Editorial: Media bears responsibility

Inaccuracy in journalism hurts everyone.

Falsehoods in the news make us a misinformed and counterproductive society.

Recently CBS has proven how misinformation can mar a presidential election.

People should feel they can look to the media as an unbiased entity willing to give the whole, true story. The media should convey the truth, and the audience should feel comfortable in the assurance that a newspaper or television station will not mislead them.

Notwithstanding the media’s responsibility to convey the truth, however, sometimes we ourselves get lied to and are duped into reporting falsehoods.

Unfortunately, a news organization’s accuracy and reliability are only as good as its sources and reporting. When the entity charged with conveying the truth is lied to, and that entity fails to sufficiently investigate and verify the information, falsehoods get published or aired as facts.

This problem was recently brought to the forefront of America’s collective mind when CBS used what are now being regarded as falsified documents in an exposé of President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard record.

On a recent episode of “60 Minutes,” CBS presented as fact two separate letters signed by Bush’s Guard commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian.

The documents allege Bush received preferential treatment in entering the Guard, failed to take an assigned physical examination and was suspended from flying jets for a period of time in the early 70s. Killian died 20 years ago, leaving everyone today to only speculate whether he actually wrote the letters.

As has nearly everything in this election, the matter has turned into a partisan free-for-all. Democrats are hanging their political hat on the letters while Republicans are justifying or flat out denying the charges.

It has become so partisan, in fact, that California Rep. Chris Cox (R-Orange County) has called for a congressional investigation into CBS and its sources.

This is the wrong way to go.

Not only is it wrong for the government to try to regulate and investigate journalism, but many states have laws that protect the media from such intrusions.

The television station has created a mess, and now it has the responsibility to get out of it.

It must have taken some serious investigation and footwork to get the story CBS did. Now it’s time to put that same, if not more, effort into uncovering the truth about these letters, on its own.

It’s CBS’ problem, and now its CBS’ responsibility, to its viewers and the entire American public, to find the truth and fix the problem.