Paxety Pages

Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated.

The correspondent on the story, CBS News anchor Dan Rather, is stepping down as anchor of CBS Evening News.

I want to see the complete report, but this is interesting language from CBSNews' web site:

The panel said a "myopic zeal" to be the first news organization to broadcast a groundbreaking story about Mr. Bush’s National Guard service was a key factor in explaining why CBS News had produced a story that was neither fair nor accurate and did not meet the organization’s internal standards.

The report said at least four factors that some observers described as a journalistic “Perfect Storm” had contributed to the decision to broadcast a piece that was seriously flawed.

So they do not claim the story was fake but accurate. We'll see how this shakes out.

Update - Here's the complete report. (PDF)

Update - Even more is on Thornburgh's law firm website.

Update - Johnny Dollar is keeping up with MSM reaction. A sample:

ERIC BURNS [FOX NEWSWATCH]: I would go a step further than Carl did. I don't think it's a sufficient explanation to say an error was made. Whenever an error is made, there's a followup question one asks: why was the error made? Was it laziness? Was it bias? Was it that the error was forced upon the news organization by a fraudulent source?...I don't know how you conclude anything else in this particular case than that the error was made because this story, as people in this business sometimes say, was too good to check. That it too nicely dovetailed into the political biases of the people putting it together.