Wednesday, November 09, 2005
FAITH-BASED REPORTING
Mary Mapes, fired by CBS for idiocy, hasn’t learned a thing:
Three of CBS’s own document experts say they had warned CBS they could not authenticate the memos. Mapes’s source for the documents, former National Guardsman Bill Burkett, later admitted lying about who had given him the memos said to have been written by Bush’s long-dead Guard commander. “Document analysis is a real subjective profession,” said Mapes, who still believes the memos are real.
Who said journalists were cynical?
Perhaps her greatest fury is reserved for the “vicious” bloggers who pounced on the “60 Minutes II” report within hours—and who she believes provided the map that major news organizations, including The Washington Post, essentially followed.
“I was attacked, Dan was attacked, CBS was attacked 24 hours a day by people who hid behind screen names,” Mapes said. “I may be a flawed journalist, but I put my name on things."
Take that, Atrios!
Despite her career implosion, Mapes hopes to stay in journalism. “It’s what I’m good at,” she said. “I like making a difference."
Well, she made a difference to Dan Rather’s career. Like O.J. prowling golf courses in search of his wife’s killer, Mapes is still hunting for the truth:
Mapes says she is continuing to investigate the source of the controversial documents whose authenticity was seriously questioned by the CBS panel.
Might have been an idea to try that before going to air. Speaking of which:
She tells Ross that she had no journalistic obligation to prove the authenticity of the documents before including them in the “60 Minutes II” report. “I don’t think that’s the standard,” she said.
Not for CBS, evidently. Too bad for Mapes that her audience is a little more demanding.