Posted on 09/27/2005 5:44:14 AM PDT by RatherBiased.com
Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer fired for her role in Memogate, has come out with her new book, Truth and Duty : The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power.
In it she mentions some encouraging words from Dan Rather, offering his support for her in her darkest hour.
I knew I could count on Dan. In tough situations, he became “fightin’ Dan,” someone who told us all to “never back up, never back down, never give up, never give in.” I was glad to hear from him and reassured by his reaction to all of it.Dan told me he was confident in the story and that he was lucky to work with me. He signed off by saying something that had become a shorthand for us over the years: “F-E-A.” That was code for “F---’Em All,” a sentiment that needed to be expressed from time to time in any newsroom. Dan was too much of a gentleman to say the real thing---at least most of the time. But he knew that when I was under deadline or work pressure I was hard put to find any sentence that couldn’t be improved by the liberal use of the “f”-word. At this point, I deeply appreciated the sentiment.
Mapes also claimed that the first criticism of the documents appeared before 60 Minutes had even ended and before the documents were put up on the CBS website. But the forum hosting the criticism was from the West coast, with an earlier timezone.
Mapes also demonstrated what could be a lack of knowledge about just what it was people were criticizing. She referred to "peripheral spacing" appearing on some typewriters, when the actual term was "proportional spacing."
Within a few minutes, I was online visiting Web sites I had never heard of before: Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Power Line. They were hard-core, politically angry, hyperconservative sites loaded with vitriol about Dan Rather and CBS. Our work was being compared to that of Jayson Blair, the discredited New York Times reporter who had fabricated and plagiarized stories.All these Web sites had extensive write-ups on the documents: on typeface, font style, and peripheral spacing, material that seemed to spring up overnight. It was phenomenal. It had taken our analysts hours of careful work to make comparisons. It seemed that these analysts or commentators---or whatever they were---were coming up with long treatises in minutes. They were all linking to one another, creating an echo chamber of outraged agreement.
I was told that the first posting claiming the documents were fakes had gone up on Free Republic before our broadcast was even off the air! How had the Web site even gotten copies of the documents? We hadn’t put them online until later. That first entry, posted by a longtime Republican political activist lawyer who used the name “Buckhead,” set the tone for what was to come.
There was no analysis of what the documents actually said, no work done to look at the content, no comparison with the official record, no phone calls made to check the facts of the story, nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface. That was all they had to attack, but that was enough.
When the analysts are told to prove that the memos are true, instead of being told to see if the memos could be false, it does take hours to rationalize all the problems with the memos away.
Which is why we saw the subsequent ludicrous claim by CBS that an expensive, sophisticated and difficult to set up proportional typewriter COULD be used by a National Guard officer to type crude memos that no one would see for his personal files. Crafting that nonsense probably took hours as well.
I don't. It was public information and under investigation, via the Army (I believe it was several months) before it 'broke' in the news media.
The only additions were the photos.
You got fired, Rather "retired" and has not been heard from in months and Free Republic continues to gain readers and kudos.
Sounds to me that the Freepers won this contest of "Who is telling the truth" and you guys lost.....BADLY!
The links are operational, but there's no data on the pages.
It seems like when these people are caught, instead of quietly going away, they try to cleanse their reputations by digging themselves into a deeper hole.
"Almost everybody forgets the Army came clean BEFORE the media reported it."
Unlike the lamestream media, the military has a reality check hovering over it's shoulder. It is called "combat".
Wait a minute - a thought just came to me. Is it possible the lamestream media has discovered that evolution has evolved a reality check to hover over their shoulder as they peck away at their keyboards?
Could it be that Free Republic and other "infamous Internet sites" are that reality check?
;-)
I opened them up before I posted and they looked OK, but the files might have been in my cache already. Maybe someone else could check. You might have bought your computer from a CBS surplus sale. :-)
After reviewing the record I have independendently verified that Howlin and Sinkspur were in on the conspiracy with Buckhead to defame Dan Rather's good name.
FYI..see the link in #93...regards
Note the artful use of "I was told..." to provide some distance between Mapes and yet another slander of her political enemies.
The actual sequence was that CBS posted the documents, Buckhead looked them over, then fired the first volley in the battle that would end with Dan Rather's reluctant retirement.
Lying worked so long and so well for these people that even when they're utterly discredited, they just lie some more.
It's all they know.
Ah...the F word. The liberal's favorite punctuation. The word that fills the empty gaps of empty minds. The word that slides off both sides of the liberal tongue and hits the floor with a steaming plop, to be stepped in and tracked around by all those unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. They can have it. They can keep it. I know some conservatives use it too, but I wish they wouldn't.
Main stream media: "Telling you what we think you need to know for 60 years."
Thanks..
See, I said just exactly that on another thread about Cindy Shee-bat. If she'd quit after Crawford some people would have remembered her as a sympathetic character, courtesy of the media adultation.
Now though, they don't realize they are overplaying their hand with these arrest antics and anti-semitic marching in DC.
They don't seem to be able to stop themselves, and I don't think we should assist them.
Note to the left:
#110 is scarcasm
I am neither an authority nor independent (I am a guy in my pajamas)
scarcasm =sarcasm
During the show TankerKC said that the format of the memo wasn't used by the USAF until the 90s and wanted to get another look at it.
She forgot "gun-happy".
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