CBS Goes Fake but Accurate, Yet Again

For those of you wondering, CBS News is now officially around the bend. The other night, they ran the following story, "Reviving the Draft" on the Evening News...

Beverly Cocco has spent most of her life protecting children in Philadelphia. She spends most of her time worrying about other people's kids.

But as Election Day approaches, it's her own two grown sons who Beverly is most worried about. "I go to bed every night and I pray and I actually get sick to my stomach," she says. "I'm very worried; I'm scared. I'm absolutely scared; I'm petrified."

Beverly is petrified about a military draft – and she's not alone. There's an undercurrent of anxiety; mass e-mails are circulating among parents worried their kids could be called up. "I think there's a good possibility," Beverly says.

But neither President Bush, nor Sen. John Kerry has said he will re-institute the draft. In fact they both say they won't. Kerry says, "I will give us a foreign policy that absolutely makes it unnecessary to have a draft for this country." Kerry says he'll try to get allies of the U.S. to send troops that could relieve American soldiers.

The Bush campaign says expecting great numbers of foreign troops to help out is pure fantasy. The president wants to train more Iraqi troops to take over for the Americans. And, he says, despite the war on terror, there will be no draft. "The war on terror will continue," says the president. "It's going to take a while and no, we don't need a draft."

But Beverly's not buying it. She's a Republican, but also a single-issue voter.

Would she vote for a Democrat? "Absolutely," she says. "I would vote for Howdy Doody if I thought it would keep my boys home and safe." In fact, there are at least three votes in this house riding on the draft: Beverly's and her sons' Carmen and Nick.

Are her sons worried about being drafted? "Yeah," says Nick. "It's the talk; the talk's there. Though people aren't actually coming out and saying it, it's there."

I heard the other day, on a street corner here in DC, that Martians are planning to invade on October 1st. And that's about as likely as the draft. Best of all, CBS reported no facts in the story.

But CBS considers this a news story, which is absurd and yet again more proof that the network news has gone off the deep end. Ratherbiased.com debunked the story quickly, before going down from too much traffic hitting the server. But Little Green Footballs and Powerline both saved the work for us...

In a story that was a textbook example of slipshod reporting, CBS reporter Richard Schlesinger used debunked internet hoax emails and an unlabeled interest group member to scare elderly “Evening” viewers into believing that the U.S. government is poised to resume the draft.

At the center of Schlesinger’s piece was a woman named Beverly Cocco, a Philadelphia woman who is “sick to my stomach” that her two sons might be drafted. In his report, Schlesinger claimed that Cocco was a Republican and portrayed her as an apolitical (even Republican) mom worried about the future.

Schlesinger did not disclose that Cocco is a chapter president of an advocacy group called People Against the Draft (PAD) which, in addition to opposing any federal proscription, seeks to establish a “peaceful, rational foreign policy” by bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Like Schlesinger’s Cocco, the group portrays itself as “nonpartisan” although its leadership seems to be entirely bereft of any Republicans.

The group’s domain is registered to a man named Jacob Levich, a left-wing activist who in a 2001 essay compared the Bush Administration to the totalitarian government portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984.

Oh, yeah, CBS might have wanted to mention that in the original report. Instead, they revised the transcript of the report later, as LGF points out. The Annenberg Center (non-partisan, we might add) already de-bunked this story. But it gets even worse, as INDC Journal interviewed folks from CBS News, among them the reporter on the piece (Richard Schlesinger) and the producer (Linda Karas). Their rationale for the story is even funnier...

INDC: "First of all, what motivated CBS News to run this story?"

Schlesinger: "The point of the piece was taking look at issues through the eyes of people who feel that those issues are the most important ... in the campaign. People who are vitally concerned. We've done many of these stories on many topics. I did another one around affordable housing ... and minimum wage, for example."

INDC: "A lot of people have a problem with this issue though, because it's specifically something that's been used by the Kerry campaign as a recent talking point. Did this influence ..."

Schlesinger: "No, it was an issue because it was out there. There are issues that we choose to do stories on ... I specifically said in the story, 'both candidates have said they would not support a reinstatement of the draft.'"

INDC: "Probably the main concern with the story is that the e-mails that are shown in the piece are false; they've been debunked on various internet sites long ago ..."

