Fired CBSer Cries Foul (Mary Mapes discovers vermin at FR)

[kskiska]

October 5, 2005 -- THE producer at the center of last year's "Memogate" scandal at CBS News says she was derailed by a vast right-wing conspiracy.

(snip)

She is convinced she was the victim of a group of loosely associated Internet bloggers "with a harsh political bent" who pounced on CBS News minutes after the airing of the now-infamous Texas Air National Guard story on "60 Minutes 2" in September 2004.

(snip)

"Within a few minutes, I was online visiting Websites I had never heard of before: Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Power Line," writes Mapes in the first chapter of her new book about the reaction to the story.

"They were hard-core, politically angry, hyperconservative sites loaded with vitriol about Dan Rather and CBS."

(snip)

"This was something else, something new and fundamentally frightening," Mapes writes. "I had never seen this kind of response to any story.

"It dawned on me that I was present at the birth of a political jihad."

more…
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/54739.htm

[Cha]

1. Go Mapes!

Can't someone get the bottom of this..i.e. The Truth?

[XNASA]

2. Welcome to the World, Mary.

You're a day late and a braincell short.

[maryallen]

31. And a tad naive ....

[Ready4Change]

3. How were they ready minutes later?

Makes one wonder...

[The Doctor.]

24. Nothing to wonder...

It was a set-up pure and simple.

It is widely suspected that the original fake documents came from Republican lawyer Richard Stone's office.

We know it was a set-up because;

A) It is a felony to forge official documents, therefore there should be a formal investigation of the forgeries.

-UNLESS-

B) The memos were copies of official documents which is not a crime. The memos could certainly have been re-typed in a different font or format so long as the content was not altered. THAT would mean that the documents were entirely accurate.

So why no investigation?

Because they all know that the truth would come out and vindicate Dan Rather.

[Ready4Change]

29. Good reasoning.

Thanks. I hadn't considered that angle, re: no investigation of the forgeries.

[rucky]

37. or Dan Rather was reporting an old story that DU knew about

for months.

n/t

[CatWoman]

4. I think that's where the "typeface/spacing" bs came from

some lawyer named "Buckhead" came up with that crap, and they all ran with it.

:hi:

[ck4829]

26. You are absolutely correct.

It just happened that Buckhead was very strongly involved with the GOP too.

[radwriter0555]

5. Welcome to Bush's New Americanazi style 'politics'... Ain't it COOL?

They're such honorable, esteemable little freerepublicnazis.

Let's call em the FRN...

Free Republic Nazis.

[mmonk]

6. What's the title of her book?

[kskiska]

8. "Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power,"

Due in bookstores Nov. 8 from St. Martin's Press. Chapter One was recently posted on amazon.com.

[peekaloo]

11. The Mapes of Wrath?

She should have checked her sources.

After doing an excellent piece on the Abu Ghraib torture stories she should have been a tad more thorough when the subject was Bu$h. You tiptoe around rattlesnakes not stomp.

imo

[bunny planet]

21. Unfortunately her being slow on the uptake contributed to the success of

one Rovian trick that may have cost us the election. She should have known about Freeperville and all the others involved in the vast RWC and been cagier about how she put the story out there. She also should have run the Niger document story as planned. Turns out if that had taken a foothold, people would have been less willing to believe *'s National Guard bullshit story and less willing to roast Rather.

[UpInArms]

32. my thoughts exactly - it was not the "birth" it is the continuing

mutation of existence that goes on over at FR - those are the most disgusting vertebrates (if they are that) on the planet.

[Missy M]

7. I can't believe someone in the media is just finding out about the...

right wing political jihad. It has been going on for years and they are just discovering it. It is time all of the media and journalists start telling it like it is with the right wing, fundie, neocon maniacs.

[SoCalDem]

12. At some level, they become "above it all", and pay no attention

to anyone but their paid advisors.. That's how they end up "out of the loop".

That is the singular problem with our media today.. It's all top down, and the real action is NOT in the skyscraper offices in NYC..

Republicans have an ARMY of operatives EVERYWHERE..and these people are ready willing and able to launch an attack on anyone..

It takes every little time to get something from their "leaders" ..through the blogs, websites, and straight to Limbaugh/Fox/Newsmax.

It's a straight line.

The road we must navigate is a winging dirt road compared to their route.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. That's What I Thought Too, Missy!

She was at the "birth" of a political jihad? It's been going on for 25 years. Way to catch up, Mary.
The Professor

[belle]

25. Hey, better late than never. Note that that is the NY Post, too.

The NY Post publishing a quote about a "rightwing jihad" is, well, remarkable.

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. The media. They're always the last to know.

What happened to our Left wing conspiracy ops? Did no one send the memo to Mapes? Who's responsible for this oversight?

[sadiesworld]

10. It wasn't a group of "loosely associated Internet bloggers", Mary.

This went to the top.

Missing the boat once again.

[LoZoccolo]

14. I wouldn't be so harsh and condescending...

...for something I offered no proof of. Don't underestimate the power of group of partisan hacks.

