CNN, during its premiere of NewsStand: CNN & Time, a television news venture with Time magazine, reported in the lead story, “Valley of Death,” that the United States had used lethal nerve gas in 1970 as part of a secret mission to kill American defectors in Laos. This report was broadcast June 7, 1998, on NewsStand: CNN & Time and reported in Time despite several oral and written complaints from journalists in both news organizations questioning the validity of the story. A military consultant resigned in protest. On July 3, 1998, the Fresno (California) Bee reported CNN’s retraction of the story by Tom Johnson, CNN News Group chair, president, and CEO. Johnson admitted to serious faults with the broadcast and apologized, saying that CNN was not able to confirm the story. Time’s managing editor admitted that he, too, could not confirm the story.
A group of television producers and print journalists conducted 200 interviews as they worked together for 8 months on the story. The group was headed by two successful producers and included an awardwinning documentary producer and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. An independent investigation into the validity of the story concluded that the group members had not intentionally made up the story. Instead, the reporting team drew conclusions based on questionable evidence, led sources into thinking that their suspicions could be supported by unseen evidence, and made decisions based on interview responses to a variety of hypothetical questions. The CNN investigation concluded that those involved in putting together the story so firmly believed what they were reporting that they ignored information contrary to what they were finding.
How could a team of talented individuals, after an 8-month investigation and in the face of cautionary criticism, produce a report that ended in people being fired, resigning, and facing reprimands—not to mention embarrassing two highly respected news organizations? Use the concepts of open and closed systems, interdependence, feedback, multiple causes/paths, and nonsummativity, to develop your own “systems” explanation for this reporting disaster. You can do this in groups or as a class.