Schlesinger: "The fact is, they were going around. I know several people that got them, and it’s gotten people all riled up. Whether or not there’s any reality to there being a draft, is almost besides the point. Do I think there’s going to be a draft? No. But it's an issue that people are talking about."

INDC: "Where did you get the e-mails? Were they sent to you?"

Schlesinger: "A friend of mine got the e-mails and forwarded them to me."

INDC: "Ok, another complaint regards the testimony from Beverly Cocco. Some people are pointing out that she's a chapter president for an advocacy group called People Against the Draft, that seems to have a clearly anti-war position. How did you choose her?"

Schlesinger: "Long story short, she’s a Republican. When we put the story together, I went looking for a Republican. We worked backwards from the e-mail, that’s how we found her. She told me that she was going to vote for Bush, though she said she may flip-flop."

...To round out CBS's perspective on the story, I then spoke to Linda Karas, the CBS News Producer that oversaw the creation of the segment.

INDC: "Why did you choose the story?"

Karas: "It’s an issue that voters are talking about."

INDC: "Ok, the e-mails in the story have been criticized because they've been debunked online for some time, why did you use them?"

Karas: "The truth of the e-mails were absolutely irrelevant to the piece, because all the story said was that people were worried. It’s a story about human beings that are afraid of the draft. We did not say that this (e-mail) was true, it’s just circulating. We are not verifying the e-mail."

INDC: "But what about Ms. Cocco? What about her affiliation with this group, People Against the Draft, that has an explicit goal of enacting a 'peaceful, rational foreign policy' that wants to bring U.S. troops out of Iraq?"

Karas: "I know that she’s affiliated with the group, and what her views are on the draft, and that’s what I was interested in. I was looking for a character that has a personal story that might be affected by the issue. And to be honest, I was looking for a Republican. I e-mailed several groups that deal with this issue, and she was the woman who responded that fit the profile and was the most interesting voice, because this is a woman with two sons ... and she is concerned about the issue. If I had some rampant leftist on there, what would you say?"

The best line is Karas' line -- the truth of the e-mails was absolutely irrelevant to the piece. Are they going to run reports next on Nigerians looking for help with obtaining a large sum of money from a bank account? If they had taken the time to actually state that the e-mails themselves are wrong, perhaps they'd have an actual story.

Or maybe this is the actual story that they should discover -- John Kerry's plan for a draft. No, I'm serious. We're not just talking about the bill before Congress, that was proposed by two Democrats, Sen. Fritz Hollings and Rep. Charlie Rangel. No, Kerry has a plan for a draft -- Swimming Through the Spin and Captain's Quarters provide the details. As Ed Morrissey at Captains Quarters noted...

But lost in the shuffle until now is John Kerry's proposal to require service for high-school graduation, found by Swimming Through The Spin. Brian found the original web page archived, as somehow this proposal has been mysteriously deleted from the John Kerry website. Since the Democrats brought this up, what exactly are the plans for American youth under a Kerry/Edwards administration?

As part of his 100 day plan to change America, John Kerry will propose a comprehensive service plan that includes requiring mandatory service for high school students and four years of college tuition in exchange for two years of national service.

The more expansive PDF of Kerry's plan doesn't detail how the mandatory high-school service is supposed to work, nor does it clearly explain how they plan to pay for four years of college tuition for the 500,000 students per year they expect to put through this program, other than closing a loophole that allows lenders on student loans to keep extra interest paid. If a "typical public university" charges $5,000 per year for tuition -- a rather moderate amount these days -- then just the cost for the first year alone will be $10 billion, not the $12 billion over 10 years that Kerry claims. ($20,000 times 500,000 students = $10 billion.)

Great -- Kerry's flip-flopped again. Does someone have a tote board around here somewhere? At least this plan was more detailed than the four point proposal for getting out of Iraq. Of course, it was also fiscally nutty, but we'll ignore that for now.

You know what's sad? A bunch of guys on the Internet not only debunked this story in one day, but they also found an angle worth pursuing that CBS totally missed. And CBS "News" can't do the same. Maybe we shouldn't blame Dan Rather. Maybe they just lack standards in general.