I get all choked up every time I think about how I had to throw Mary to the wolves to try and save myself. But I am Dan Rather damn it!
Courage Mary, courage.
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.
The printing business, the military, any subject--it doesn't matter. The collective knowledge/expertise of 100,000+ individuals will dwarf any news bureau or collection of political hacks. Not every poster knows, but someone will have the resources or know where it can be found in order to get to the truth.
Conversely, any misstatements, half-truths or misinformation will be challenged. It's the ultimate in freedom of the press.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts
Howlin posts a link to the docs ALREADY ON-LINE at 11:17PM.
Buckhead responds at 11:59PM:
To: Howlin
Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.
In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.
I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
This should be pursued aggressively.
47 posted on 09/08/2004 11:59:43 PM EDT by Buckhead
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Mapes's assertion that the first acusations of forgery occurred before the docs were available for viewing is a lie.
Gee ... I get the impression that Mary doesn't like us
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I have this thread by howlin .
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220090/posts
From time to time, we get DU trolls on FreeRepublic & I am sure that one of them will pass along the following message to you:
1. You lied.
2. You got fired.
3. W. got reelected and is STILL the President of the U.S.A.
4. In closing, ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha. You can suck it.
I am sure that Air America is hiring or maybe you can get a job from you comrades over at NPR.
“All your 'peripheral spacing' are belong to us!”
Not to worry. Gunga Dan and Mary 'quite contrary' Mapes have redoubled their efforts to find Lucy Ramirez, and they're confident of success. Really! O. J. Simpson has offered to help...
Yes it was. Thank the Lord. They still don't get it.
FOUND IT!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts
post # 47.
Amen
Yup. We bad!
Actually the AB story was broken by the Army. They did a news release on their internal investigation. About a month later somebody in the lamestream media "broke" the story.
Almost everybody forgets the Army came clean BEFORE the media reported it.
Leni
Hey, I got a forged document, but let me see how I feel about it. Mapes is a stupid Clymer.
Fake but true? - Clearly, STUCK ON STUPID!
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