Mary Mapes and Alternative Reality
Mary Mapes, in case you don't know, is the former CBS News producer who produced bogus documents from a man from Texas with an axe to grind against Bush that were used by Dan Rather in a pre-election "expose" claiming that Bush got others to use undue influence to allow him to go AWOL from the National Guard back in the VietNam War days.
She was asked in a TV interview about those forgeries, and she claimed that nobody ever definitively proved they were forgeries. And in her view, rather than it being her responsibility as the journalist to confirm their validity, it was somehow the responsibility of those questioning the documents to prove they were not authentic.
How bizarre. I can't help but wonder whether this is now the "standard" for professional journalism. You get some incriminating information from a source you know has a vendetta in Burkett, fail to research and get independent verification of the information, and actually ignore reliable sources who will refute the information to rush it on the air. Plus, it is rushed on the air only a few weeks before a presidential election. Then when people all over begin to point out the obvious flaws in the story, you accuse them of partisan motives and stick with the story even when it's proven to be at least questionable and most probably wrong.
What amazed me at the time was that a very similar story had been circulating about Bush's opponent's VietNam War record. Mary and Dan Rather ignored that one completely. No mention of the "Swift Boat Veterans" was ever made on CBS news. And Mary and Dan both continue to say their reporting had nothing to do with political bias. Really? So calling Joe Lockhart, Kerry's top campaign adviser, and getting him in touch with the source of those forged documents before airing the story isn't prima facie evidence of not only bias, but coordination with the Kerry campaign.
The comparison of stories goes something like this:
Bush was in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. There was a guy who came out and said that he helped lots of young sons of prominent people get into the Guard to avoid Vietnam service, and that probably included Bush. But later he had to retract that when direct evidence surfaced that proved Bush got into the guard on his own merits. And he apparently was a talented pilot, getting excellent performance reports from his superiors.
Then as the war in Vietnam was winding down, Bush requested and received a waiver from some service dates while he was working for a political campaign. There's no official military documentation that he did anything improper or used undue influence to skip drills while he worked for that campaign. Only these new documents which were magically "discovered" by Burkett and faxed to Mary supposedly showed anger and frustration over Bush's commanding officer at the political influence brought to bear on him to somehow force him to allow Bush to skip drills.
The incriminating documents seem to have been created on Burkett's own word processor, but he claimed some mysterious person gave them to him. And the fonts used in the documents are unique to modern word processors, and no such fonts were available on the typewriters used during that time. Plus, the family of Bush's CO adamantly refuted the content of the documents, saying they were not in his writing style, that the CO never wrote memos remotely like them on any topic, and that the CO actually never expressed anything but respect and admiration for Bush.
So the worst that can be said about Bush that is verifiable is that he chose to join the Guard to avoid assignment to VietNam, and that he skipped drills (even though with permission) to work on a political campaign. My take on that is, "So what?".
Let's contrast the "Swift Boat" story about John Kerry. It's not based on a single source, although you could say that the leader of the group telling the story is an avowed Kerry enemy. It's actually documented in a book that was compiled and supported as truth by nearly everyone who served with or commanded Kerry during his brief tour in VietNam.
Most people know the stories that cast Kerry in a rather poor light, but essentially the book suggests that he ran away from a firefight, leaving other swift boats crews and even one of his own behind. That two out of his three wounds that earned him purple hearts and a ticket out of Vietnam were of questionable origin and may have been self-inflicted. And that his anti-war statements about atrocities after the war were fabrications, and the only actions that even came close to the horrible crimes he testified to were his own.
Beyond the first-hand accounts of the Swift Boat group, there is documentary information available that can at least partially support or refute their stories. But those documents are held by the military and can only be released upon Kerry's own request. Kerry refused to allow their release. I wonder, is it possible that those reports would prove the Swift Vets version of events to be false? If so, you'd think Kerry would have moved to release them in a heartbeat.
So which story is more newsworthy? Which story would have had more relevance in revealing the character of the candidate?
Most importantly, why did Mary and Dan choose to spend over a week reporting Burkett's memos and the Bush AWOL story while never even mentioning the Swift Boat Vets story?
I know. How dare I impugn the integrity of such great journalistic watchdogs!
Of course, such things never happen and that was just a small mistake. As if CBS has mended it's ways, just look at how they report more recent news. The Libby indictment, Hurricane Katrina, the DeLay indictment - all notable more for the inaccuracies and information they leave out than for their so-called journalistic integrity.
