Quote:
Originally posted by ktsnake
...at least they didn't try and defend what was said there for two weeks before admitting they were wrong.
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Come on.
The US Army defended Lt. Richard Caley in the My Lai incident until the charges were proved. The Republican Party supported Richard Nixon on Watergate until the evidence proved otherwise.
The list goes on.
There are two things happening. One, inside and outside the judicial system, we believe people are innocent until
proven guilty. Second, it is important to believe and support your employees until you are sure they have made an error.
Certain high profile CBS employees made serious mistakes in not checking sources. That, in itself, does not indict the entire organization. In fact, they admitted the error, took responsibility (as they should have) and apologized after their own investigation of the facts. Then, they hired a former US Attorney General to dig deeper into the situation. Did anyone really expect them to take as Gospel the charges on a blog? If so, you may as well not expect to see any kind of investigative reporting anywhere -- because there are always two sides to a story.
Given the circumstances, I don't think the ten days or so that it took CBS to do its investigation and issue the retraction and apology is out of line. Remember the original investigation had been going on for much longer.
CBS clearly (at least in my opinion) put a fair amount of resources into finding themselves "guilty" and did it in a reasonable amount of time given the circumstances.