Posted on 12/15/2004 12:41:04 PM PST by mrustow
Well, "Black Rock" isn't the Tower of London, and we no longer behead those who seek to topple the government, as Elizabeth I's executioner did Mary, Queen of Scots, but CBS' corporate headquarters will have to do, as the media world awaits whatever passes for the sentencing and punishment of news fraud Mary Mapes, who gave the world Rathergate, among other infamous episodes.
Any day now, possibly even today, the CBS News internal Rathergate report will be completed and read by the "suits" in the suites at Black Rock. When Rathergate became a full-blown scandal, CBS appointed former U.S. Attorney General and liberal GOP Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh, and former Associated Press chief, Louis Boccardi, to investigate the matter. CBS will likely fire Mapes.
As Rather Biased reported on December 7, in "Mapes's Last Stand,"
"Mapes has been acting very much to save her professional skin, writing up a 68-page statement in her own defense and repeatedly lobbying the commission to persuade it of her view that the documents which she obtained from a Texas Democrat with a history of mental problems could be true in spirit, if not in fact."
She's still arguing that the story is 'fake but true.' What do detectives always say? "Criminals are creatures of habit."
A few weeks ago, at Rather Biased, I came across a November 13 story about a CBS News producer who'd been fired: "CBS Fires Trigger-happy Producer." "So, they finally got around to Mary Mapes," says I. No such luck. The tarnished Tiffany network had unceremoniously dumped a news producer for interrupting a broadcast of its popular new crime series, CSI: New York, for a report on the death of Arab terrorist Yasser Arafat. It seems while honesty in reporting counts for little at CBS these days, hot entertainment properties are sacred.
The November 13 Rather Biased dispatch follows:
"Friday both Reuters and Broadcasting and Cable magazine reported that CBS has fired the producer it blamed for preempting the network's popular 'CSI: New York' show to announce the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"According to Reuters, the yet-to-be-named female producer ignored 'explicit, advance instructions' that the official news of Arafat's death was not to interrupt regular programming. She also allegedly ignored CBS standard procedures which require the consent of a News Division executive to sign off on all such preemptions.
"The former CBSer is said to have been a producer at the network's insomniac news program 'Up to the Minute,' which is used as a proving ground for young and inexperienced staffers.
"The firing is the second step the Viacom-owned web has taken to atone for its sin against its hot property 'CSI.' Earlier in the week, CBS posted a message of apology on its web site and emailed a similar one to its affiliates.
"While the network's decision to apologize and fire the offending producer has raised eyebrows of some viewers, we suspect that most people would support the decision given that the news of Arafat's passing was not exactly a top concern of Americans--particularly of those who had deliberately avoided the cable news death watch by watching an entertainment show.
"Like many of our readers, however, we do wonder why the preemption of 'CSI' is an immediate firing offense at CBS while deliberately ignoring warnings about forged documents in a blockbuster story is not."
Granted, the producer had violated a direct order not to interrupt the show without the permission of a superior officer. TV executives may have contempt for the military chain of command, but they have zero tolerance for insubordination on their own turf.
In addition to Rathergate, Mary Mapes produced the Abu Ghraib story for CBS News, in which she presented American G.I.s in charge of a section of the Abu Ghraib military detainee facility reserved for terrorists, as if they were torturers and war criminals. The story, which was reported separately by Mapes for CBS News and Sy Hersh for the New Yorker, represented in both cases an instance of defining journalistic deviance down. Hersh and Mapes both sought to recreate the scandal of Vietnam's My Lai massacre, but without the massacre. This is what happens when journalists go from seeing themselves as patriots supporting America, as they did in World War II, to seeing themselves as revolutionaries destroying her, as they have since the War in Vietnam. If FDR had had to put up with the likes of Mapes and Hersh, today we'd be speaking German.
In Rathergate, Mapes used forged documents in an attempt to cost George W. Bush re-election, by presenting the then-Texas Air National Guard officer as a shirker, as insubordinate, and possibly even a deserter who succeeded only through the intervention of powerful friends.
Mapes' source for the forgeries, Bill Burkett, a former Texas Air National Guard lieutenant colonel with a longtime, public grudge against the Bushes, argued in his defense that he did not seek out Mapes; she sought him out. (Burkett has also denied that he produced the forgeries, though no one has been able to find the mystery woman that, he claims, gave them to him.) At the time, CBS claimed Mapes had been "working on" the story for five years, yet she had nothing to show for it, prior to Burkett giving her the forgeries. And in spite of CBS News' document experts having doubts about the documents' authenticity, Mapes rushed the story onto the air four days later.
The September 19 New York Times quoted Mapes' executive producer, Josh Howard, as saying, "Mary Mapes told us her source made her completely confident about where they came from, and that they were authentic, and that made me confident..."
There are thousands of Mary Mapeses in the socialist mainstream media (SMSM), and the damage they do is not limited to the phony stories they broadcast and publish, but extends to the countless true stories they squelch or ignore.
Dan Rather has announced that he will retire as evening news anchor on March 9, his 24th anniversary on the job as Walter Cronkite's successor; pc understudy John Roberts is his likely successor. CBS News chief Andrew Heyward, who will likely be fired along with Mapes, will be replaced by one of the usual suspects, possibly executive producer Jeff Fager, who earlier vouched for Mary Mapes' character.
And now, we return to our regularly scheduled program.
For More Information On This Story Visit: geocities.com/nstix
Hey..thats the date that little religious guy was bornded??Right? Thats why we get that day off right? Whats his name?? KWANZA?????
Sounds more like Gollum.
Sure, she'll appear to be at the top of her game after all this, but crap eventually sinks.
Anyone heard from the Dixie Chix lately?
And then there was the little matter of Mapes hooking up Burkett with the Kerry campaign (Joe Lockhart?), so that by SHEER coincidence, the Democrats had a whole ad campaign, "Fortunate Son", ready to roll the day after the "60 Minutes" piece. Ah, serendipitous synchronicity- no ideological double team here- but we do have the ultimate oxymoron-(mainstream) journalistic ethics.
So often reporters have invented facts to "compliment" their story. Interviews with fictional poverty-stricken individuals were said to be true representations of how it is on the street. Jason Blair comes to mind, the poster boy for fictional journalism.
But hey, this "fake but true" standard is and always has been a phony journalistic shield for those lazy idiots who are about to get their butts fired!
Say "Goodbye" Mary.
ping
Good ol Jason. Anybody know the where abouts of Jason these days ??
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