It is a sad day when we now have to admit our major news outlets: NY Times, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, are no better than Pravda of the old Soviet Union. Only news that helps their beloved Democrats or hurts the hated Republicans is fit to publish or broadcast.
She was asked in a TV interview about those forgeries, and she claimed that nobody ever definitively proved they were forgeries. And in her view, rather than it being her responsibility as the journalist to confirm their validity, it was somehow the responsibility of those questioning the documents to prove they were not authentic.
How bizarre. I can't help but wonder whether this is now the "standard" for professional journalism. You get some incriminating information from a source you know has a vendetta in Burkett, fail to research and get independent verification of the information, and actually ignore reliable sources who will refute the information to rush it on the air. Plus, it is rushed on the air only a few weeks before a presidential election. Then when people all over begin to point out the obvious flaws in the story, you accuse them of partisan motives and stick with the story even when it's proven to be at least questionable and most probably wrong.
What amazed me at the time was that a very similar story had been circulating about Bush's opponent's VietNam War record. Mary and Dan Rather ignored that one completely. No mention of the "Swift Boat Veterans" was ever made on CBS news. And Mary and Dan both continue to say their reporting had nothing to do with political bias. Really? So calling Joe Lockhart, Kerry's top campaign adviser, and getting him in touch with the source of those forged documents before airing the story isn't prima facie evidence of not only bias, but coordination with the Kerry campaign.
The comparison of stories goes something like this:
Bush was in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. There was a guy who came out and said that he helped lots of young sons of prominent people get into the Guard to avoid Vietnam service, and that probably included Bush. But later he had to retract that when direct evidence surfaced that proved Bush got into the guard on his own merits. And he apparently was a talented pilot, getting excellent performance reports from his superiors.
Then as the war in Vietnam was winding down, Bush requested and received a waiver from some service dates while he was working for a political campaign. There's no official military documentation that he did anything improper or used undue influence to skip drills while he worked for that campaign. Only these new documents which were magically "discovered" by Burkett and faxed to Mary supposedly showed anger and frustration over Bush's commanding officer at the political influence brought to bear on him to somehow force him to allow Bush to skip drills.
The incriminating documents seem to have been created on Burkett's own word processor, but he claimed some mysterious person gave them to him. And the fonts used in the documents are unique to modern word processors, and no such fonts were available on the typewriters used during that time. Plus, the family of Bush's CO adamantly refuted the content of the documents, saying they were not in his writing style, that the CO never wrote memos remotely like them on any topic, and that the CO actually never expressed anything but respect and admiration for Bush.
So the worst that can be said about Bush that is verifiable is that he chose to join the Guard to avoid assignment to VietNam, and that he skipped drills (even though with permission) to work on a political campaign. My take on that is, "So what?".
Let's contrast the "Swift Boat" story about John Kerry. It's not based on a single source, although you could say that the leader of the group telling the story is an avowed Kerry enemy. It's actually documented in a book that was compiled and supported as truth by nearly everyone who served with or commanded Kerry during his brief tour in VietNam.
Most people know the stories that cast Kerry in a rather poor light, but essentially the book suggests that he ran away from a firefight, leaving other swift boats crews and even one of his own behind. That two out of his three wounds that earned him purple hearts and a ticket out of Vietnam were of questionable origin and may have been self-inflicted. And that his anti-war statements about atrocities after the war were fabrications, and the only actions that even came close to the horrible crimes he testified to were his own.
Beyond the first-hand accounts of the Swift Boat group, there is documentary information available that can at least partially support or refute their stories. But those documents are held by the military and can only be released upon Kerry's own request. Kerry refused to allow their release. I wonder, is it possible that those reports would prove the Swift Vets version of events to be false? If so, you'd think Kerry would have moved to release them in a heartbeat.
So which story is more newsworthy? Which story would have had more relevance in revealing the character of the candidate?
Most importantly, why did Mary and Dan choose to spend over a week reporting Burkett's memos and the Bush AWOL story while never even mentioning the Swift Boat Vets story?
I know. How dare I impugn the integrity of such great journalistic watchdogs!
Of course, such things never happen and that was just a small mistake. As if CBS has mended it's ways, just look at how they report more recent news. The Libby indictment, Hurricane Katrina, the DeLay indictment - all notable more for the inaccuracies and information they leave out than for their so-called journalistic integrity.
It is a sad day when we now have to admit our major news outlets: NY Times, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, are no better than Pravda of the old Soviet Union. Only news that helps their beloved Democrats or hurts the hated Republicans is fit to publish or broadcast.
posted by Dan S. at 6:45 AM
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