PressEthic

The dissonance between predominately liberal reporters and the inherently conservative corporate conglomerates who employ them is illustrated by this AP article printed in the New York Times: “Producer Links CBS Probe to McCarthy.”

Mary Mapes, a producer fired from CBS after the “Rather-gate” incident, claims in her upcoming book that she was the victim of a corporate witch-hunt. She says CBS and Viacom, “did not want an angry Bush administration making vindictive decisions that would cost them money,” so they eagerly found her guilty and cut her loose. The article says:

When she was interviewed by the panel, Mapes said, panel member Louis D. Boccardi, retired chief executive of The Associated Press, asked whether she described herself as a liberal and whether most of her co-workers thought she was a liberal.

She said this immediately reminded her of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hearings in the 1950s where he probed whether people were Communists.

''What in the world would Edward R. Murrow think of his network now?'' she asked.

She blamed CBS for staging an ''upside-down, inside-out reenactment of the famous face-off between Murrow and McCarthy. At this new CBS, the journalists were the bad guys. The corporate fat cats would cloak themselves as seekers of truth. And the American public and its right to be informed? ... It never came up.''

As a diversionary tactic and as a publicity ploy, these accusations may just work (as this article itself evidences). Underneath it all, it sounds like Mapes’ book will be nothing more than a long excuse for poor reporting, but her case as a whole does touch on issues that have become more and more relevant to journalism of late: questions about the ethical use of anonymous sources and the existence of media bias.