Et tu CBS?

Seven years ago, this spring, I had the honor of receiving an award from the New York State Broadcasters Association for a story I did on how law enforcement trains their dogs. You know, bomb sniffing dogs, the ones who locate missing people and of course those pups who can find a kilo of cocaine hiding in someone’s luggage at the airport.

The ceremony was in New York City at the old Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and I was even given a free room for the night. Before you get too jealous, I did put on the big, padded suit and let several dogs attack me; one even making his way through the canvas and breaking the skin on my leg. No blood, no story has always been my motto.

Anyway, at this event they decided to give a special award, ‘Broadcaster of the Year’, to Norah O’Donnell of CBS news. I’ll never forget the moment they handed it to her because the people running the show allowed Norah’s boss from CBS to get up first and talk about how great she is. He looked like the kind of guy you cast in a movie if you want someone to play the man selling fake concert tickets behind the arena. Slick enough to cause an oil spill is my point.

Appearances aside, this bozo gets up and instead of just singing Norah’s praises, which are many by the way, he talked about the day he contacted her to leave NBC News and come over to CBS. He said, paraphrasing now, “Are you sure you’ll be okay moving to a station that actually does news?” He then doubled-down insulting NBC further, with NBC executives sitting in the audience not twenty feet removed from the stage.

The whole room audibly gasped at such a crappy thing to think or say, but he did it with a smile on his face. Norah must have been mortified. In the seven years since, she has moved up from mornings to the evening newscast and is doing fine.

Mr. Snark was right about one thing in his speech. CBS used to do an incredible job at journalism, especially the show 60 Minutes. I grew up admiring Mike Wallace and the gang holding crooked people accountable. That old saying, “You know it’s going to be a bad day when Mike Wallace and the 60 Minutes crew are at the door,” was very true. But oh my, have things changed.

Working in the media, I have seen the shift at the national level to the left. I didn’t like it, I prefer journalists straddle the center lane on the highway, but I’d grown to accept it. In fact, when people ask me about news coverage from the networks or cable TV I tell them to watch everyone. Don’t just sit with Tucker or Maddow every night or you’ll get a pretty titled view of the world. Read everyone, especially those you might disagree with and see if they might have some truth to their argument.

One week ago, tonight, CBS aired a horrible piece of journalism during 60 Minutes. If you are news junky, you no doubt know I’m talking about the vaccine story and the governor of Florida. What’s striking is that there are serious questions over who got the vaccines first in the sunshine state. The first part of the 60 Minutes piece had some teeth to it. But sadly, the woman doing the story decided that wasn’t enough, so she cooked up the second half of the story and misrepresented what happened in Florida.

She committed a lie by omission, by carefully editing soundbites of the governor and then leaving out the parts that weakened her conclusions. And let me stop you right there. If you’re a real journalist, you are not hunting for conclusions. You present the facts where they lay and let the reader or viewer make their own conclusions.

To not put things in a story to shade the truth is a lie. And how do I know the reporter lied and misled? Because the man she was trying to hurt with the story is a republican and prominent democrats in Florida have come to his defense. That doesn’t happen unless you really cooked the story.

I’ve written before in this space over my heart breaking when I saw the New York Times jump the shark and report things that just weren’t true. I grew up LOVING the Times. I harbored some hope that a show like 60 Minutes would be above the fray and stay in that center lane. Now those hopes are dashed. As a journalist, I have to question what else they’ve put on the air recently that wasn’t entirely fair or true.

I don’t know who the NBC execs were in the audience at that award ceremony in 2014 at the Waldorf Astoria, but they must be watching what CBS just pulled and rolling their eyes. If I were one of them, I wouldn’t resist texting Norah O’Donnell and saying, “You left us for this?”

I hoped after Trump the networks and major publications could get back to journalism. I was wrong.