CBS News and Dan Rather did not make a "good faith error"

Every law student learns during his first year of law school a pithy old legal definition of the term "good faith" — "honesty of intention and freedom from circumstances which ought to put the holder upon inquiry." 

It's a term used throughout the law and in many different contexts, but always with both a subjective component, unique to the individual being inquired about and dependent upon his state of mind (honesty), and an objective component, governed not by the individual's state of mind, but by whether a reasonable person in the same circumstances would have been alerted to a problem.

Thus, for instance, Justice Harlan, writing for the United States Supreme Court in an admiralty case, The Kate, 164 U.S. 458, 468 (1896), had occasion to quote Justice Clifford's opinion from an even earlier case, The Lulu, 10 Wall. 192, 202-03, 77 U.S. 192 (1869), on the subjects of "good faith" and the circumstances that prevent it from being claimed as an excuse:

[A] party to a transaction, where his rights are liable to be injuriously affected by notice, cannot willfully shut his eyes to the means of knowledge which he knows are at hand, and thereby escape the consequences which would flow from the notice if it had been actually received; or, in other words, the general rule is that knowledge of such facts and circumstances as are sufficient to put a party upon inquiry, and to show that, if he had exercised due diligence, he would have ascertained the truth of the case, is equivalent to actual notice of the matter in respect to which the inquiry ought to have been made.

If one has ignored red flags in the circumstances that would have alerted a reasonable person to a problem, he cannot thereafter claim to have acted in "good faith."  Nor, of course, can he claim to have acted in "good faith" if he had actual, subjective knowledge of the problem.

From Dan Rather's statement about the use of the forged Killian memos (boldface added):

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where — if I knew then what I know now — I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry.  It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Not only Mr. Rather, but also CBS News itself has repeated this claim of making a "good faith error" (boldface added):

This was an error made in good faith as we tried to carry on the CBS News tradition of asking tough questions and investigating reports, but it was a mistake.

But this was not an error made in good faith — not as that term is known in law, or in journalism, or in common English.  Indeed, a previous version of the Society of Professional Journalist's Code of Ethics noted that "[g]ood faith with the public is the foundation of all worthy journalism," and that "[t]here is no excuse for inaccuracies or lack of thoroughness."

CBS News, "60 Minutes II," and Dan Rather used the Killian documents despite numerous and obvious indicia that they weren't authentic — including express warnings from the very experts whom they had consulted on the question of the documents' authenticity.  No reasonable journalist, nor any reasonable person, would have ignored those warnings.  Moreover, CBS News and Mr. Rather continued to assert the documents' authenticity for a full week while concealing the identity of their confidential source — a known crank with an axe to grind against President Bush — and while continuing to insist that their confidential source was "unimpeachable."  They insisted that they had confidence in the documents' "chain of custody"; they belittled anyone and everyone who questioned the documents' authenticity, including their own experts; and they've yet to issue a decent retraction or apology. 

Dan Rather and CBS News did not merely "willfully shut [their] eyes to the means of knowledge which [they knew were] at hand" — as would have been true had they recklessly failed to consult any experts whatsoever — but indeed, they shut their eyes to the knowledge their own experts were serving up.  And as such, they cannot claim now to be excused, in whole or in part, by virtue of having acted "in good faith" — for they cannot satisfy either the subjective or objective part of that term's definition.

Simply put, for CBS News and Dan Rather to claim now that they made a "good faith error" is itself a knowing lie — an act of bad faith from any objective standpoint, and indeed even  from their own subjective standpoint regardless of how self-deluding Mr. Rather and the other responsible individuals at CBS News have been or continue to be.