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CBS Evening News Anchor Dan Rather speaks on his Monday, Sept. 20, 2004 news broadcast about the controversy surrounding documents used in a story questioning President Bush's National Guard Service. CBS News apologized Monday for a "mistake in judgment" in its story aired on Sept. 8, claiming it was misled by the source of documents that several experts have dismissed as fakes. MORE COVERAGE CBS producer swept up in storm over Guard memo story

Dan Rather's storied career at CBS could be nearing an ignominious close. He, his producer and his network authored one of broadcast journalism's most embarrassing chapters, etched in arrogance, perceived bias and undeniable ineptitude. And it is a chapter that stains all of journalism.

"We need to realize the public looks at us as if one monolith," said Geneva Overholser, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism's Washington bureau. "So all of us are affected when one large, mainstream, respected media organization goes through something like this. ... We all need to use it as an occasion to recommit ourselves to higher ethical standards."

CBS News apologized Monday for a "mistake in judgment" in its "60 Minutes" story questioning President Bush's National Guard service. CBS claimed it was misled by the source of documents that several experts have dismissed as fakes. The network said it would appoint an independent panel to look at its reporting about the memos.

Almost immediately after the story aired Sept. 8, document experts questioned memos purportedly written by Bush's late squadron leader, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, saying they appeared to have been created on a computer rather than on the kind of typewriter in use during the 1970s.

CBS strongly defended its story. It wasn't until a week later -- after Killian's former secretary said she believed the memos were fake -- that the news division admitted they were questionable.

CBS's source, retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, admitted this weekend that he lied about obtaining the documents from another former National Guard member, the network said. "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said CBS News president Andrew Heyward. "We should not have used them."

Overholser, a past editor of the Des Moines Register and ombudsman for The Washington Post, said CBS waited too long and defended the initial report too vehemently.

"They sounded so blustery and arrogant -- 'we're 100 percent sure.' We should never say that. It's not a good journalistic instinct," she said. "We're always supposed to doubt. There's a funny old saying: 'If your mother says she loves you, check it out.' They went in the absolute opposite direction."

Anchor away?
Besides tainting the network's flagship broadcast, "60 Minutes," the report was a damaging blow to Rather, 72. Some have suggested that the scandal, along with the low ratings of the "CBS Evening News," could hasten Rather's retirement.

"I think it's going to be more and more difficult for him to return to business as usual," said Robert Thompson, a media and popular-culture professor at Syracuse University. He said Rather is the most visible face to this scandal and that his insistence in questioning the motives of those who questioned the story did him no favors.

Overholser said the perceived arrogance of Rather and CBS is another media staple -- one born, to some degree, out of necessity.

"We do have to try to insulate ourselves to a certain extent," she said. "You can't respond to every phone call [thinking] 'I should have edited the paper that way.' "

She called the perception of journalistic arrogance "a long-time problem. Hopefully we're becoming less arrogant. We sure as hell have the reasons to."

Thompson said it's not just Rather whose job is on the line.

"A whole number of people have to sign off before [a story of this magnitude] gets on the air. There are a number of people in line for the potential head-rolling queue."

Questions already center on the story's producer, Mary Mapes, who had contact with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart before the segment aired. Mapes, who did most of the reporting for the Guard story, is considered one of the network's top investigators and broke the story of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal photos.

A CBS spokesperson declined to speak on the record for this report.

Bias alleged by some
Partisanship at both ends of the political spectrum also played a role in the CBS debacle. Conservatives saw the initial report as a smear job against President Bush. Liberals discounted the doubts about the CBS report cast by conservatives.

Overholser said the CBS affair feeds into perceptions of a liberal media bias as well as "the widespread notion that we aren't careful and we aren't trustworthy, and that, too, is overblown, because an awful lot of people are doing hard, careful, ethical work.

"It's clearly the case that CBS News, in this instance, with its weakness in reporting ... along with stonewalling after questions were raised, has fed those doubts about the media, and it's lamentable for all media."

J. Patrick McGrail, a media researcher and assistant professor of communications at Susquehanna University, said a return to the days of the partisan press of the 1830s may be in the offing.

