Michael Gartner Rewriting History

The Iowa City Press-Citizen has a long piece on new Regents President Michael Gartner.

This is beyond a stretch:

In 1987, he and a partner bought the Ames Tribune, an 11,000-circulation paper that published six days a week. From 1988-93, Gartner also was president of NBC, which at the time had a budget of about $350 million. He resumed working at the Tribune on a full-time basis after resigning from the network in the wake of a controversial "Dateline" segment. The report staged an explosion in a story about potentially hazardous pickup trucks made by General Motors.

"It happened on my watch," Gartner said of the incident. "I took responsibility for it. I did what I thought you ought to do when you make a mistake. You say 'we made a mistake' and apologize to the viewers."

Well.... that's not really what Gartner did, at first. From author Ken Auletta:

Michael Gartner, the beleaguered president of NBC News, has fallen on his sword because of the faked crash of a General Motors truck on "Dateline NBC." While Gartner's bosses did not hold him personally responsible for the story about the crash, the network did hire two outside lawyers to investigate the behavior of NBC News and consider the question of account-ability, including what action Gartner took, or didn't take, after the specious report was broadcast. A key decision-maker at NBC says that it was "outrageous" for Gartner to stonewall G.M. and to defend his own news staff even after he learned that someone had hidden miniature rockets on the truck and detonated them just before the collision. Even before Gartner resigned, on March 2nd, he was about to be fired. "He knew about this incident for several days," this man said. "He didn't investigate it in depth. He should have looked into it more, because he was aware that he was being sued before he issued a statement defending News." Then, the last week in February, questions were raised about another report broadcast by NBC News, this one on the effects of logging in Idaho's Clearwater National Forest, and that situation made it even more difficult for Gartner to stay.

Gartner came to NBC News from the Gannett Company in 1988, and he was required to perform three conflicting roles: editor-in-chief, publisher, and producer. He did some of what was asked of him: reduced News costs, streamlined management, and after some false starts finally got on the air a magazine show ("Dateline NBC") with respectable ratings, if not always respectable stories. One of the men who held Gartner's fate in their hands praised these accomplishments the other day and said, "This man is the rock of integrity," but added, ominously, "The facts are these: Michael has an unpleasant personality..."

The other lesson is that a fixation on costs at the three network-news divisions may lead to the kind of problem that has come to light at "Dateline NBC." NBC News hired an outside firm--not an unusual practice--to do the testing of the G.M. trucks involved in the "Dateline" report, but gave the firm a limited budget to work with. A person close to the internal investigations admits, "The demonstration was quite cheap." NBC may have saved money, but it also surrendered quality

Michael Gartner was defending "fake but accurate" news before "fake but accurate" was chic.

Heh heh heh heh...

You've got to wonder where Michael Gartner would be today if the Dateline scandal had happened during the modern Internet era of blogging, and especially following the scandal at 60 Minutes. I kind of doubt he'd be running Vision Iowa and then appointed to and become unaminously elected the president of the Iowa Board of Regents. I think his reputation would have been rightfully trashed to a greater degree.

And don't forget how Gartner treated Arthur Kent:

Now reluctantly working for Dateline NBC in Rome, Kent's foreign stories were being butchered and dropped altogether and Kent wanted to know why. In his attempts to find out what was happening, Kent wrote several letters to Don Browne, vice-president of NBC news. He was becoming an ever-present thorn in the side of one of the world's largest corporations.

Fed up with Kent's persistent requests for some justification as to why his stories were being dropped, David Verdi, under the orders of Michael Gartner, assigned Kent and his team to Zagreb and then to move immediately into Bosnia.

It was an extremely dangerous assignment. Twenty-seven journalists had been killed in Bosnia the year before. Kent and his team were sent in without bullet-proof vests and helmets. They were provided with no translators or guides, no first-aid gear, no maps and no background files. Kent refused the assignment. NBC's own policy book stated that all hazardous assignments were purely voluntary. Kent also had a contract with NBC which stated that reassignment from Dateline could only be to the senior Europea n posts at NBC's Nightly News.

He was sent letters from Michael Gartner, threatening him with suspension. Kent was eventually suspended and fired. Gartner wasted no time in launching a publicity campaign claiming that Kent had been suspended for refusing a legitimate and safe assignment-to Zagreb, Croatia with no mention that Kent had been assigned to go into Bosnia.

Kent's case never went to trial, but the book takes on a dramatic turn from the world theatre to the boardrooms of NBC where Kent tells his story through depositions. Here, the various people involved in the Kent vs. NBC case tell their side of the story to the defendant and the plaintiff (and their lawyers) under oath.

If the book up until this point is fascinating, it reaches the realms of the un-put-down-able in these later chapters. In just under 75 pages, the upper management of NBC comes tumbling down. An organization, when called to account for what appeared to be lies, irresponsible decision-making, compromised news reporting and sensationalistic tendencies, simply cannot defend itself. Many of NBC's executives come across as-for lack of a better word-morons. Kent's case seems so strong from the beginning that it is hard to believe his opponents manage to run a network.

David Verdi, who was responsible for assigning Kent and his partner to Bosnia, admits that he doesn't know the Serb capital of Bosnia or the Muslim capital. He also admits that no equipment was available to Kent when he was assigned to go into Bosnia. More digging revealed that, contrary to Gartner's claims in the press release denouncing Kent, there was never an assignment to "peaceful Zagreb." (Ironically, Kent ended up in Bosnia anyway, filming an award-winning documentary sold, in part, to the BBC and CBC.)

From beginning to end, it is clear that Kent is in the right and NBC is terribly, terribly wrong. Kent initially asked for $25 million plus a full apology. The cash settlement Kent received remains confidential, but by the end of the book, Kent achieves three consequential achievements. Not only does he clear his name and show that his dishonourable discharge was based on completely false charges, but he has demonstrated something to which everyone who considers news of some importance should pay close attention: NBC news was (and very well may still be) driven by its entertainment division-as appalling a revelation as can be imagined.