Did CBS Bury The Abu-Ghraib Torture Scandal In 2004 For Bush Re-Election?
As alleged in a Salon story:
In early 2004, Mary Mapes, a producer for “60 Minutes II” with more than two decades of experience, uncovered the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Her sources were sound and the evidence incontrovertible, but according to Rather’s complaint, “CBS management attempted to bury” the story. In a highly unusual move, then CBS News president Andrew Heyward and then senior vice president Betsy West personally intervened to demand editing changes and ever more “substantiation.”
Rather’s suit states that “for weeks, they refused to grant permission to air the story” and “continued to ‘raise the goalposts,’ insisting on additional substantiation.” Even after Mapes gained possession of some of the now-infamous photographs of the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the news executives suppressed the story, “in part,” according to Rather’s suit, “occasioned by acceding to pressures brought to bear by government officials.”
Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Rather at his home, sources close to the case told me, telling him that broadcasting the story would endanger “national security.” Myers explained to Rather that U.S. soldiers, just then poised for an assault on Fallujah, would be demoralized and suggested that Rather and CBS might threaten the outcome of the battle and the soldiers’ safety.
Only when Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for the New Yorker, relying on different sources from Mapes’, unearthed the Abu Ghraib story and CBS executives learned that the magazine was about to scoop the network did they grudgingly permit it to be aired. “Even then,” Rather’s suit states, “CBS imposed the unusual restrictions that the story would be aired only once, that it would not be preceded by on-air promotion, and that it would not be referenced on the CBS Evening News.” Feeling forced against their will to broadcast a story they knew was accurate, CBS’s executives did everything within their power to ensure the public would pay as little attention to it as possible by prohibiting any mention of it. CBS’s self-censorship set the stage for its reaction to the Bush National Guard story.
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