Posted on 09/21/2004 8:50:42 PM PDT by Pikamax
CBS Says Producer Violated Policy by Putting Source in Touch With Kerry Aide By JIM RUTENBERG and BILL CARTER
Published: September 22, 2004
BS News said yesterday that the producer of its flawed report about President Bush's National Guard service violated network policy by putting a source in touch with a top aide to Senator John Kerry.
"It is obviously against CBS News standards and those of every other reputable news organization to be associated with any political agenda," the network said in a statement.
The rebuke of the producer, Mary Mapes, also broadcast last night on "The CBS Evening News," served to underscore the change in Ms. Mapes's status in the last week.
Leading up to the report on Sept. 8, on the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes," about the records, records that the news division now says it can no longer vouch for, Ms. Mapes was one of the most respected producers at the network.
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Her reputation was burnished in the spring, after the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes," then called "60 Minutes II," reported in detail the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq.
Now executives at the news division say that high regard may have poked a fatal hole in its checking procedures, perhaps making some news executives less vigilant in asking hard questions about how the producer obtained documents.
Privately, network officials said they were caught off guard on Monday when Joe Lockhart, a senior adviser to Mr. Kerry, told reporters that he had spoken to Bill Burkett, the source for the questionable documents, at the behest of Ms. Mapes.
On Monday, the news division announced that Mr. Burkett had misled Ms. Mapes and Dan Rather, the network anchor who presented the report, about the origins of the documents.
In an interview with Mr. Rather, Mr. Burkett admitted lying about their provenance, saying first that they came from a former Guard officer overseas and then that they came by way of a mysterious couple.
Officials of CBS News and CBS management have announced that they will name an independent committee to investigate how the report was prepared and broadcast.
Ms. Mapes, through a network spokeswoman, declined to comment. That Ms. Mapes is now at the center of such a lapse is hard to fathom, many colleagues at the network said.
"Mary Mapes has always been a first-class producer with an impressive body of work," said Jeff Fager, now the executive producer of the Sunday edition of "60 Minutes" who supervised her when he was executive producer of the Wednesday program. "I hope we all find out soon how this could have gone so horribly wrong."
For a week after the report, CBS News executives said they were confident about the authenticity and origins of the documents, even as experts stepped forward to say they could only have been produced by modern word processors.
Top network officials, who face questions about their roles in broadcasting the report, say part of that assuredness came from the confidence that Ms. Mapes showed in her source and the report.
Executives had reason for that confidence. At 48, Ms. Mapes is accomplished enough that producers for the "60 Minutes" Wednesday edition, which is based in New York, let her work from home in Dallas, similar to arrangements with several top producers.
She had all the more influence as Mr. Rather's designated producer on the Wednesday program, where she reported to Mr. Fager until this fall, when Josh Howard succeeded Mr. Fager.
Although the two editions share the name, they operate under separate top executives and, for the most part, maintain separate production teams and correspondents.
In recent days, two correspondents for the original Sunday edition, Morley Safer and Steve Kroft, have said the Guard report did not live up to their program's standards.
The Abu Ghraib scandal was one of several exclusives for Ms. Mapes, who began working for the news division in 1989, mostly as a producer for "The CBS Evening News."
In 1999, she secured for Mr. Rather an interview with Shawn Allen Berry, a white man who was convicted in the racially motivated killing of James Byrd Jr., whom Mr. Berry and two others dragged behind a pick-up truck near Jasper, Tex.
Ms. Mapes nearly went to jail for refusing to hand over tapes of the interview to prosecutors.
She also secured a major interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton after President Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings.
Mr. Rather and CBS executives said that Mr. Bush's Guard records had been intensely important to her, a subject she had been chasing with Mr. Rather off and on for five years.
Several people at the news division, who insisted on anonymity because they had been told not to talk to reporters, said one important line of inquiry in the internal inquiry would be whether Ms. Mapes's zeal clouded her judgment.
Some colleagues and associates questioned whether her politics could have interfered.
John Carlson, a colleague of Ms. Mapes at KIRO-TV in Seattle in the 1980's who is now the host of a conservative radio talk show there, said she was "ardently liberal.''
"When I heard about this story,'' Mr. Carlson said, "I said, 'I wonder if that's Mary, because she was someone who, like many advocacy journalists, went into journalism to try to change society.'
"She believed in what she was doing, and I think that she and other people at CBS would not have made the same mistakes had this story been about John Kerry.''
Mr. Fager, her old superviser, said the only thing he knew that drove Ms. Mapes was a passion to get a story and get it right.
