Press: Autopsy on a CBS Expose

The network is ambivalent in defense of a Viet Nam report

Virtually from the moment it was broadcast on Jan. 23, the CBS documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Viet Nam Deception came under attack. The prime-time program, which featured a memorable heated interview between CBS News Correspondent Mike Wallace and retired U.S. Army General William Westmoreland, had as a central thesis the charge that in 1967 Westmoreland led a top-level military conspiracy to sustain public support for the war in Viet Nam by giving the White House gross underestimates of the size of enemy forces. Three days after the show was aired, General Westmoreland angrily denied the allegations. Other disavowals followed, including claims by senior advisers to President Lyndon Johnson that they had been well aware of debate among military and intelligence officers about the strength of the enemy. In May, TV Guide (circ. 17.7 million) published its own expose, titled "Anatomy of a Smear:

How CBS 'Got' General Westmoreland," which questioned CBS'S evidence for claiming a conspiracy and challenged the network's reportorial procedures and the integrity of its editing.

CBS reacted to the TV Guide report in a manner all but unprecedented in its history. News Division President Van Gordon Sauter launched an internal investigation to re-examine every step in the assembly of the documentary. To that task he assigned Burton Benjamin, a senior executive producer. After receiving Benjamin's report, Sauter last week wrote and released an eight-page memorandum, remarkable enough for being made public and unique for its candid admissions of error. Sauter said, "CBS News stands by this broadcast." But he then conceded that the news division had committed five substantial violations of CBS'S journalistic ground rules, plus other lapses and debatable "judgment calls," some on evidence that was pivotal to the documentary's contentions. Indeed, he labeled the very use of the word conspiracy "inappropriate." Sauter, moreover, was moved to reassert strict, traditional standards and make major changes in news division practices, including installation of what amounts to an ombudsman. Perhaps as important, Sauter pledged "the full involvement and collaboration of the principal correspondent" of each documentary from the beginning of its reporting. Over-scheduled on-air stars like Wallace often join a project after most decisions have been made. Wallace, CBS conceded, did little reporting for the Viet Nam documentary and contributed only a few interviews.

TV Guide's probers, Don Kowet and Sally Bedell (who has since joined the New York Times), were not fully satisfied. But, said Kowet, "I have to give CBS credit. It has made an enormous contribution to TV journalism by admitting mistakes and setting up an ombudsman."