication of the book. Good idea.
But the question remains: How much of a role did corporate synergy play in propelling such a dubious witness into a starring role?
Also, how come the report never mentioned that Davies had written a book for a CBS subsidiary?
The CBS investigators, er, reviewers also will definitely want to check out an excellent piece by Nancy A. Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers, which pokes numerous holes in the 60 Minutes report.
For example, Youssef writes that Logan repeatedly refers to al-Qaeda as being solely responsible for the attack, and doesn't mention Ansar al Shariah, an Islamic extremist group that she says has lo! ng been s! uspected of being behind the bloodshed.
The story continues: "It is an important distinction, experts on those groups said. Additionally, al Qaida's role, if any, in the attack has not been determined, and Logan's narration offered no source for her repeated assertion that it had been."
Credit also goes to the liberal group Media Matters, which from the get-go has done a fine job keeping the heat on the broadcast's manifold shortcomings.
When things go terribly wrong, the best response is to do everything you can to figure out why, in the hope that you can find guideposts for avoiding similar debacles in the future.
Confronted with the widespread fabrication and plagiarism of reporter Jayson Blair, The New York Times ordered up and published a mammoth and devastating reconstruction of the mess. Faced with a similar scandal involving correspondent Jack Kelley, USA TODAY brought in a trio of distinguished outside journalists to investigate.
Closer to home for CBS, when Dan Rather fronted a 60 MInutes II segment on President George W. Bush 's National Guard service that turned out to be based on questionable and quickly questioned documents, the network turned to a former attorney general no less, as well as the retired head of the Associated Press, to sort things out.
It's critical that the "journalistic review" said to be underway at CBS turns out to be a serious, unblinking assessment of what transpired, and that the findings are shared fully with America's news consumers. They deserve no less.
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