Mary Mapes Blames 'Vicious' Bloggers

NewsMax ^ | 2/12/06 | NewsMax

[wagglebee]

Fired CBS "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes is still blaming the internet for ending her media career prematurely - or more precisely; the "vicious" bloggers who discovered that documents she unearthed in a bid to trash President Bush's National Guard service were forgeries.

"The criticism that was launched at us initially really came from the very conservative blogosphere, folks who are on these very conservative web sites," Mapes complained Friday on WVMT Vermont's "Charlie & Ernie" radio show.

"This was really a terribly vicious attack they launched on CBS," she insisted, before lamenting: "Politics is not necessarily the way it was when we all grew up, where you might disagree on something but you wouldn't eviscerate someone."

Mapes says that she was a victim of a new standard in journalism where "the truth doesn't matter" but instead it's "the perception of truth that matters."

"What happened to me, I think, and to all of us at CBS, was that the perception of truth became that these documents were not real; that there were flaws in the typeface and all kinds of sort of dry and extremely dull details about proportional spacing and superscript and all that."

Mapes said that she still believes the documents cited in the "60 Minutes II" broadcast by her boss, Dan Rather, were authentic, saying; "I feel that if they had been forged there would have been a flaw. And I have not been able to find the flaw."

She also noted that CBS's own internal investigation "could not prove that the documents were false."

[Incorrigible]

Some DUmmie fun with Mapes:

DUmmie FUnnies 11-08-05 (Amazon.Com Customer Reviews of Mary Mapes Fiction Book)

DUmmie FUnnies 10-11-05 (Mary Mapes Fiction Book Returns To Amazon)

DUmmie FUnnies 10-04-05 (Mary Mapes Spins Fiction---Book Excerpt)

 

[rawhide]

Talk about living in a world of denial.

[Babu]

"I feel that if they had been forged there would have been a flaw. And I have not been able to find the flaw."

Mapes, you couldn't find your fat a** in the dark with both hands and a flashlight if your life depended on it.

[doug from upland]

DFU SONG: More Than a Feeling (but watch Mary Mapes...still telling lies)
DFU SONGS | 11-2005 | Lyrics, Doug from Upland

Posted on 11/09/2005 9:47:07 PM PST by doug from upland

<

MIDI - MORE THAN A FEELING

She woke up one morning and her job was gone
Suits in the boardroom said go away
The docs were phony the FReepers showed
For her and Dan it's a bad hair day

(musical break)

She was sent reeling...she tried to hurt Dubya
Her dirty dealing...had been stopped, and she started to cry
But watch Mary Mapes...still telling lies

(musical break)

So many people she had deceived
Hatred of Bush made them blind with rage
She's claiming that she...did nothing wrong
And she is stuck on the same old page

On the same old page

(musical break)

She was sent reeling...she had tried to hurt Dubya
Her dirty dealing...had been stopped, and she started to cry

[John Lenin]

Dan Rather's Ratings Legacy at CBS

[TChad]

Mapes still has her true believers. I have spoken with a few of them. I have tried to explain the overwhelming evidence against the authenticity of memos, including the typographic evidence, but they continue to believe that "some typewriters had that sort of spacing back then, so the memos might be real."

Part of the difficulty in changing such peoples' minds comes from the difficulty of explaining the evidence against authenticity. Take the case of the animation showing two nearly identical versions of a TANG memo, the original and a version created in Microsoft Word. The Mapes believers say, "Sure the images look alike, so what? They both have the same words, so of course they look alike." It is hard to explain why they are wrong without being sidetracked explaining terms like microspacing, kerning, fonts, and typefaces.

Yet there is a good analogy available in something that everyone understands: keys. The precise shape of a string of printed characters is as unique as the shape of the teeth in a key.

Even a small change in a key's shape prevents it from fitting its lock, just as a small change in the shape of the printed characters would have produced document images that did not precisely match. Yet, after accounting for some apparently fax-induced artifacts, the document images do precisely match. There are many thousands of points of identity. Anyone with a copy of Word can easily produce his own "forgery" that is nearly identical to the CBS "original".

If two keys open the same high-quality deadbolt lock, the keys can be presumed to be copies. The same can be said for two matching document images.

[bad company]

One of the main problems with the memos in the superscripted "th".

All of the high dollar typewriters of that age simply raised the ball to superscript. Thus the top of the "th" would raise above the nubmer it notated. The word program reduces the size of the "th" as well as raising it.

[AmericaUnite]

Did her book not sell?

[SteveH]

I am not clear what she is even claiming. Is she claiming that what the documents were typed on a typewriter? I assumed it has been proven that no typewriter that would have been used by Texas Air NG could have been the source?

Perhaps she is saying that even though the form of the information appears fraudulent, that the content of the information has yet to be proven false.

Therefore, the story based on the information could be true (in Mapes' apparent view).

I believe this would dovetail with what Rather was claiming as he was "retiring."

[TChad]

One of the main problems with the memos in the superscripted "th".

I know. I'm not concerned with the issue of authenticity, that was settled long ago by Newcomer and others. I am concerned that Mapes revisionist version of her CBS debacle seems to have a fair number of believers. So, how to change their minds?

The typographic evidence is hard to explain to people who have no understanding of computer typography. Their attitude is exactly like that of Mapes: "...there were flaws in the typeface and all kinds of sort of dry and extremely dull details about proportional spacing and superscript and all that." These people simply will not be convinced by technical explanations.

That is why Charles's animated GIF from Little Green Footballs was so great -- even the most intellectually dishonest liberal had to choose between Mapes and his own eyes. Still, many liberals have never seen the animated GIF, and some, including Mapes, have tried to ignore its significance.

I tried to figure out how to convey the reason that the animated GIF is such compelling evidence, in non-technical language. It is not easy to do, but the "key" analogy helps.

[infowarrior]

Unbelievable ... did Mapes never really understand investigative journalism?

Mapes never graduated past "Advocacy Journalism: Shaping Public Opinion 101".(For those of you in Rio Linda that means "Basic Brainwashing"...)

the infowarrior

[infowarrior]

Mapes, you couldn't find your fat a** in the dark with both hands and a flashlight if your life depended on it.

Mapes couldn't find her own posterior given the use of both hands, a map, a compass, a seeing-eye-dog, *and* a Global Positioning System...

the infowarrior

[steve-b]

And also DUmmie FUnnies 11-10-05 ("Fired CBS News Producer Unrepentant").

[steve-b]

But of course its not her fault.

The sour grapes of Mapes.

[sissyjane]

>>Which is why you and Danny Boy are history.<<

I'm going to miss Danny's wierd comparisons on election night though. They were good for a laugh when I start getting nervous!!

[wallis2]

Exactly. That's what i wanted to say but couldn't put it
nearly as well as you did.

Dennis Wallis

[Richard Kimball]

I'm going to miss Danny's weird comparisons on election night though. They were good for a laugh when I start getting nervous!!

Just come around to Free Republic. I'm from Texas, and I'll come up with all kinds of things like, "Well, Hillary's a nervous as a cat that sat in a tackle box.", or "Well, Mary Lou Retton couldn't be jumping any higher than the third district of Minnesota is tonight, this is tighter than a garter belt on Natalie Maines."

[Richard Kimball]

Thanks. I'd forgotten I'd even posted this. You must have been checking the ooooooold threads.