Kant, Hume and Machiavelli on 60 Minutes Segment "For the Record" concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service

Pedro Silva1
psilva@sfsu.edu

19 September 2006

1  Introduction

The polemic concerning CBS's 60 Minutes segment "For the Record" on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service is of interest in the development of a case study that, if analyzed under differing ethical theories, may contribute, in some minor way, to further one's understanding of the field of media ethics. To that effect, I have chosen to interpret the case in light of Kant's ethical absolutism, Hume's utilitarian ethics, Machiavelli's special form of ethical egoism. This is a deliberate choice of both deontological and teleological approaches to ethics. Likewise, I have attempted to pursue both communitarian and libertarian avenues of thought. To continue on [4] framework, these theories are considered professional, as opposed to humanistic, in that all are deterministic and set a priori (p.10). I will not thoroughly detail all the facts, as these are well-known and, moreover, eloquently described in [6].

2  Case Summary

According to various reports on the media [2,3,1,5] and what can be considered the final, and due to its independence, authority and scope, most truthful account of this matter [6], the following is probably an accurate account of what took place:
60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes had pursued the story of Bush's National Guard past over the previous five years. Mapes eventually tracked down a source, now know to be Bill Burkett, which supposedly had access to the personal files of Jerry Killian, who purportedly wrote the memoranda. At the same time, Ben Barnes - a democrat who allegedly had first-hand influence in helping Bush through the National guard affair - called 60 Minutes host Dan Rather saying he would go on the record with his story of how he helped Bush get into the National Guard. Mapes and Rather met with Burkett, and eventually got the documents. Mapes contacted four independent analysts to authenticate the memos, but only one (Marcel Matley) authenticated a signature in one of the documents. All other three (Emily Will, Linda James, James Pierce) cautioned the 60 minutes producing team not to go ahead with the story. None provided CBS with a written report prior to the broadcast. Robert Strong, a colleague of Killian, told Mapes the documents were compatible with his knowledge of Killian. Bobby Hodges, Killian's superior officer and, according to Rather, a staunch supporter of Bush, confirmed that he indeed knew of Killian's feelings toward Bush. According to Rather, this was strong support for the story. CBS executives, including president Andrew Heyward and producer Josh Howard, vetted the story and were happy with Mapes answers to their questions. White House communications director Dan Bartlett met with CBS correspondent John Roberts and did not dispute the authenticity of the memos. He would later state he did not even try to refute them in such a short time-frame (three hours). The fact that Bartlett kept using the Killian memos to assert Bush's clean National Guard past gave Roberts confidence in the story. At this point, CBS abandoned the authenticating process. After the show, Rather said he was very confident in the documents and the story. At the same time, the first problems were raised: namely, the ths, spacing and formatting considerations cast doubt on the memos veracity. CBS defended their story, namely through independent analyst Bill Glendon, who claimed the documents could have been produced, in theory, in the 70s with an IBM Selectric machine. However, other experts, contacted by the press, disagreed. Furthermore, they said, none of the CBS analysts were appropriately certified. Eventually, the Killian widow and son also refuted the authenticity of the memos. At this point, Rather and CBS through Heyward, emphasized the story over the documents that supported it. Another memo showed that a source mentioned on the Killian memo was not on the army at the time. The fourth analyst, James Pierce, finally delivered a corroborating report to CBS. At this point, Bill Burkett - an active democrat with a history of confronting Bush with the National Guard issue - was established as CBS' original source and admitted he had misled CBS as to the memos origins. CBS also admitted that Burkett had indeed advised them to independently seek authentication, which they did not. Finally, Killian's then secretary Marian Knox cleared everything by stating she had not written the memos, but what they implied was indeed true. On September 20, 2004, CBS and Rather apologized for using the fake memos. The said they had been misled, but still felt the "heart of the story" was true.

