Mary Mapes Hits Bloggers and MSM in Upcoming Book--But What's With the Kurtz Excerpts? (Book Gone)

Editor & Publisher ^ | October, 7, 2005 | E&P Staff

[PJ-Comix]

NEW YORK Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post might have a bigger scoop than he thought. In his online column this morning, as a final, almost throwaway item, he quoted from the first chapter of the forthcoming book by former CBS producer Mary Mapes that covers, among other things, her controversial experience with the Dan Rather/Bush/National Guard “60 Minutes” segment.

Among the excerpts: "I was incredulous that the mainstream press -- a group I'd been a part of for nearly twenty-five years and thought I knew -- was falling for the blogs' critiques. I was shocked at the ferocity of the attack. I was terrified at CBS's lack of preparedness in defending us. I was furious at the unrelenting attacks on Dan. And I was helpless to do anything about any of it."

He said he had drawn the brief excerpts from the first chapter, which had been posted (as sometimes happens with new books) at amazon.com. He also provided a link. But the link goes to a dead Amazon page. In fact, the book (which is due out on Nov. 8) seems to have disappeared completely from Amazon, except for its audio version (Mapes narrates herself).

Barnes and Noble still has the book, which is cazled “Truth and Duty, “ online, with the Nov. 8 pub date (and no excerpt). The book is still featured at the site of the publisher, St. Martin's Press, which promises an excerpt-but not until pub day.

Calls to a publicist at St. Martin's have not yet been returned.

One clue in the mystery is that Kurtz writes that he had been meaning to get to this item “for some time,” so perhaps the excerpt got pulled a few days ago. But it doesn't explain why the entire book has gone missing at Amazon.

Among the excerpts quoted by Kurtz:

-- “And right now, on the Internet, it appeared everything was falling apart. I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. . . . The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out."

--"Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed -- -in some cases not once, but twice -- -was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost."

--"To these people, there was no such thing as unbiased mainstream reporting, certainly not when it came to criticism of the president, no matter how tepid. To them, there was Fox News and everything else -- and everything else was liberal and unfair."

[tumblindice]

"I gulped and tried to breathe."

What is about dum dums and gulping for air?
First Blewinsky, then Shrillary,
now there's something about Mary.

De-horned and now owned by FR.
For Sale, one liberal journalist.
Enquire within. No gulping.

[KarlInOhio]

They must have used one of the new faxes that's able to update USAF standard blocking from the 1970s to the blocking used in the 1990s.

[contemplator]

Hasn't she ever heard the expression to the effect that "It's better to keep silent and let people suspect you are an idiot than to open your mouth and confirm it"? (Yeah, I paraphrased it)

[conservative in nyc]

Kurtz' column is here. It's mainly about how headlines in the Rove grand jury story have been slanted. The Mapes stuff is near the end. One excerpt:

What about the suspect memos by that long-dead Guard official? "Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed -- -in some cases not once, but twice -- -was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost."

The problem is that three of CBS's own document experts later said they could not have authenticated those memos, and two had warned the network about that.

Mapes on her critics: "To these people, there was no such thing as unbiased mainstream reporting, certainly not when it came to criticism of the president, no matter how tepid. To them, there was Fox News and everything else -- and everything else was liberal and unfair."

Mapes on the MSM: "I was incredulous that the mainstream press -- -a group I'd been a part of for nearly twenty-five years and thought I knew -- -was falling for the blogs' critiques. I was shocked at the ferocity of the attack. I was terrified at CBS's lack of preparedness in defending us. I was furious at the unrelenting attacks on Dan. And I was helpless to do anything about any of it."

Problem: Lots of MSM outlets, including The Post, did their own reporting and concluded the memos were highly suspect at best.

[RasterMaster]

Mary Mapes...the queen of sour grapes.

[Paradox]

You just KNOW she lurks here, probably swearing under her breath, eyes wide, fingers typing erratically, as she mutters "I'll get you, you buckheaded bastards, I'll get you yet..."

[SquirrelKing]

You're right.

making crap up = pulitzer
getting caught = radioactive

[expatpat]

It's a typo -- should be "crazed".

[ClaireSolt]

Now, if Fitzgerald just nails Joe Wilson, the election will be over.

[Jim_Curtis]

It's a typo -- should be "crazed".

Crazed: "A network of cracks"...yup, that must be it.

[laredo44]

"I was incredulous that the mainstream press -- a group I'd been a part of for nearly twenty-five years and thought I knew -- was falling for the blogs' critiques. I was shocked at the ferocity of the attack. I was terrified at CBS's lack of preparedness in defending us. I was furious at the unrelenting attacks on Dan. And I was helpless to do anything about any of it."

Oh please! You had the entire CBS news apparatus behind you and Dan. All you needed were some reasonable explanations -- which of course you didn't have.

The truth is you weren't attacked at all. Some of the MSM reported a tiny fraction of the other side and it seemed like an all out attack. Dan Rather needed to grow some but he couldn't and didn't.

[Old Seadog]

Mary Mapes

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Among the excerpts quoted by Kurtz:

-- “...on the Internet, it appeared everything was falling apart. I had a real physical reaction ..... It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. . . . The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out."

--"Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed -- -in some cases not once, but twice -- -was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost."

--"To these people, there was no such thing as unbiased mainstream reporting,...."

..good job Mapes

...."analyzing a memo that had been faxed....was virtually impossible."

[alnick]

"I gulped and tried to breathe."

Sounds like a similar reaction to what Hillary said she had when she learned Bubba had done the nasty with Monica.

[Republican Red]

"To them, there was Fox News and everything else -- and everything else was liberal and unfair."

I admit I am one of "them".

[pfony1]

Mapes is so weak on the "details" that she has even misspelled "Pajamahadeen"...

[adgirl]

"You mean faxing a document doesn't change the font from Fixed Courier to Proportional Times New Roman with the same word wrap as MS Word and the the fake kerning used by TrueType"

The utter arrogance of this woman to assume that just because she knows nothing of typesetting, fonts, or air force protocols from the 1970s that the rest of the country shares her ignorance is bewildering to me.

Hey Mary, wake up. You were wrong. The documents weren't from the 1970s the technology that produced them wasn't available in the 1970s. Your forger ignored Air Force protocol when he wrote the memo. The General that was referenced in the memo had already retired like a year before the memo was written. What don't you get about why people suspect it of being false? It was not a right wing conspiracy. I know, I'm in charge of the right wing conspiracies.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

The previous post was one of the forged docs overlayed by a Microsoft Word doc in the default mode.

Courtesy of "Little Green Footballs".

[RedMonqey]

"What is about dum dums and gulping for air? {"


Grnetics, or more likely, the same (ghost)speechwriter.

[Crawdad]

Tweak.