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.
Exactly. Doesn't matter what the truth is. Just brazen it out.
Yep. Old "take it to the bank" Rather. He said once that if he said it, you could take it to the bank.
Turn this around and apply it to Mary Mapes and see what a good fit you get.
And that's the way it is..
rather - (rath' 'r) [from CBS: v. (1) to make up events in an attempt to achieve maximum headline impact. Also, (2) to lie about event(s) on camera. (3) n. rathering reporter Dan Rather
Marvin Kalb, in the face of evidence a 5th grader could digest, continues to shill for what is clearly discredited. Isn't he the Dean of Journalism of Columbia, or some elite Journalism school? His questions had no probative value at all on the CSpan interview with Rather. I understand him trying to rehab his old buddy, but the kindest thing he could tell Dan is, "Dan, you F****d-Up and got caught. Stop talking about it. You're taking us all down with you".
I also seem to remember that the memos had an incorrect address for one of the units.
When did David "Colonel Kilgore" Hackworth turn into such a leftie? Was it all because of the Vietnam war?
Bitter much, Mary? LOL!
Buckhead and TankerKC plus a dozen or so others took you down using the freedom of this new medium to assemble and speak and conclude the forgery. It really stings when the People have the power to do that huh?
Monopoly's gone, and so is your reputation except among your own kind. But if their opinion really mattered, would you have written this book? Nope.
Hey, Ms. Mapes, I'm holding in my hand a letter, PURPORTEDLY SIGNED BY YOU, giving me all the royalties from your book.
PLEASE REMIT.
By the way, Ms. Mapes, FU2.
Hey...........I think she's talking about you, LOL! This elitist idiot just cannot believe that average Americans WILL root out the truth when they are being so obviously lied to.
The docs were so bad that all it took as a 2 second glance to tell that they were fake. I posted at 8:19 Central time saying that we needed to see more of them. They are confusing my quick call with the detailed analysis that followed.
That was me. It wasn't even the fonts. It was the formats and headings of the memo. They memo was in a format that the USAF didn't use until the early 90s. There is no way that a memo written in 1972 could perfectly match the format we went to in the 90s.
And, that, beyond all else that has been said, is why I KNOW they are fake. Whoever forged these documents had some knowledge of standard memo formats...from the wrong era.
Of course it was enough, you brainless nitwit! Once it became obvious that the supposed "memos" were, in FACT, forgeries, their contents became irrelevant. Who cares what a document forger has to say? The FACT of the forgery itself is the real story.
Because the documents were forged--therefore, what they said was less important that the fact that they were forgeries.
no work done to look at the content
When the documents are forged, the content is beside the point.
no comparison with the official record
What would be the point of checking phony documents with the official record? The documents were false, and whether or not they matched the official record on ANY point is superfluous.
no phone calls made to check the facts of the story,
The facts had been available for a long time. President Bush's records were out. Why call to see if a phony, forged document matches anything?
nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface.
A genuine typeface, a genuine document, would have withstood the cursory and politically motivated examination and rendered the examination moot.
Alas, it was a forgery. The cursory and politically motivated examination revealed it to be so.
The way she 'reports' the details of this matter in her book should give a clue to the truth of her 'journalism'
for CBS. Her facts are wrong from beginning to end, she doesn't even understand time zones or the internet's broad reach, and her bias is on parade here for all to see. This is one sick reporterette.
Hit the nail on the head... I love it...
Uh, F-YOU Mary Mapes...and the donkey you ride on too!
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