[sadiesworld]

15. You really don't think Rove et al were involved in Rathergate?

:wow:

[LoZoccolo]

19. No.

I have no proof, and it doesn't matter anyways until I do.

[deminks]

16. CRC, Mary.

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/1/pein-blog.asp

The very first post attacking the memos — nineteen minutes into the 60 Minutes II program — was on the right-wing Web site FreeRepublic.com by an active Air Force officer, Paul Boley of Montgomery, Alabama, who went by the handle “TankerKC.” Nearly four hours later it was followed by postings from “Buckhead,” whom the Los Angeles Times later identified as Harry MacDougald, a Republican lawyer in Atlanta. (MacDougald refused to tell the Times how he was able to mount a case against the documents so quickly.) Other blogs quickly picked up the charges. One of the story’s top blogs, Rathergate.com, is registered to a firm run by Richard Viguerie, the legendary conservative fund-raiser. Some were fed by the conservative Media Research Center and by Creative Response Concepts, the same p.r. firm that promoted the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. CRC’s executives bragged to PR Week that they helped legitimize the documents-are-fake story by supplying quotes from document experts as early as the day after the report, September 9. The goal, said president Greg Mueller, was to create a buzz online while at the same time showing journalists “it isn’t just Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge who are raising questions.”

[Marr]

17. Not just that- didn't they have detailed font critiques ready 30 minutes

after the show aired? They were suddenly experts on what typewriters could and could not do in the year that memo was typed. Or one guy was. A guy with connections to the GOP machine, IIRC.

That shit was so staged. The right-wing media knows how to use outlets like those to push talking points and fake public outrage.

[Sequoia]

18. CBS should be ashamed. Edward Morrow would've never

stood for this. The media is just a wuss now of the highest degree, afraid, so afraid of little monkey boy and his thugs. I would just love to hear someone, anyone in the bloody news to say in front of the camera, blast you facisist bastards for destorying our country and showing flag drapped coffins up the ying yang.

Good for you Mary, I hope your book is a best seller. I will buy one that's for sure! You the Bomb! Dan too.

[MADem]

22. You know why I think the media is starting to grow a set???

It isn't just Katrina, the incompetence, the war lies, the gas prices, but all that is certainly helping. They are starting to realize that people are REALLY PISSED OFF. And all they care about, being the slaves to corporate whoremasters that they are, is keeping their jobs. It's all about profit--pissed off people want to watch reporters reflecting their views, and viewers=ad revenue. Ad revenue makes the rich fatcats richer...and to hell with the monkey in the White House--he is such a lame duck, already, even with a majority (squawking like pissed off turkeys, of late)on the Hill and his hand-picked Supremes. It's all about the money, always has been since the corporatization of the news media.

[truedelphi]

20. Don't forget - She and Dan Rather received Peabodies

The Peabody is one of the nation's highest journalistic rewards.

In April 2005, both of them got theirs.

I am old enough that I personally used an IBM Mag Card typewriter
in 1972 - the same year of the typewriter controversy.

I could do special fonts, sub scripts and super scripts (If you don't beleive me, there is a wo9nderful on-line museaum of typewriterws and what not (Google typewriters and museum)

Not many had them - but if ad agencies could afford them, so could the military.

I personnally called CBS and told them they could easily refute the naysayers to Mapes- they did not seem overly interested in doing that...

Carol Dagg Sterritt

[kskiska]

23. I used a MagCard back then, too

and couldn't believe how naive some people were regarding the capabilities of typewriters of that period. I also used the IBM Composer, which was mentioned, but that was a typesetter, not a typewriter that would have been used for letters.

[Bridget Burke]

27. The IBM Executive Typewriter also had PS.

Back then, I used one in a law office where money was NOT thrown around.

I also used the Composer, but I agree it was not for regular office use. (What, you mean I have to type it twice?)

[Sequoia]

34. Same here, I was in the Air Force

and our commanding officer's secretary had lots of font balls, and yes there was a Times Roman.

[johnaries]

28. Let's email her and invite her to check out DU.

Let her also see "the other side" of the blogworld.

[Gregorian]

30. I second that.

I don't know her email. And I'm doing fifteen things at once, here.

Bright idea Johnaries!

It's a snowball from heaven. May it grow ever larger. Or something like that. :)

[degreesofgray]

33. As soon as Rather caught Flak

I thought, hmm, I bet Turd Blossom is behind this.

I wonder what it's going to take before the press and regular Americans catch on to what's happening in this country.

Right now it seems we could have our own version of a Reichstag burning and most folks would sit on the couch and yawn.

[spanone]

35. Not only present, but a victim.

Truth terrorists.

[Carni]

36. WTF has she been for 8 years? Hardly the *birth of it" honey..

The birth of all the crap started with the freeptards, Drudges, Lucianne Goldberg et al back at the start of the Paula Jones lies...
(Let us not forget that Lucianne WAS a freeper at one time)

This woman is just NOW noticing this culture of vermin?

How is it that so called *media* doesn't seem to notice a story until it (and in this case literally) bites them in the ass?