3  The independent panel report

As mentioned previously, this case has been more or less dissected. Both the mainstream press and one independent review panel have investigated it thoroughly. Before moving on to analyzing the case in the light of differing ethical theories, it may prove useful to take a look at how the independent panel addressed the issue. According to [6,pp. 4-6],
The most serious defects in the report and production of the September 8 Segment were:
  1. The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner;
  2. The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature fro one document used in the segment;
  3. The failure of 60 Minutes Wednesday management to scrutinize the publicly available, and at times controversial, background of the source of the documents, retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett;
  4. The failure to find and interview the individual who was understood at the outset to be Lieutenant Colonel Burkett’s source of the Killian documents, and thus to establish the chain of custody;
  5. The failure to establish a basis for the statement in the Segment that the documents “were taken from Colonel Killian’s personal files”;
  6. The failure to develop adequate corroboration to support the statements in the Killian documents and to carefully compare the Killian documents to official TexANG records, which would have identified, at a minimum, notable inconsistencies in content and format;
  7. The failure to interview a range of former National Guardsmen who served with Lieutenant Colonel Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents;
  8. The misleading impression conveyed in the Segment that Lieutenant Strong had authenticated the content of the documents when he did not have the personal knowledge to do so;
  9. The failure to have a vetting process capable of dealing effectively with the production speed, significance and sensitivity of the Segment; and
  10. The telephone call prior to the Segment's airing by the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry - a clear conflict of interest - that created the appearance of a political bias.
By looking at what the panel considered the shortcomings of the production and reporting of "On the Record", one can deduce its positioning in the ethical spectrum: seven of the ten points raised as "serious defects" are procedural errors. Notice the verbs of action: "obtain (...) authentication"(p. 4); "scrutinize (...) source"(ibid); find and interview"(ibid); "establish a basis"(p. 5); "develop (...) corroboration (....) and (...) compare (...) documents" (ibid); "interview (...) Guardsmen" (ibid); "failure to have a vetting process" (ibid). The other three are infringements of the news organization's implicit social contract. This implies non-conformance to a code of standards by which the 60 Minutes team should have guided itself in the reporting and producing of the piece. Indeed, CBS maintains a person "in charge of Standards and Practices" (p. 217). This is nothing new, as most news reporting organizations follow a deontological code of conduct by which the media person may guide his or her actions. Typically, a news agent code of conduct is professional in its orientation and, although necessarily libertarian in disposition - due to First Amendment considerations - in later years, most notably after the Hutchins Commission, more pressure has been made for a communitarian perspective to news reporting. That is, more and more the concept of freedom of expression is accompanied by the concept of responsibility. This is obviously a highly debatable topic, and one not necessarily belonging to this discussion. In any case, these are two contrasting views and, one hopes, most deontological codes of conduct nowadays try to balance the two concepts in an effort of self-restraint. This is closely related to the "categorical imperative" from which Kant derived his theory of ethics.

4  Absolutist, utilitarian and Machiavellian ethics

It is interesting to note that the actions of the CBS' 60 Minutes production team, when analyzed from a deontological standpoint, may be interpreted in various ways. Even if we further focus on one small aspect, namely some kind of a priori guidance such as that addressed in absolutist ethics, the result is still, at least, ambiguous. The previously mentioned tension between the rights provided by the First Amendment and the duty to be responsible toward something, or someone, are obvious. Depending on which set of guiding principles one chooses to follow, most actions seen here may be considered more or less ethical. However, this is something in clear contradiction with absolutist ethics: how can the tension be resolved?
To begin with, to what or whom is CBS' duty to be responsible due? The independent panel would say, CBS' Standards and Practices, which ultimately is a form of responsibility toward the public at large. It follows, then, that in this sense, perhaps utilitarian ethics would be at home analyzing the case. If we stipulate that the code that was broken, according to Thornburg & Boccardi, is ultimately designed to protect the public's right to truthful and balanced information, then there is not doubt that almost all actions taken by Rather and his team were unethical. However, that is a somewhat simplistic view of how they predicted the consequences of their actions: CBS News stressed enough times that they believed their story was essentially correct, regardless of the document's veracity. In this perspective, would it not be ethically utilitarian for them to assume a Machiavellian ethics point of view? To clarify: a utilitarian point of view implies unethical behavior on the part of the news reporter who breaks the deontological code of conduct which has an implicit social contract with the public at large; however, if by adopting a Machiavellian ethics standpoint, and essentially breaking the deontological code in order to achieve an end, will result in an even greater good for the most, this in turn shows that the actions taken were not unethical at all, from a utilitarian perspective. The question that remains is: did Rather and his team's procedural failures directly have to do with a Machiavellian interest in accomplishing what they essentially knew was right anyway? More importantly, did they believe so? Even if they did, a case may also be made as to their real motivations. There is evidence that the 60 Minutes team indeed tried to rush the segment in order to get the story broadcast first (p. 122). This would qualify their actions as purely Machiavellian - as in a special form of ethical egoism. This is reinforced by the three remaining considerations made by the panel (points 2, 8, and 10). These did not constitute procedural errors at all, but were either active attempts to mislead the public or pure naiveness and inexperience as a production team.

