Open Mike

Editor: Your B&C editorial “The Real CBS Bias” (1/17, page 78) merely adds another nine paragraphs to the media’s complicity in the CBS whitewash. Your willingness to accept their “Gee, we worked on the story for three years, considered questionable documents a godsend to our manufactured attack on the president of the United States, and were desperate to release the story before the election” disclaimer makes your B&C editor as gullible as CBS is disingenuous.

Please, this is a network that will pray for and broadcast anything that could possibly embarrass George W. Bush. One has to wonder if you would have been so forgiving had the fraud been committed by, say, Fox News.

Equally amusing is the “We just didn’t know” and “But they didn’t follow our instructions” chaff dispensed by those ultimately responsible for CBS’s broadcasting and staffing. Apparently, the “If he didn’t know, he should have” rationale so frequently employed against the president by CBS journalists comes with a media exemption.

Despite your straight-faced assertion that Les Moonves has learned his lesson and will never allow this to happen again, the same CBS honchos live on. Your own J. Max Robins (The Robins Report: “A Real Page Turner,” 1/17, page 9) now proposes a CBS alliance with CNN. That would be more of a synergy of dishonesty than a cleanup.

Fortunately, the American public (and your readers) has enough common sense and recognition of media bias to know that you’re both spinning.

Todd Halberg

Denver