Earth Calling Mary Mapes…

You remember Mary Mapes, no doubt. She was the producer at CBS who was fired in the wake of the Bush National Guard Memo fiasco. While Rather was the public face of the story, it’s probably safe to say that Mapes had a huge responsibility in getting the story to air. Certainly, Ms. Mapes is a seasoned professional in broadcast news and I’ll stipluate to her credentials in the industry. Clearly she’s an expert.
Well, she’s an expert on a lot of things, but the truth doesn’t appear to be one of them.
The Huffington Post | The Blog | Mary Mapes: In Defense of Dan Rather
Here we are, nearly two years after the story originally aired, and Mapes is fiercely defending the story and vehemently denying that the documents obtained by CBS were forged:

Page Six restates the conservative canard that our report “was found to be based on forged documents.” That is just not true, no matter how many times Page Six or the Washington Times or some bitter conservative blogger repeats it.
The Bush National Guard story is a fascinating and terribly under-covered topic, full of Texas-style intrigue, privilege and political skullduggery. I mean, talk about selective service. At the height of the Vietnam War, the future president was able to select where he served, how he served and when he served. He even got to select his departure date.
When our story aired on September 8, 2004, it was savaged in an unprecedented outpouring of political vitriol. The Bush administration was then at the height of its ability to summon a terrifying whirlwind of criticism from right wing bloggers, hate talk radio yackers, FOX News “reporters,” conservative columnists, and those hollering people whose heads always appear in little boxes on cable discussion shows. None of these critics cared anything about the facts of the story, only about their politics.
They claimed that CBS used forged documents and they repeated that lie so often that it stuck. The mainstream media picked it up, repeating bloggers’ criticisms without making any serious effort to investigate the story. But then that would have required real legwork, something that very few were willing to do on this subject.

Then, after she has seemingly blamed just about everyone else in the world for this story, she goes ahead and pins plenty of blame on CBS’ parent company:

Viacom, CBS’s parent company, never did care whether the story was true or not. They just wanted rid of it. Among other things, they had multiple issues pending before the FCC and various other arms of the administration and our story was no help to the company in its quest to squeeze every last dime out of what used to be the public airwaves. Firing longtime employees in an attempt to get back into the administration’s good graces was simply a business decision. It had nothing to do with journalism or the crucial role that critical reporting is supposed to play in American democracy.

So it’s the fault of the Republicans.
It’s the fault of those hacks at FOX News.
It’s the fault of the talk radio airwaves that are dominated by conservatives.
It’s even the fault of those damned conservative bloggers.
Plus, if none of that works for you, it’s the fault of Viacom who never cared and was apparently in the doghouse with the FCC and the Bush Administration.
Mary Mapes seems to lay the blame at the feet of everybody except herself, and that’s the problem. I understand that she truly believes in the content of the report, and that’s fine. If she’s going to level a charge like the one that report did, she’s got to have proof that’s impeachable and beyond reproach. She didn’t. It’s that simple.
Ms. Mapes, if these documents could have been authenticated–by anybody–they would have. Why didn’t anyone at CBS News think to ask if any Air National Guard units in Texas or Alabama even had computers or word processors with the Times New Roman font in an age when most arms of the government were still using typewriters? Why didn’t anyone at CBS News hold off on the story until the evidence could be authenticated?
I’ll tell you why they didn’t: it’s probably because the people involved in the story wanted it to be true. In their avarice to have an impact on the presidential election, they abandoned what I think must be the primary tenet of journalism: to get the story right. On that count, Mapes, Rather and company failed miserably. This wasn’t a vendetta against Dan Rather, CBS or you. This was a case where savvy and informed consumers of corporate news held you accountable.
The only canard here, Mary, is the one that you went to air with in September of 2004.
All you or anyone else at CBS had to do was authenticate the memos. It’s that simple. But then, I can imagine it’s difficult to authenticate what was never legit in the first place. Apparently “great b.s. detectors” aren’t something CBS has ever had in great supply with most correspondents, anchors or producers.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com