CBS Fires Mapes

cbs radio news

[1Old Pro]

Report just issues, mapes finally fired

[beyond the sea]

Joseph Farah WND 9/20/04

When Dan Rather was caught red-handed passing off forged and fraudulent documents indicting the president of the United States for supposedly not fulfilling his National Guard obligations, he resorted to the Hillary Clinton defense.

One of his producers was quoted as saying: "All Dan could say was that this was an attack from the right-wing nuts, and that we should have expected this, given the stakes. He was terribly defensive and nervous."

Have you ever noticed the last refuge of scoundrels is not patriotism, as the old aphorism goes, but labeling – name-calling, reducing intelligent debate to bumper-sticker shouting.

[Mo1]

I just turned on the news

Oh My MY

[maryz]

The ONLY reason this piece was aired when it was was a political agenda.

If I recall, the Kerry campaign at the time had an ad on Bush's National Guard service ready to run at the same time; I think the firestorm broke before it had, and it was pulled.

[newzjunkey]

Congrats to JimRob, Buckhead, Howlin and the others for breaking the memo madness wide open.

Pity the report is a whitewash but we expected that. Rather got to fall on his sword metaphorically but he'll still be "reporting" on 60 Minutes.

[shiva]

Will she write a book now?

[beyond the sea]

ping

[timpad]

The interests of Rather and Mapes in pursuing a story about President Bush’s TexANG service date back to at least 1999. At that time, and again during the presidential election of 2000, they investigated allegations that then-Texas Governor Bush had received preferential treatment in getting into the TexANG in 1968. Although Rather did two interviews about the subject in 1999, no story was put together for airing.

Looks like Burkett finally told them what they had been wanting to hear for some time.

[newzjunkey]

Hackworth is a hack afterall. Pity anyone actually paid him as a 'fair and balanced' consultant or pimped him on conservative talk shows.

[Judith Anne]

To me, it's clearly collusion between the Kerry campaign and CBS. Frankly, I wish THAT were the subject of the inquiry.

[logic]

makes you wonder what it would take for them to admit such....."This document forged by...."

[chiller]

Mapes, and probably Rather too, knew that this was their last chance to air the story before GWB was done with his last campaign. She, and perhaps he, had to run it now or never and there is no way in hell they would let 5 years of research, 5 years of waiting go down the drain.

So they faked it. Wrong call.

[mondonico]

Rather should be fired too. As it is, his pretense to being a "reporter" or "journalist" is now revealed to be pure BS.

[beyond the sea]

What about this girl?

*****

http://www.madkane.com/wwwboard/messages/3286.html

“One report describes Robin Rather as an environmentalist and "a likely candidate for Austin Mayor in 2006." Another report states that she lives in the same congressional district as the former Texas lieutenant governor and heavyweight Democratic contributor Ben Barnes. He is the man behind most of the charges about President Bush's service record. Potential mayoral candidates and heavyweight campaign contributors tend to mingle. And according to that second report, Robin Rather and Barnes worked together on Democratic party fundraisers--perhaps including that March 2001 event described above.

[CFC__VRWC]

Rather is effectively fired....

Oh please. His "punishment" was his "retirement" from the CBS Evening News anchor chair in March - when he was already planning to give that up this year anyway. He still gets to stay on 60 Minutes, and (in his and the media's minds, anyway) his "legacy" is intact. People like us who insist on bringing up his role in the TANG story will just summarily be dismissed as right-wing cranks.

(Actually, I think Rather and his media pals are deluding themselves here, but since he'll probably never set foot outside Manhattan again except to jet away to some other tony liberal resort for vacation every now and then, he'll always be surrounded by people who will only tell him how great he was).

[cyncooper]

Jim Warren = Chicago Tribune' Bureau chief in Washington, D.C. and sometime pundit whose schtick is to paint conservatives as paranoid and such.

[beyond the sea]

I'm sick to death of "Nuanced", that word needs to be banned! Why are all the newsies like highschool groupies and continually copy one anothers language? Remember gravitas?

Yeh, when talking to these newsies, I wish "shove it" would have caught on!

[Mo1]

If I recall, the Kerry campaign at the time had an ad on Bush's National Guard service ready to run at the same time; I think the firestorm broke before it had, and it was pulled.

They DID have it and they DID air it

[onyx]

The report stops short of collusion:
instead calling the contact between Kerry
campaign (Mapes and Lockhard) INAPPROPRIATE.

[Timeout]

MSNBC is interviewing former CBS News VP, Ed Fouhy.
(Pronounced "PHOOEY").

LOL!

[mysto]

She looks like a deer in the headlights...