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Related Media Monitors and Columns Reed Irvine's Letter to the Chairman of CNN Reed Irvine's Letter to the Managing Editor of TIME CNN NewsStand CNN NewsStand
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July 9, 1998 CNN SENDS THE WRONG SIGNAL CNN is not likely to repair the damage done to its credibility by its charges that nerve gas was used to kill American defectors in Laos with the half-measures it has taken so far. The two unrepentant producers of the story, April Oliver and Jack Smith, were fired; repentant executive producer Pamela Hill resigned; star correspondent Peter Arnett was let off with a reprimand. When "Dateline NBC" was caught rigging tests to show that certain GM pickup trucks would burst into flame in collisions, Michael Gartner, the president of NBC News, assumed responsibility and resigned. Three senior members of the "Dateline" staff were fired. Michael Gartner knew nothing about the rigging of the crash tests, but it happened on his watch, and he took responsibility for it. He says there comes a point when you have to do that. CNN chairman and CEO Tom Johnson understands that. He submitted his resignation, but it was rejected. Rick Kaplan, the president of CNN, the executive who bore the most responsibility for putting the discredited nerve-gas story on the air, admitted no fault and paid no penalty. On CNN’s "Reliable Sources" he said he had considered resigning but he decided against it. He explained, "I really didn’t have an opportunity to get to the truth of it. I was not part of the investigation that turned out the bad jour–, that turned into bad journalism. I didn’t have access to that. I was kept from that, if you will, by the way the story was brought to me. If I had a hand in twisting the story or reporting the story that way, I would have resigned." If lying on the air were a firing offense at CNN, that statement alone would suffice to justify showing Kaplan the door. Sources within CNN say that Kaplan was committed to the nerve-gas story because he wanted a sensational debut of his pet project, "NewsStand, CNN & Time." They say that he was in the editing room, overseeing the final cut. April Oliver says they cut out a sound-bite from the pilot who dropped the gas, Art Bishop, saying it was tear gas to make room for "colorful language" Kaplan insisted on adding. There is reason to believe that Kaplan feared that the evidence in the Tailwind story would not withstand hard scrutiny. Maj. Gen. Perry Smith, CNN’s military consultant, was not consulted about the story before it aired. That was Kaplan’s call. CNN’s Pentagon correspondent was shown the script but was not asked for comments. He sent a critical memo to Atlanta, but Kaplan claims he didn’t see it. Gen. Smith suspects he was not consulted because Kaplan feared he would expose flaws in the story that would delay or derail his plans for a blockbuster "NewsStand" debut. That fear was justified. After the program aired, it took Gen. Smith only three days to obtain records that proved that the gas used was tear gas, not the deadly nerve gas claimed by CNN. Those records confirmed what Peter Arnett had been told by Art Bishop, the pilot who dropped the gas, and by virtually every commando who was exposed to it. Nevertheless, Perry Smith’s recommendation that CNN air a retraction was rejected. He resigned, saying he couldn’t work with such unethical people. That very night, CNN aired a second program defending the first program. Kaplan was quoted in The New York Post saying that Smith had not worked on the story and didn’t know the facts. He said CNN was confident that the program was accurate. But on "Reliable Sources" three weeks later, Kaplan said, "The test of any organization is in how you react when a mistake is made....As soon as the report aired and we started hearing all the criticism and we started getting a lot more information that we didn’t have before the report aired, we started looking at the piece very vigorously." The truth is that CNN vigorously defended the piece until the deluge of angry letters, faxes, calls and e-mail became overwhelming. Kaplan claims, "I asked as many questions as I knew how to ask," but the most obvious question that he should have asked was this: Why did the gas allegedly kill the North Vietnamese who were attacking the commandos but did not even seriously injure any of our men who were exposed to it without the protection of gas masks? Kaplan was asked to explain this on "Reliable Sources." He ducked it because there is but one answer: it was not nerve gas. Even CNN’s star witness, Robert Van Buskirk, when pressed to explain this mystery, denied saying or even implying that nerve gas was used. Kaplan minimized Peter Arnett’s role in this story,. Arnett conducted three key interviews. He failed to discern or report that two of the interviewees, Van Buskirk and Jay Graves, had no credibility, but he questioned Art Bishop’s statement that he dropped tear gas even though Bishop had a diary entry to back it up. By not firing Kaplan and Arnett CNN is sending the wrong signal, one that will not help it repair the damage they have done to its credibility. |
