Posted on 11/19/2005 6:42:27 PM PST by ncountylee
I REALIZED Mary Mapes had not told the whole story of the CBS-National Guard fiasco when I looked in the index to her book for a reference to The Boston Globe. It wasn't there.
Why is this such a telltale omission? In an article published in February 2004, seven months before CBS News imploded, The Globe, under the headline "Doubts Raised on Bush Accuser," essentially destroyed the credibility of a man named Bill Burkett, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard. Burkett claimed to have stumbled upon some of George W. Bush's Guard records in a trash can in 1997 while on a visit to a military museum where documents were kept. In the Globe article, three witnesses disputed this outlandish yarn.
No matter. Mapes writes that she knew other reporters had found Burkett to be an anti-Bush zealot back in February, but she doesn't seem to have taken their work seriously. When Burkett gave her "new" documents in early September, she staked her career and those of several colleagues at CBS News, including Dan Rather, not to mention control of the White House and the precarious status of the American news media, on the word of a man who had long since been discredited. Oh, well.
The story that was broadcast on Sept. 8, 2004, on "60 Minutes Wednesday" was like manna from conservative heaven. In the days preceding it, the press had been full of accounts of how Bush skipped a required physical exam for pilots in 1972, stopped flying and thus did not fulfill his obligation to make good on the Guard's large investment in his training.
But soon the 2004 presidential campaign was consumed by a discussion of font size, proportional spacing and how Burkett had admitted lying
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ROFLMAO
Cindy trashed Hillary and now a steady, reliable Bush basher bashes Cindy. Look closely and you'll see Hillry's arm reaching up through Alter's butt, working his jaw...
Well, well. He hates "bloggers" so much he can't help telling the same lie Mapes told at the end of this story.
It's now obvious, however, that Mapes's book is going nowhere fast, since even the most leftist of reviewers are reluctant to join with her and go down on the Titanic.
Alter won't admit that she lied, but he does admit that she was careless and got caught.
Exactly what planet does Jonathan Alter live on? Geeze...
LOL, what an image that brought to mind. Love to see that photoshopped.
"It's Bur-KAY!"
Even though Alter concludes that the legitimacy of the documents are "almost irrelevant," he still concludes that Mary Mapes' conduct on this story was beneath the dubious standards of the MSM. When even your friends don't like you....
Congressman Billybob
Latest column: "What If the French Had Pulled a 'Murtha' in 1781?"
bump
Exactly what planet does Jonathan Alter live on? Geeze...
The Planet of the Clueless?
Alter's final huffer-puffer:...The only remedy for journalists is to admit mistakes, then put our helmets back on and return to the field.
I'm making book on when this pimping little prime donut makes good on his remedial mea culpa.
"Alter won't admit that she lied, but he does admit that she was careless and got caught."
He also reveals she and her father hadn't spoken in years. That makes me think there is something very wrong with one or the other or both of them.
Alter is trying his feeble best to distance himself from the incident and at the same time embrace the motives which instigated this smear attempt.
In other words, "This gal peed her pants and crapped our bed so we'd better kick her on the floor and scrape her leavin's on top of her before anyone blames us for smellin' up the place."
From deeper in the article:
"The most illuminating parts of the book are those in which Mapes strikes back at the cyber-lynch mob. Her description of a right-wing veteran of the Paula Jones case, masquerading as an expert on the technology of 1970's typewriters, should help dispel the myth that this case was a triumph for the fact-checking prowess of the blogosphere. (The blogger's anonymous assertion, within hours of the broadcast, that the proportional spacing and type font of the Killian memos did not exist in those days was only one of many falsehoods spread by political hit men.) Seeing how documents change shape and appearance after faxing and e-mailing should give pause to even the most ideologically ardent of amateur document analysts."
[KUDOS to FReeper's hard work to expose the lies expressed above.]
:
"In her attacks on Bush, on CBS's corporate parent, Viacom (for kissing up to Bush), and on her own colleagues, Mapes is merciless. She pulls no punches on anyone except herself. "I'm afraid if Andrew Heyward had been on the Titanic, he would have been among the handful of men said to have slipped on long gowns and elaborate veiled hats and shoved their way to the lifeboats," she writes of Heyward's effort to avoid blame. Richard Thornburgh, the former attorney general who was co-chairman of the panel, takes it on the chin from Mapes when he says that Bush and other well-connected "fine young men" might have been accepted into the Guard "on their own merit." It's easy to understand why she wouldn't want her work judged by someone so clueless about the realities of how the privileged escaped serving in Vietnam."
[This - the same VIACOM, run by Sumner Redstone, host to Elian Gonzales during the Klintoon regime. Wanna discuss lifeboats? And exactly how doesn't Alter qualify as priveliged?]
:
"In the mainstream media, if you don't know, you don't go. Anything else is asking for trouble."
[Here, Alter sums it up. This article serves as hi come to Jesus moment. He finally gets IT. If you don't speak the TRUTH in the mainstream media, you're gonna get your butt handed to you on a plate.]
:
"But blaming cyber-bullies and corporate greed-heads for that endangerment won't cut it. CBS News did this to itself, and to the rest of us. The only remedy for journalists is to admit mistakes, then put our helmets back on and return to the field."
[This summation defies analysis. Blaming others "won't cut it", yet they "did this to itself, and to the rest of us." So let's strap 'em up, get back on the field, an GET THAT BUSH!]
My apologies to Buckhead for not remembering his ID in my haste to post my humble distaste for this drivel from Alter.
Priceless. I love this place...
Apparently Mapes is originally from Burlington, WA (where my mother lives, in Skagit County, just about the only Republican voting county in Western WA) and her dad went on TV and said he was ashamed of her.
I wonder why he chose to slander a lawyer? Go get 'em, Buckhead!
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------..forged CBS document overlayed by Microsoft Word in default mode......courtesy Little Green Footballs..
....you go girl...
The only remedy for journalists is to admit mistakes ....and return to the field.
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