Tony Blankley has cracked the code of the CBS News "Independent" Report: the peculiar combination of honesty and evasion in the Thornburgh/Boccardi Report finally makes sense. We are all in his debt. It all comes down to the potentially conflicting demands of ethics faced by the lawyer Richard Thornburgh and his law firm, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, Counsel to the Independent Review Panel.

Tony first demolishes the misleading claim that the panel is at all independent.

So the lawyers hired to independently investigate CBS have a lawyer/client relationship with CBS. Presumably, as a senior member of that firm, Independent Review Panel Member Richard Thornburgh also has CBS as a fiduciary client. Thus, unlike similarly named government independent investigations — this one is paid for by, and carried out on behalf of, the target of the investigation. 

The foregoing is not meant to impugn the integrity of Mr. Thornburgh. He is a man of proven integrity. But it is meant to try to determine what his ethical obligations required of him. If CBS is his legal client, then he has an ethical obligation to represent CBS's best interests — and certainly to minimize any exposure CBS might have to legal liability for their conduct.

I would assume that as a former attorney general and public man, he would also feel an ethical obligation not to report facts to the public other than those he believed to be correct and in fair context. While those two sets of ethical imperatives may sometimes be hard to manage simultaneously, from a first reading of the report it appears to me that he has upheld both of those ethical obligations.

Thus, the report issued this week appears to be a very thorough and accurate rendition of facts that demonstrate the bad journalism practiced by CBS. 

This fulfills both his ethical obligations. He has been honest with his factual report, and, by being so, he has helped CBS appear to be coming clean with the public.

But where he has boldly sought and reported the objective facts, he has been cautious and inconclusive regarding the subjective characterizing of those facts.

Tony goes on to note that the Report scrupulously avoids drawing conclusions which would expose his client to legal liabilities, criminal and civil.

This is a brilliant piece of work. Read the whole thing.

And thanks, Tony.

Thomas Lifson   1 12 05