It’s pretty damning stuff. Not a whole lot of news in it, though, from my summary reading. Terminating Mapes is serious accountability. Here’s the real money quote:
The panel finds that once serious questions were raised, the defense of the segment became more rigid and emphatic, and that virtually no attempt was made to determine whether the questions raised had merit.
No attempt to ask questions? Wasn’t Rather part of this defense? And wasn’t it relevant that critics were accused of partisanship? Why the knee-jerk partisan response? What interests me about the summary is that all sorts of sins can be attributed to journalists – rushing a story to print, not following rudimentary fact-checking rules, refusing to re-check after questions were raised, etc, etc. But the one thing the report is clear about is that no political bias ever influenced the process. Even when you have Mapes calling Lockhart, the report insists that this created “the appearance of political bias.” (My italics.) Others will parse the report more carefully, I’m sure. But the refusal to acknowledge this blind spot is not encouraging.
The Dish 