Posted on 09/21/2004 3:06:46 PM PDT by Travimoto
KVI Seattle's John Carlson is breaking a story about Mary Mapes...she did something like this at KIRO TV in '87...Carlson telling story now live
Well, he also still believes that the documents are not forged. Just that they cannot be proven authentic to the high standards of CBS journalistic practice.
What's scary is that 10 or 15 years ago, CBS would've gotten away with it. Before the advent of the internet, talk radio and 24 hour news channels, the Big 3 (ABC, NBC, CBS) controlled, for better or worse, the content of news that was broadcast to the public.
The natural question then becomes, WHAT ELSE DID THEY FOIST
OFF ON US?
Which station was it that called the Florida Election before
the polls closed in the panhandle?
"The natural question then becomes, WHAT ELSE DID THEY FOIST
OFF ON US?"
The Clinton presidency for one!
Entertainment 09/21/2004 17:19:49 EST DAVID J. PHILLIP/AP Photo CBS Producer on Thin Ice After Guard Story By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer
NEW YORK - The fallout from CBS's doomed story about President Bush's National Guard service most endangers a woman few viewers know but who played a key role in two of the biggest television stories of the year.
Mary Mapes, a veteran producer at CBS News, reported most of the National Guard story, including obtaining the documents CBS now says it can't authenticate. She also passed on the phone number of her source, former Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, to the Kerry campaign.
Mapes, 48, was described by colleagues on Tuesday as a dogged and talented journalist who made no secret of her liberal political beliefs.
She's only a few months removed from a career-defining highlight. Mapes took a story that had received little attention - the abuse of prisoners by American soldiers in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison - and unearthed the photos that gave the story its visceral impact.
"She pursued stories very aggressively always," said Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes." "She definitely has an investigative sense. She was responsible for the bulk of the work on Abu Ghraib. That was her story."
The Dallas-based producer, who declined through a spokeswoman to talk with The Associated Press, also landed the first TV interviews with Strom Thurmond's biracial daughter and Hillary Rodham Clinton after her husband's impeachment. Mapes was almost jailed in 1999 for refusing a judge's order to turn over a videotape of Dan Rather's interview with a white man convicted of killing a black man by driving him behind a pickup truck.
She worked at Seattle's KIRO-TV before coming to CBS in 1989. In the "60 Minutes" tradition, producers like Mapes wield tremendous influence on the stories and operate with a great deal of independence - a status earned after many years of proving themselves, Fager said.
John Carlson, a former commentator at KIRO-TV who is host of a conservative radio talk show in Seattle, remembers Mapes as a talented producer with whom he often argued politics in the newsroom.
Mapes was "quite liberal" and disliked the current President Bush's father, he said.
"She definitely was someone who was motivated by what she cared about and definitely went into journalism to make a difference," Carlson said. "She's not the sort of person who went into journalism to report the news and offer an array of commentary."
Carlson spoke with Mapes about the National Guard story a week ago, and said that he believes she "put so much time into it that she wanted something to come of it."
"This was a woman with a good reputation," he said. "The mistakes she made were so obvious. This was a story that was rushed because they clearly believed it was true. They wanted it to be true."
Rather acknowledged Monday that Burkett didn't come to CBS. The network approached him about the documents, knowing he had been trying for several years to discredit President Bush's military service record, he said.
In a USA Today story, Burkett said he agreed to turn documents impugning Bush's service - widely considered now to be fake - over to CBS on the condition CBS would help arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign. Burkett's lawyer, Gabe Quintanilla, said he could not immediately confirm that Tuesday.
CBS acknowledged Mapes passed on Burkett's number to Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart, and Lockhart called him. Spokeswoman Kelli Edwards said CBS wasn't aware that this was part of any deal, but it's one of the things that will be examined by an independent commission CBS will soon appoint to look into the incident.
"It is obviously against CBS News standards and those of every other reputable news organization to be associated with any political agenda," Edwards said.
It had to be tempting: get key documents you've long been seeking to nail down a story, and all you had to do was set up a phone call.
Still, it's a lapse in journalistic ethics if true, said Marvin Kalb, senior fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
"Journalists do all kinds of odd things these days to get a news story," Kalb said, "but one of the things they should not be doing is paying the price of a political contact."
It's particularly damaging when news coverage is being scrutinized by both sides of a bitter political divide, said Frank Sesno, former CNN Washington bureau chief and professor at George Mason University. Even before this story, Rather and CBS News were targets of groups concerned about an anti-Republican bias in the media.
The Lockhart contact "is going to cast more doubt on not just the practices, but the motives behind the story," Sesno said.
"She's done many, many solid stories in her career," Fager said. "How this went so horribly wrong is a mystery to many of us and I like forward to hearing the details."
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Return to Top Stories WebMarket.com out it
for those who missed it...he'll go over the details again at 5pm PST....you can listen online at KVI.com
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/10/politics/main248524.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/c2k/pdf/REPFINAL.pdf
"What is even scarier is that if they had the good sense to use a typewriter for their forgery, they would have gotten away with it THIS time."
Yes, but the silver lining to that cloud is, it re-afirms my belief that if I only had a modicum of artistic talent I could have been a pretty decent forger.
(But I would never work for the enemy!)
bump
LOL....Martyr Mapes....LOL
Isn't that the equivalent of paying for a story?
Is Dan & CBS on record concerning that issue?
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE THEY DONE THIS BEFORE?
The point needs to be made that this HAS happened before with Rather and Mapes and CBS. "The Wall Within" is a prime expample. It was exposed, but they got away with it.
In 2001 Rather went to the Texas Dem fundraiser. People complained, but he got away with it. That's why they did it this time, THEY KNEW THE STORY WAS WEAK, BUT THEY GOT AWAY MANY TIMES BEFORE. Why should this time be different?
WE MUST ESTABLISH A PATTERN OF BIASED REPORTING BY RATHER AND CBS.
Places to look: RatherBiased.com and MediaResearch.org
I am sure I have no use whatsoever for Mary Mapes, but I hope you have more to go on in getting up anger against Mary Mapes in a former life than that she documented a drug bust gone bad.
keep reading the posts...Mapes provided an "eyewitness" at the 11th hour who said the Cops shot the dealer in cold blood...she didn' vett the witness (wanting the story to be true...sound familiar?) The "eyewitness" was discredited as a liar. Mapes "Learning her craft"?
If Burkett wanted to get in touch with the kerry campaign, why wouldn't he take the simple route?
Ben Barnes
BTW--Ben Barnes has been noticeably out of the picture. By design?
I think Burkett is being offered as the sacrifical lamb to hide the bigger scandal.
Ben Barnes & Kerry are buds. They both have a place on Nantucket.
Ben Barnes gives a talk at a fundraiser in May. The topic is his shame at how he pulled strings to get Presidnt Bush and others into the National Guard.
It was quite a folksy little talk. He is on record as saying he was totally unaware it was being taped.
The Prowler has an article saying Barnes made the tapeat the request of his friend, John Kerry.
Too many little coincidences converging in the first week of September.
So while we are all chasing Lucy Ramirez, who may not even exsist, Barnes may be sitting at home thinking what a bunch of idiots we are.
Ben Barnes cannot be lost in the shuffle.
Thank you for clarifying that point. The story needs to be rewritten to emphasize the lesson about her MO, because the police shooting someone holding a remote control is a bit over the top.
One just has to wonder which stories she and Rather have been involved in were actually true and which were made up.
If people at CBS are saying this, she must be somewhere to the left of Trotsky
BTTT
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