"It troubles me that we are losing the notion of journalistic objectivity. ... It's an important value, and we dismiss it at our peril," McGrail said. "I am seeing this in my lifetime with Fox News, and the CBS snafu isn't helping. Although I think they're wrong, I can see how people might think CBS is shilling for Kerry. I can see people thinking that even if I don't. It may be wrong, but it's not unreasonable, and that's the problem. The average American depends on their broadcast news to give it to them straight without any curve on the ball."

Overholser said that in the new media environment, Americans no longer believe in the notion of objective media.

"We've got to find some new touchstones, and I think a good new touchstone will be transparency," she said. "[CBS] did not tell us who the source was. That really undermined them. They need to worry about source issues."

She said CBS should have disclosed its source's biases up front. "We've got to be transparent and accountable. CBS muffed both of those."

And because partisanship, already at what seems like an all-time high, played a role in this particular scandal, the flap probably will cement the allegiance of conservative viewers to Fox News Channel, which many feel is a much-needed antidote to the allegedly liberal mainstream media.

"It's just one more step," Overholser said of the changing state of broadcast news. "Network news has for a long time not been what it used to be. We're recognizing more directly that it's a very different landscape. Network news will continue to play an important role, but it's part of a larger and more varied landscape."

The influence of the Internet
The landscape forevermore will include bloggers, people who post online opinions to their own Web sites and, in this case, do their own research and reporting. Many bloggers see Rather as a left-wing zealot with an ax to grind against the Bush family and were more than happy to ferret out evidence that cast legitimate doubts on CBS's report.

Greensburg native Mike Krempasky, one of the founders of the two-month-old Republican blog www.redstate.org and the not quite two-week-old www.rathergate.com, said the role of bloggers was crucial in this story.

Krempasky, 29, works for a conservative direct mail fund-raising company, and said rathergate.com was designed as a clearinghouse for anyone interested in the controversy. It includes links to other blogs -- including powerlineblog.com and instapundit.com -- that he said "did more of the heavy lifting" in efforts to debunk the "60 Minutes" report.

"This would never have happened if not for bloggers and the technology that has allowed any American to enter the industry of reporting news," Krempasky said. "Mainstream media has no idea what they're up against because there are tens of thousands of bloggers out there. It was fashionable [for members of the mainstream media] to sneer at these folks until they got their brains beat in. ... It's like a gale-force wind, as evidenced by the fact that CBS said they spent five or six months working on this story, and it took bloggers about 12 hours to prove it false."

He said this event and the role bloggers played will force mainstream news outlets to take more time in crafting stories, knowing that bloggers might go in search of factual gaps. And he said blogging has helped democratize the news process.

"Now it doesn't matter if you're a conservative Republican or a liberal Democrat or a moderate," Krempasky said. "Now no one viewpoint or cultural background can ever dominate the news again, and that's good for anybody who believes in truth and accuracy."

Overholser said the role of bloggers in this episode will help the news business catch up with a change that has already taken place, whether old media titans know it or not.

"The old mainstream media are not all that they once were in terms of being the gatekeepers," she said. "CBS put the memos online, to their credit, and all these bloggers within hours found all kinds of questions about the authenticity of the documents. I think that's very reassuring in one sense because it really is the democratization of the media."

She also sounded a cautionary note:

"To the degree that people worry the media don't verify, we sure as heck shouldn't think the bloggers are all verifying," she said. "Whatever we may think about CBS in this particular instance, we can rest assured it tried hard to apply journalistic editing, probably more than the average blogger does. We should welcome the blogger's role but shouldn't think all credibility shifts over there."

Once CBS acknowledged the deficiencies in its reporting, Overholser commended the network's forthrightness, particularly compared to other conglomerates.

"I keep thinking about Enron," she said. "You've got to admit, the media tend to be accountable in the end in the way very few corporations are."

Krempasky said one blogger contrasted CBS's initial reaction to doubts of its report with the tainted Tylenol scandal of 1982.

"Johnson & Johnson didn't obfuscate or stonewall, they immediately ordered, at great financial cost, every bottle off the shelf and investigated and came forward. They raised their credibility so much higher because of the way they dealt with it quickly and forthrightly and honestly," he said.

"CBS has done exactly the opposite. We'll see where it goes from there. It definitely is a new day in journalism."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.