Posted on 11/11/2005 4:39:05 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
The phony-but-accurate defense is back.
Mary Mapes, producer of the notorious Rathergate story in which CBS relied on blatantly forged documents to argue that the young George W. Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard, just completed an interview on Fox & Friends with ED Hill.
ED was grilling Mapes rather hard as to the standards of authentication that were required to go forward with such an explosive story. Mapes first gave something of a "depends what the meaning of is, is" defense. She claimed that the standard of authentication for her purposes could be lower than that of absolute proof in a legal setting.
Mapes then added: "I relied on the information, not the authentication."
Translation: yeah, the documents could have been phony, but the underlying story was true.
The old false-but-accurate defense rides again!
As an aside, IMO ED Hill could have been tougher in terms of demonstrating how blatant were the forgeries, but other than that I felt ED handled herself in a professional manner.
Fox & Friends Rathergate ping to the Today Show ping list.
I thought O'Reilly did better last night, which surprised me.
Why even have this discredited person on? They are helping to line her pockets by allowing her to shill for book sales. Do something wrong in life and be rewarded I guess.
"Truth" to the left is that which advances their goals. Factuality has nothing to do with it.
"IMO ED Hill could have been tougher in terms of demonstrating how blatant were the forgeries, but other than that I felt ED handled herself in a professional manner."
Media types tend to go easy on other media types..they are afraid they will be in the same position one day (being grilled).
True, but that's the devil's bargain that all media plays.
Hate her or not but Mapes is a newsworthy person whose appearance will boost Fox's ratings, so Fox in return is willing to help boost her sales.
60 Minutes to Infamy- those forged memos and The Shot Heard Round the World
various FR links | 09-10-04 | The Heavy Equipment Guy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1211904/posts
"She claimed that the standard of authentication for her purposes could be lower than that of absolute proof in a legal setting."
Brilliant. What's scary is she believes this to be the standard in journalism.
Professional, pffffft. She made Mapes out to be a victim.
Hill did not ask Mapes one hard question. That is not 'professional'.
TC
How is she newsworthy? FNC has been on all morning but apparently she is not such a $$$ gathering presence since we all missed the segment. We are waiting to see the Harry Potter star though!
If the MSM were in fact worried about ratings they wouldn't try so hard to shove the Liberal view down our throats. I understand your point though.
Mapes probably would not have agreed to the "interview" had Fox not agreed to only have ED Hill do the interview.
Also, Mapes blamed CBS's actions on about 100 bloggers. Afterall, as she pointed out, those 100 bloggers made it appear to CBS that everyone was against CBS. LOL.
Mapes also said she assumed from the first that the documents were fakes. That is why she had some ex-military review them for authenticity. What a bunch of B.S.
It's interesting how this thread has largely mutated from a discussion of what Mapes said - rehashing her 'phony-but-accurate' defense - into a discussion of my comment that ED was professional.
You never know where FR threads will lead.
ROSS: Have they proved to be authentic, though? Isn't that really what journalists do?
MAPES: No, I don't think that's the standard.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1519145/posts
Their claim is not that the documents are accurate, they more or less concede that they are fake.
They claim that the underlying story the documents were intended to "prove" is true, which is, by definition, a leap of faith.
I wonder if they would have the same degree of understanding for a cop who fakes evidence to convict someone he "knows" is guilty?
Here's my copy...Joined while ED was opening up the segment...
Fri Nov 11 06:22:01 2005
...really confusing, yet -- it's confuse, but also opens up a whole new way of viewing the way this business works, and a lot of people I think try to demonize you as a bush hater who was on a rampage, but the book is interesting. Let's start out with the basic criticism of the report that you address in here and that is that those killian memos, the squadron commanders of the president's in texas, that those memos couldn't be authenticated. Why do you think it was still right to go ahead and use theM.
>> For a number of reasons. We vetted them, we had military consultants that looked at them with us, we looked for all kinds of errors, it's almost like police work, because i really sort of when I got them, i assume they were forgeries, because it was politicS.
>> Coming from a known bush hate jeer.
