I was one who agreed with CBS that the report on the forged memos should have been delayed until after the election (a position for which I took a little criticism). Further delays may still be justified if the investigators are responding to criticisms of their first draft–checking issues that were under-investigated in the first place.
But RatherBiased.com is reporting that the current debate at CBS is over whether to release the full report (tip to Glenn). The Report probably does involve the employment status of some of CBS’s staff members, so there might be some reason to suppress a few sentences giving context on individual employment backgrounds not directly involved in the actions being investigated. I could also imagine that some recommendations for future action might be only hinted at in the report and then delivered in person to the top honchos. Other than that, I don’t see what should be withheld. And I still think that CBS should release a draft of the report for comment before finalizing it.
Unless the full report is shown to only a half-dozen people, I don’t see how they will be able to keep it private. You would think that a news organization would want more transparency than most other organizations in the US. More tellingly, you would think that CBS would understand that times have changed; it is very hard to keep the lid on something like a damaging report–or whether memos in a news story are forged. If RatherBiased.com is correct, it suggests that some at CBS still don’t get it.
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