Mary Mapes, the erstwhile CBS News producer who was fired earlier this year for her role in the botched “60 Minutes II” story on President Bush’s National Guard service, is back in the news this week promoting her new book, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. During interviews with ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Washington Post, Mapes has defended her own reporting while criticizing (a) her former employers and (b) the various bloggers who had previously criticized her former employers.
“Perhaps her greatest fury is reserved for the ‘vicious’ bloggers who pounced on the ’60 Minutes II’ report within hours — and who she believes provided the map that major news organizations, including the Washington Post, essentially followed,” noted Howard Kurtz in an article today in the Post.
“I was attacked, Dan was attacked, CBS was attacked 24 hours a day by people who hid behind screen names,” Mapes told Kurtz. “I may be a flawed journalist, but I put my name on things.”
“Some of the key bloggers, however, posted criticism under their own names,” added Kurtz.
Today, bloggers with and without screen names were jumping at the opportunity to bash Mapes for bashing bloggers for bashing CBS for … okay, enough.
Bring on the bloggers.
“[I]t’s clear Mapes has decided that book sales are not well served by a simple admission of error or by the ‘fake but accurate’ line advanced by some of her peers,” noted Verum Serum. “No, Mary has decided to go the full monty with this. She still believes it’s all true.”
“That Mapes can still not be bothered to do basic research on this story is astonishing and sad, but also a little funny,” noted Jackie Danicki on jackiedanicki.com. “Or maybe she’s just as outrageously dishonest as so many have always contended.”
“What a difference a year makes, eh Mary Mapes?,” wrote Right Wing Nut House in a post entitled, “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” “Just think … a year ago you were a big shot producer at the ‘Tiffany Network’ of CBS. You had gofers at your beck and call. A nice, fat, expense account. A couple of awards under your belt. The fawning admiration of your colleagues. Dan Rather even said hello to you in the CBS cafeteria. Now, you’re a wreck.”
Not that Mapes was without an occasional defender.
“Mary Mapes was right about what she reported and all she has to do is wait for vindication,” wrote Wylie Post. “Just like Michael Moore, Joe Wilson, Paul O’Neill, General Shinseki and others who have been vindicated, it will eventually be proven that Bush deserted his unit in Texas just like he no-showed in Alabama. It’ll all come out sooner or later.”
But Wylie is in the minority, as most bloggers hammer away at Mapes and the media outlets giving space to her claims — particularly Vanity Fair, which recently published an excerpt from Mapes’ book.
“That Mapes thinks that her own actions were even remotely comparable to the revelation of Watergate proves that she has absolutely no idea what she did wrong,” noted TigerHawk. “That Vanity Fair would print such trash proves that Graydon Carter remains deeply invested in discrediting George W. Bush, regardless of the cost to his own credibility.”
The Red Voice, on the other hand, offered Mapes a potential scoop. “I have, in my possession right now, documents that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Saddam Hussein swallowed the evidence of WMD in little tiny balloons and that Osama bin Laden is, in actuality, Madeline Albright after in-patient Jenny Craig therapy,” wrote the Red Voice. “Seriously. They may or may not be authentic, but apparently that is not of great concern.”
Mapes is, however, inspiring the Red Voice to move ahead on one front: “I was under the mistaken impression that journalism was in trouble in this country,” he and/or she writes. “I wasn’t exactly ready to jump off the roof or anything, but I was concerned. Now I know that I can go ahead and jump off the roof.”
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.