Mary Mapes, Carl Bernstein, Why We Use Unnamed Sources

STUBBORN AS A MULE

Mapes Blasts Limbaugh, Bernstein Backs Anonymous Sources





More than a year after the CBS Evening News "Rathergate" phony documents scandal, has former producer Mary Mapes moved on?

After a heel-digging appearance at a three-day media conference on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University, no seems a safe answer.

In fact, it's official: Mapes is stubborn as a mule.

From John Mashek at US News and World Report:

Mary Mapes, the CBS producer who was fired over her role in a 60 Minutes II story about George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, said profiteering had taken over at television networks at the expense of news. Mapes defended her professionalism in the controversy, indicating that a rush to run the story played a role in the errors admitted by CBS.

Mapes implied that she took the fall, along with other female operatives, while the male executives at the network escaped with their jobs intact. Of course, Dan Rather, who had to humble himself for the mistake, left the network anchor chair a few months later.

In response to questioning from Wallace Westfeld, a former producer and executive at NBC News, Mapes ridiculed some critics of her reporting and authenticating. Of Rush Limbaugh, she said : "I don't need to be lectured on ethics from a much married, obese, drug addict."

That's right: Rush Limbaugh is the problem, not Mary Mapes and her phony documents! When all else fails, why not resort to calling El Rushbo fat?

With the left, it works every time! No need to argue points: my opponents are overweight, what more do I need to say?

At Newsbusters, Tim Graham adds:

It might help Mary's attempts at humor if they came anywhere close to reality. Limbaugh hasn't been "obese" for years now. Perhaps she's forged her own version of Rush.

Equally interesting was a discussion featuring Watergate legend Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, where the use of unnamed sources was vigorously defended:

Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame at the Washington Post defended the use of anonymous sources. He said the first 100 stories he and Bob Woodward wrote contained no sources and incurred the wrath of Nixon administration apologists in those turbulent days.

"Without those unnamed sources, there never would have been a scandal," he said.

He was initially angered by it, but Bernstein now defends President Gerald R. Ford for pardoning Richard Nixon. Although it may have cost Ford his presidency in the 1976 race with Jimmy Carter, Bernstein said the nation had to put aside the crimes of Nixon and his aides and move on.

In Bernstein's view, the misjudgments by the current administration of George W. Bush in Iraq would never have been exposed without a vigilant press and anonymous sources. That exposure of wrongdoing, he explained, seems to always fall to the press, which then takes a beating for it.

Since the Radio Equalizer regularly takes abuse for using unnamed sources, isn't it interesting to see one of the left's journalistic icons defending the practice?

What Air America's unhinged defenders really believe: it's okay for lefty newspaper reporters to engage in the practice, but not conservative bloggers.

And by the way, conservative bloggers are fat.

Why don't we name our sources? For the same reason Woodward and Bernstein didn't: to protect them.

As professional broadcasting insiders, they risk not only the loss of their positions, but even potential physical abuse by one or two unstable, otherwise unemployable characters that somehow manage to thrive at Air America Radio.

Just as the Washington Post team relied on increasingly disgusted individuals who could no longer tolerate the sleaze they were observing, Air America also has at least a few honest insiders.

Too bad the company is more concerned with hunting down leaks than with cleaning up its unsavory act.


Without this help, the public still would know little, if anything, about the sleazy Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club scandal, where $875,000 in taxpayer grants were instead diverted to the liberal radio network.

Nor would we know much about the increasingly partisan nature of Air America's operations, now focused almost entirely on 2006 Democrat campaigns, rather than making money as a supposedly for-profit corporation.

To those who will defend Enron-like corporate antics just becuase the company provides leftist radio programming, what's clearly most important is the physical appearance of their enemies.

What does that say about the state of their political movement?

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AAR Spin: David A Lunde for the Radio Equalizer