I’m not familiar with Don Hewitt but I sure do have questions about why this story seems not to have been vetted properly; also about why it was so important to run with it that, according to reports, a story on the forged Niger documents was bumped to make room. Of course, I’m also wondering why the Bush documents story was challenged so quickly and why there is now an email campaign calling for Rather’s ouster, when the false reports that hounded the Clintons throughout the 90s mostly faded away without repercussions for the journalists who aired them. Indeed, the current affair reminds me a bit of the campaign to take down Andrew Gilligan and others at the BBC over the report of the “sexed-up” Iraq weapons dossier that led to the death of Dr. David Kelly. There’s some element of “bring the media to heel” in the furor over Rather’s story that feels awfully familiar . . .

All that being said, I really don’t know what to think about any of this. Were the documents a set-up? If so, by whom? Why the shoddy journalism, if that’s what it was that led to airing the story? And if not shoddy journalism, then what? A deliberate decision to air a story based on faulty evidence in advance of airing a story on the faulty evidence used to justify invading Iraq?

These are only a few of the questions that whirl around in my head, but I do have a couple for you, Rory. Do you think the independent investigation CBS has initiated will uncover the whole story behind the story? And do you think the story will be told or covered up?

In some ways this story reminds me of what happened to the with Andrew Gilligan’s report about the “sexed-up” Iraq dossier at the BBC. The particulars are different, of course, but there’s something about the rapid attack on the story and the campaign against the reporter and network that feels disturbingly familiar. Let’s hope an alleged source doesn’t end up dead in this affair.