Some colleagues expressed worry that Ms. Mapes would be a scapegoat and that others, like Mr. Rather; Betsy West, a CBS News senior vice president; and the CBS News president, Andrew Heyward, would not be held accountable.
What do you want to bet NOBODY GETS FIRED!!
Grrr! I knew they were going to make Mary Mapes the fall-gal! What a bunch of crybabies.
This is the Lefts spin machine at it's best. This women will fall on the knife, and no one else will ever get a scratch.
Such pure, unadulterated bullsh*t. Why even put up the front, folks? CBS remains a reputable news organization alright. Their reputation is that of DNC shills.
Rather will skate merrily along and Mr. & Mrs. Dumbass will keep tuning in to get their daily dose of hog slop from the Telly.
Nothing new here...move along.
What a total crock. CBS will continue to spin this and avoid admitting the truth that they were going to get Bush no matter what it took. Anone who thinks this was just a "mistake" is from another planet. This was a deliberate smear and they never expected to get caught.
Can you say "Scape Goat"?
it seems to me, i remember some top guy at 60 minutes bragging that he got bill clinton elected (the first time) by editing clinton's 60 minutes interview ("i have made mistakes in my marriage") to make clinton look good.
Mary... In the REAL universe you could make a bundle by not being the patsy.
I know that we have discussed President Bush’s Air Guard service sited by CBS's forged documents but the Air Force Manual that the documents refer to has nothing to do with Flying Boards or meeting Flight Physical Standards. In the 70s the manual that covers these items is AFM 160-1. AFM 160-1 contains the actual schedule and other requirements about these medical exams.
Now Kerry on his web site on 27 Apr 2004 raised the following question:
FACT:
Bush Was Suspended From Flight Duty For Failing To Take Mandated Medical Exam. On September 29, 1972, Bush was officially suspended from flying for missing his annual medical examination. The orders note that Bush’s suspension is authorized under the guidelines presented in Air Force Manual 35-12 Para 2-29m, which reads that Bush’s local commander “will direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination.” [Aeronautical Orders, Number 87, 29 Sept 72; AFM 35-13, Para 2-29m] Where Are the Complete Results of the Required Investigation into Bush’s Absence from the Exam?
We now know that the memo's were completely bogus and the reference to
AFM 35-15 was a ruse by the person that forged the documents to add a touch of realism.
My question is this:
How does the Kerry campaign explain away the fact that they and the CBS memos cite the same bogus Air Force Manual 35-13 without being in contact with each other. Two groups just dreaming up the same non-existent manual goes way beyond coincidence?
I got it...the Halle Bop (spell?) people forged the memos!
Five years? That's not an investigation -- it's an agenda!!!
He said, insincerely...
RATHER, ROBIN
AUSTIN,TX 78704
MIND WAVE RESEARCH/CEO
3/15/2004
$1,000
Kerry, John
7/27/2004
$500
Kerry, John
******
RATHER, ROBIN
AUSTIN,TX 78701
NONE/CONSULTANT
5/27/2003
$250
Democratic Party of Travis County
6/19/2003
$250
Dean, Howard
******
RATHER, ROBIN
AUSTIN,TX 78704
REALITY RESEARCH
6/22/2000
$5,000
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte
11/8/1999
($1,000)
Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte
6/4/2001
$1,000
Responsibility/Opportunity/Community PAC
8/30/1999
$1,000
Clinton, Hillary Rodham
10/28/1999
$1,000
Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte
11/17/1999
$1,000
Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte
10/16/2001
$1,000
Democratic Congressional Campaign Cmte
11/5/2002
$1,000
Kirk, Ron
11/8/2001
$1,000
Kirk, Ron
Yuppers... and they were wearing their magic nikes
LOL...youre good mon...
Wait just a friggin' minute. NOW cBS is saying they had the source FIRST? Is cBS falling on the sword to protect the DNC? I thought it had been established the DNC had the memos first, then sent them to cBS after they determined the memos were fraudulent. How else could the DNC have incorporated elements mentioned in the memos into some of their campaign ads running long before the memos were released by cBS?
Enquiring minds want to know.
If they fire her, she will spill the beans. We know it all was a plot with the Kerry campaign.
What a bunch of crimminals, the whole lot of them.
The Democrat party is finnished. They will continue on with the worst smear and lie campaign ever seen, because they have nothing to loose.
she violated the policy by getting caught.
Questions need to be asked.
marymapes: dust off your resume'
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