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and is not undertaking any investigation of its own. Rather, there appear to be a
"series of investigations," possibly all British, including one by Carlton Television
which originally financed and broadcast the documentary, and including a study by the
British government. One may hypothesize, then, that CBS does not place high priority
on the acknowledgement and correction of its own errors, and that it will do so only
when forced to by public disclosure of these errors by some other agency. For this
reason, the acknowledgement by 60 Minutes that its story The Mule was entirely
fraudulent ca
that its story The Ugly Face of Freedom was entirely fraudulent.
American Competence Gap? Mention has often been made in the Ukrainian Archive
of the existence of competence gaps as these relate to brain drains and gains. The
observation of a startling degree of credulity in the highest levels of the American
Press constitutes one such competence gap, although in this case it is not a gap that
leads to any brain theft from other nations, as the gap is largely hidden from the
American public. Perhaps the American public has its own competence gap - one in which
the people watching the news are as blind to incongruities as the people who are
broadcasting it.
Below are excerpts only. The complete Washington Post article is purchasable online
from the Washington Post by anyone who cares to first set up an account with the
Washington Post.
Acclaimed Expose Questioned as Hoax
British Drug Documentary Was Featured on "60 Minutes"
By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 9, 1998; Page A01
LONDON, May 8 - That powerful expose on "60 Minutes" last summer about Colombian drug
ru
After a lengthy investigation, London's Guardian newspaper has charged that the
award-wi
The program featured dramatic footage of a drug "mule" said to be smuggling several
million dollars' worth of heroin to London for Colombia's Cali drug cartel. The
Guardian reported, though, that the "mule" actually carried no drugs, that his trip to
London was paid for by the documentary's producers, and that many of the report's
dramatic moments were faked.
[...]
When the report was shown on "60 Minutes," CBS reporter Steve Kroft said that the mule
had "no problem" slipping past British customs with the heroin in his stomach.
"Another pound of heroin was on the British streets," the "60 Minutes" report said.
But the Guardian, which says it found the "mule," reports that he actually swallowed
Certs mints, not drugs. It says the flight to London took place six months later, and
was paid for by the filmmaker. And it says the "mule" was actually turned back at
Heathrow because he had a counterfeit passport, and thus never entered Britain.
[...]
The documentary included a highly dramatized segment in which reporters under armed
guard were taken to a remote location for an interview with a figure described as a
high-ranking member of the Cali drug cartel. "60 Minutes" reported de Beaufort had to
travel blindfolded for two days by car to reach the scene of this secret rendezvous.
The Guardian [...] said the secret location was actually the producer's hotel room in
Colombia.
[...]
The British government's watchdog group, the Independent Television Commission, has
launched a study of its own. Unlike the United States, where government has no power
to police the content of news reporting, there are official regulations here requiring
that TV news demonstrate "a respect for truth."
CBS has not undertaken an investigation of its own, but will report to its viewers on
the results of the British investigations [...].
HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES 1254 hits since 20Oct98
Buzz Bissinger Vanity Fair Sep 1998 Old Liars, young liar
Trouble was, he made things up - sources, quotes, whole stories - in a
breathtaking web of deception that emerged as the most sustained fraud in modern
journalism.
The topic of lying in the media is of central importance on the Ukrainian Archive
because of the frequency with which the media uses the opportunity of reporting on
the Slavic world in general, and on Ukraine in particular, to instead calumniate
them. Three prominent examples are Jerzy Kosinski's career as Jewish-Holocaust
fabulist and Grand Calumniator of Poland, TIME magazine's wallowing girl photograph
of 22Feb93, and Morley Safer's 60 Minutes story The Ugly Face of Freedom, broadcast
over the CBS network on 23Oct94.
From such examples as the above, however, it is difficult to estimate the prevalence
of misinformation and disinformation in the media. It may be the case that
distortion and calumniation are limited to a few topics such as the Slavic world or
Ukraine, and that otherwise the media are responsible, professional, and accurate.
The value of studying the case of Stephen Glass, however, is that it suggests
otherwise - that perhaps the media operate under next to no oversight, that they are
rarely held accountable, and that only egregious lying over a protracted interval
eventually risks discovery and exposure. Had Stephen Glass been just a little less
of a liar, had he more often tempered his lies, more often redirected them from the
powerful to the powerless, he would today not only still be working as a reporter,
but wi
viability of the hypothesis that misinformation and disinformation in the media is
widespread, and that the three examples mentioned above, and the many more documented
throughout the Ukrainian Archive, may not be exceptional deviations at all, but
rather the tip of an iceberg in an industry which is largely unregulated, which is
largely lacking internal mechanisms of quality control, which is responsive not to
truth, but to the dictates of ruling forces.
Another question which may be asked is whether Stephen Glass is the product of some
sub-culture which condones or encourages lying, or which even offers training in
lying.
The following excerpts, then, are from Buzz Bissinger, Shattered Glass, Vanity Fair,
September, 1998, pp. 176-190. The quoted portions are in gray boxes; the headings in
navy blue, however, have been introduced in the UKAR posting, and were not in the
original. I now present to you Stephen Glass largely on the possibility that our new
understanding of Stephen Glass will deepen our existing understanding of other
record-breaking, media-manipulating liars that have been featured on the Ukrainian
Archive, ones such as Yaakov Bleich, Morley Safer, Neal Sher, Elie Wiesel, and Simon
Wiesenthal.
One precondition of exceptional lying may be an intellectual mediocrity which puts a
low ceiling on the success that can be achieved through licit means. Thus, Stephen
Glass, although performing well in high school, began to perform poorly in University,
and when he began work as a reporter, was discovered to not know how to write:
Glass began his studies at the University of Pe
curriculum. According to various accounts, he held his own at the begi
then his grades nose-dived. He apparently flunked one course and barely passed