>> Exactly right and a whistle blower type and those people are never mother teresA. There's always going to be somebody who has an agenda, so i was ok with that, so i vetted really carefully, i meshed it with all the official documents and it fit perfectly. We had the document analysts and then i had killian's commander corroborate it all, i read him the memos, were they familiar, they, this is owl killian felT.
E.D.: You had the three cbs authenticators, who said no, i quo not authenticate thaT. What happened?
>> This is what is difficult about iT. We tossed the word around authenticate and there's a legal meaning to it and then there's the kind of thing you and i would talk about. Legally authenticate means 100%, which would be an ink test or something like that. You can't do that on a copy and i always knew that and what i felt we had to do was rely on the information much more than the very subjective profession of document analysiS.
E.D.: But when something --
>> When a reporter said oh, they can't authenticate it, i always knew thaT.
E.D.: If something comes from a source that you know has it in for the subject, which was the president, if it comes from a source, don't you have an even higher bar that you have to fit where you have to prove, be able to prop that that's correct, since that was the basis?
>> The bar is high no matter who it comes from. The bar is always really higH. One of the stories i did right before this was abu ghraib, where I got photographs of abuse at abu ghraiB. The bar was very, very high there.
E.D.: Right. You have the proof there.
>> Well, you had the pictures to prove it, but what if those pictures were fake?
E.D.: But you also had the documents from the folks who were emailing you back abandon r and forth to show that those were correct.
>> You approach everything as skeptically as possible. E.D.: But going back to this, if you -- can you use something, something that is as sensitive as this, at the time that it came out, smack dab before the e elections, can you use something if you don't know? There really was not a lot of times to know it was true.
>> As you know, reporting, journalism, is a rough draft of history. It's the first draft. You do your very, very best. People who reported watergate didn't always, no, no, no, they didn't have the bar as high as I'm being asked to have iT. E.D.: The brass, did they all know about it? Because afterwards it was like they were like how about d that happen?
>> I was a worker bee at "60 minutes 2", and i went ahead and did my stories, i didn't do lunch with andrew heyward. E.D.: But this was a story that could have brought down a?
>> Well it was a discussion that we had started nationally a long time ago, we really did and i had two things, i had ben barns, the man, in an interview for the first time, the guy who said he got bush into the guard and i had these new documents i. Ement both of them are suspect people and one absolutely hates bush and the other is no friend either.
>> He was less the guy who was in the position to do it, whether he was a friend or a foe, he was the man who was there and there is a good deal of evidence that ben barnes helped people get in and he says he did and a lot of people know that.
E.D.: If as you portray it, you kept everything up to the standard that you and that cbs felt comfortable with, why did they fire you?
>> What happened, i think, we got this incredible onslaught of ploughingers, and this was -- bloggers, and this was more than a year ago, it's hard to remember that far back, but nobody had had that happen before. You know, bloggers, whether it's 200 people or 2,000 people, can really make it feel like the whole world is against you. And that's exactly what they did and i think it terrified cbs.
E.D.: Well, here's cbs, and i know you've heard this, but for our viewers, their statement is it mary mapes' actions disregarded and damaged cbs news as an organization and brought pain to many colleagues with whom she worked, her disregard for journalistic standards and for her colleagues comes through loud and clear in her interviews and in a book that attempts to rewrite the history of this complex and sad affaiR. What do you make of that statement, why would they put out something like this?
>> Well it's a demonizing staple and it's very hurtful. I was part of the cbs family, dysfunction am but lovable for 15 years and i loved people there, I still do, they're very close friends, i actually think I'll put my love and loyalty for think colleagues up against cbs corporate's any time, absolutely any time. I mean, these are people that I've worked with, that i've gone into wars with, that high driven into hurricanes with, and that's something that the people who wrote that statement cannot say.
>> Did you expect dan rather to stick up for you?
>> I think dan has done what he can to be my friend and i respect that very much. Whatever people think of him, i think he is first and foremost, a very, very loyal man and i admire him, i think the world of hiM.
E.D.: The book is very interesting, it is called "truth and duty, the press, the president and the privilege of power," mary mapes, thanks for joining us.
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