November 10, 2005
Mary Mapes, making the rounds on her new book, appeared on The Situation Room today to argue her story with veteran reporter Howard Kurtz. Kurtz gave Mapes the
HOWARD KURTZ: What is amazing to me Wolf is that 14 months after this story blew up we are still talking about a story that was retracted by CBS news, an independent commission found that Mary Mapes and her colleagues had failed miserably to authenticate. I can’t prove the documents aren’t real, but unfortunately for Mary, I sympathies for anyone who has gone through the battering she has, she can’t prove that the documents are authentic. It’s not just the arguments about the th’s and the superscript, one of the key people interviewed by 60 minutes was an 86 year old former secretary to Bush’s late squadron commander and she says the documents weren’t real. So this story still has problems and Mary Mapes seems not fully uncomfortable to come to grips with that.
Mape still contests that the document is real because no one has shown proof that is fake. (So much for the “journalist standard” that she speaks about.) Mapes responds to Kurtz remark about spacing yet does not dare to speak about the th’s.
MAPES: I can’t speak for Dan, I certainly can’t. All I can do is tell you my experience and once again, I’m going to say your reporting was wrong about proportional spacing, it was wrong about the document being able to be created in [Microsoft] Word with Times New Roman font,(1) it was wrong in a number of respects and it remains wrong and if you had spent more time looking for more documents, looking at the facts of the story, and really looking at the case you would have done some different reporting yourself.(2)
(1) Charles Johnson begs to differ:
(.gif image of the document created in word compared to CBS’ copy of it)
(2) It sounds like Mapes is suggesting Kurtz to do her dirtywork.
Conservative Outpost linked with Daily Summary
The Anchoress linked with “round the blogosphere
small dead animals linked with Those Wild And Hateful Bloggers
The Great Satan linked with Mary you ignorant slut!
Cyber Cossack linked with “No One Manips Mapes Me”
11 Responses to “Mapes and Kurtz Debate Memogate (VIDEO)”
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8:09 pm [ Quote ]
[...] Shakleh Holera! Posted in media | No Comments » [...]
8:44 pm [ Quote ]
Call me crazy, but isn’t it the job of the reporter to actually authenticate the stuff before it’s published? It’s not that we’re supposed to show it’s fake – it’s that THEY are supposed to show it’s REAL. And near as I can tell, she didn’t make an effort at all to authenticate this…
J.
8:54 pm [ Quote ]
The exact matching of formats demonstrated by Charles’s GIF goes by the name “format fidelity” these days (in the old SGML world, we knew it as “page fidelity” and treated it as a mythical beast). It’s extremely hard to achieve, even within different versions of the same software.
Maybe it will seem weird to connect a CBS/TANG/Mapes thread with a Massachusetts OpenDocument decision thread, but… In this very knowledgeable post on the latter, the point is made in this section that:
Mapes says in this segment that she has now found a document from the same era as the “memo” that has proportional spacing. Well, of course—weren’t high-quality books ever published in those days? The technology existed (even if using it for memos would be unusual). It’s the level of fidelity that is incredible.
10:56 pm [ Quote ]
Maybe this is the other document she found with proportional spacing.
Looks authentic to me…
11:45 pm [ Quote ]
Mary you ignorant slut!
Honestly Mary Mapes is perhaps the most self delludedl human on earth I think Mary is going to qualify for her own entry in the DSM V…
11:51 pm [ Quote ]
When she appears on RS this weekend, I wish Kurtz would ask her about about the timing of her report and the “Fortunate Son” campaign from the DNC. IMO, that is why the report HAD to air when it did. The Dems had scheduled the “Fortunate Son” campaign to be rolled out the next day.
12:01 am [ Quote ]
Those Wild And Hateful Bloggers
The architect victim of Rathergate is out flogging a book. Apparently, she didn’t use the time off since her firing to improve her research skills. The “anonymous” Bill Ardolino; I will grant her one thing – the “school of sharks”...
1:01 am [ Quote ]
What an IDIOT. Proportional spacing was only ONE of the problems with the document – and yes, there were typewriters that could do a form of it back in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. Unfortunately for Mary those don’t match the spacing in the documents even slightly. The memos were forged in Word in either MS’s version of New Times Roman or Pallantino, period.
Rumor control: According to one blogger last year there was a set of forged memos circulated before the 2000 election that supposedly proved Bush had skipped out on his obligations. These however were issued as jokes and no one took them seriously at the time. Sometimes I wonder if some moron came across a set of those at a garage sale, screamed, “SMOKING GUN!”, and that’s what started this whole mess.
3:03 am [ Quote ]
I believe Ordi is right… and wasn’t some woman Kerry campaign advisor talking to CBS about the story as it was being prepared to air? I can’t remember all the details, does anyone know where there is a detailed timeline to lay out to ignorant libs when neccessary… Although clearly this isn’t one they really wanna touch, they’ve stayed far away from these posts on tpt… they’re making all the normal idiot lib kool aid arguments on all other posts, but they are mysteriously absent from these Mapes posts…
4:06 am [ Quote ]
[...] In the midst of so many good posts on Mary Mapes, Victoria at Sundries gives us a unique and thoughtful perspective. [...]
10:00 am [ Quote ]
Daily Summary
NEWS: – Senate Approves Plan to Limit Detainee Access to Courts – State-Sponsored ‘Narnia’ Contest Causing a Stir in Florida – NRA Challenges San Francisco Gun Ban – GOP Tax Cut Plan Hits Snag – House Republicans Vow to Revive…