Posted on 09/22/2004 11:25:42 PM PDT by kattracks
September 23, 2004 -- Ratings for Dan Rather's "CBS Evening News" have plummeted drastically in New York since the Bush-documents scandal broke wide open this week. The perennially third-place 6:30 p.m. newscast averaged 135,000 viewers on WCBS/Channel 2 Monday the day Rather issued an on-air apology for the mess.That's down 49 percent from the 266,000 viewers who tuned in to Rather's newscast the previous Monday, Sept. 13, according to Nielsen.
[snip]
According to sources, Mapes told "60 Minutes" bosses that the questionable memos at the heart of the controversy were authenticated by four document experts.
In fact, only two experts authenticated them and could not vouch for the documents themselves, only the signature, the sources said.
Mapes is said also to have told her bosses that her source for the memos Bill Burkett, the former guardsman wanted to be put in touch with high-level officials at the Kerry campaign, apparently as payback for providing the documents to CBS.
She was denied permission but went ahead and did it on her own, the insiders contend.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The long knifes are coming out now, oh boy.
Mapes Lied! cBS Died!
That rules dude. I'm busting up. Also, I am still, after all this time, enjoying the HELL out of all of this.
I think this confirms what many suspected, Mapes is to be the fall guy. The information leaked to this reporter certainly puts all the blame on her.
Of course the "dog that has yet to bark" suggests that Rather and others at CBS are if not equally culpable, they are close to that culpability. They certainly dug in their heels rather than checked out their story when questions were raised.
They are getting their firing squad ready for Mary Mapes! These leaks are preparation to blame as much as possible on her.
Do you think Burkett made up the memos?
Exactly, the network want to save Rather and Heyward.
maped - verb
mapist - noun
"drather" may catch on too
Well those excuses were good for less than a day (if true)but by the day after the broadcast all that info should have been known to CBS executives and they should have retracted the story..instead they tried to stonewall and cover it up..they are everybit to blame as Mapes for loss of public confidence..ome sacraficial lamb won't cut it...
You can't be the scapegoat if you're guilty as hell. Plenty of others at CBS deserve to be fired as well, but Mapes is by far the most culpable. Producers do most of the work putting together stories for TV newsmagazine shows. This whole fraud was her baby. Dan Rather would never even have heard of it if it weren't for Mary Mapes.
MSM turns on its own here too.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2004/nf20040923_8308_db045.htm
Hard to believe, since Rather was supposedly the big guy at SeeBS.
If he was so "in the dark" about this, it makes you wonder how many other stories Rather reported on in the past were less than accurate.
Was it really this easy to sucker him into reporting this bogus story?
I'll be happy when it is down 100% and Rather and Mapes are pounding rocks in Sing-Sing while Lockhart is fending off his new cellmate, "Tiny", in Joliet.
Yowsah!
266,000 viewers one town watches CBS? More like most veiw Rather as the town idiot!
C.B.S. = See B.S.
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