April 8, 2005

YOU ARE WHAT YOU HONOR:

'60 Minutes II' Wins a Peabody Award, Raising Eyebrows (DAVID CARR, 4/08/05, NY Times)

When the George Foster Peabody Awards for excellence in electronic media were announced yesterday, they cited a program that was later accused of basing a report on fake documents, "60 Minutes II" - and a program that gleefully engages in the production of fake news, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

The Peabody given to the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" honored an exclusive story, produced by Mary Mapes and reported by Dan Rather, about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Several months after that journalistic coup, Ms. Mapes was fired and Mr. Rather retired as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" earlier than planned in the wake of another broadcast, on President George W. Bush's National Guard service. After initially backing its reporters and their report, CBS said they may have based it on falsified documents.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 8, 2005 6:03 AM
Comments

Mr Peabody better stick to his Wayback Machine and not let Sherman do the selections.

Posted by: bart at April 8, 2005 9:20 AM

Compared with the lofty leves the Peabodys aspired to a generation ago, they do come across now as the intellectual crowd's verson of the Golden Globes or Dick Clark's People's Choice Awards.

Posted by: John at April 8, 2005 10:13 AM
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