5  Conclusion

I have argued, in this paper, the following progression: a deontological theory of ethics is not suitable to analyze the case, as conflicts between communitarian and libertarian approaches immediately arise. Specifically, in news reporting in the U.S., the main difficulty is understanding whether the media positions itself as libertarian (First Amendment), communitarian (Hutchins Commission) or some golden mean between the two, as [4,p. 38] proposes. Thus, we move toward teleological, or consequence-weighted, theories. Analyzing Thornburg & Boccardi's argument, it may be argued they follow a utilitarian model of ethics, even though it is based on the so-called media deontological code of conduct. My reasoning is that the ultimate purpose of this code is to accomplish the greatest good for the most. I contend even further, that even if the 60 Minutes team in fact adopted a Machiavellian ethics conduct - and it is not clear whether they did - that could still be ethical, in a utilitarian way, depending on their ultimate purpose. Such ethical "flexibility" was not unexpected, but it should be kept in mind that this is ultimately an exercise in applying unorthodox theories to news reporting in general, and the 60 Minutes segment in particular. Pragmatically, both teleological theories based on some form of ethical egoism would most likely be subjected to contention by peers or the public.
It is understandable that a deontological theory of ethics be preferred for the media, as that simplifies choices as to courses of action. Indeed, the teleological perspective has an implicit demand for evaluating motivations, if one is to assess ethical behavior. Perhaps that is what is being debated so fiercely nowadays: the tension between two approaches, libertarianism versus communitarianism, is extremized by the deontological course, which leaves no room for ethical flexibility. The arguments are well known: communitarianism brings about Pandora's Box; libertarianism is not easily legislated, nor regulated. On the other hand, consequence-based ethics, reliant on individual motivation, are not easily assessed, so we end up in the same alley. Perhaps the solution lies with subjectivist, personal ethics such as situationism?

References

[1]
J. Eggerton. Cbs, rather apologize for memo use. Broadcasting & Cable, page A01, 19 September 2004.
[2]
H. Kurtz. Rather defends cbs over memos on bush. The Washington Post, page A07, 11 September 2004.
[3]
H. Kurtz, M. Dobbs, and J. V. Grimaldi. In rush to air, cbs quashed memo worries. The Washington Post, page A01, 19 September 2004.
[4]
John C. Merril. Controversies in Media Ethics, chapter Foundations for Media Ethics. Allyn & Bacon, New York, 2nd edition, 1998.
[5]
J. Meserve, T. Barrett, P. Ornstein, and S. Irwin. Cbs revisits bush's guard memos. CNN, 13 September 2004.
[6]
D. Thornburg and L. D. Boccardi. Report of the independent review panel on the september 8, 2004 60 minutes wednesday segment For the Record concerning president bush's texas air national guard service. 5 January 2005.

Footnotes:

1Broadcast and Electronic Arts Department, San Francisco State University

File translated from TEX by TTH, version 3.77.
On 24 Apr 2007, 23:49.