Fineman:
<font size=4>Mapes Wished to <font color=blue>"Save the World
from a Bush Presidency"
<font color=black>
Newsweek's Howard Fineman argued that CBS News producer Mary Mapes became <font color=blue>"obsessed,"<font color=black> with trying to prove that George W. Bush got special treatment in the National Guard, because she wanted to <font color=blue>"save the world from a George Bush presidency, and in the last five years, she's tried to find that smoking gun that would allow her to do that."<font color=black>
Appearing on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning on Wednesday, Fineman fretted that due to the CBS scandal, it is getting <font color=blue>"increasingly difficult to prove"<font color=black> that the rest of the media strive for <font color=blue>"objectivity"<font color=black> and want to be <font color=blue>"fair"<font color=black> and <font color=blue>"even-handed."<font color=black> Fineman also predicted that <font color=blue>"if Roger Ailes and Fox had done something like this, you know, the world would be on fire." <font color=black>
The MRC's Jessica Anderson caught the exchange between Don Imus and Newsweek's chief political correspondent, who appeared by phone, on the September 22 MSNBC simulcast of the Imus in the Morning radio show:
Imus: <font color=blue>"What do you all make of what's going on at CBS?"
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Fineman: <font color=blue>"...My take on what happened here is that the producer, who I've never met, and who has a great reputation, but the producer, Mary Mapes, became obsessed with this story. In 1999, she began looking for evidence that then Governor Bush, you know, had not shown up for and been derelict in his duty in the National Guard. She probably didn't like him politically, judging from everything I've read about her, and was gonna save the world from a George Bush presidency, and in the last five years, she's tried to find that smoking gun that would allow her to do that. And they went to this guy, Burkett -- I mean, to me, one of the most amazing things about this story is that they searched him out, even knowing what an unreliable source he was. And that, to me, means obsession, and as you pointed out the other day, you know, that's what editors are for. Editors are there to harness the energy, sometimes obsessive energy of reporters and they clearly didn't do it in this case."
<font color=black>
Imus suggested: <font color=blue>"...Rather doesn't have any friends who do not hate George Bush. His friends are all -- we know who they are. I mean, the Molly Ivans of the world, and they all hate Bush. Maybe Rather doesn't, but he's the only one of anybody who he ever talks to or hangs out with...He may not, but that makes him unique in his circle of friends."
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Fineman: <font color=blue>"...In a way, this is a Texas war. It's between what I'm assuming is Rather's sort of populous Texas notions, which I'm sure he holds deeply, and the Bush view. The problem with all of this is, for what's left of what we used to call the mainstream media or the national media, is that those of us who've spent a long time, indeed, a whole career, trying to argue that we are objective, that we strive for objectivity, that we're interested in the facts, that we want to be fair, that we want to be even-handed, it gets increasingly difficult to prove that when something like this comes along, and for other people in the national press corps, whether it's at other networks or at news organizations like mine, to take sort of any secret guilty pleasure in CBS's trouble is a huge mistake, because what's happening is that the national press core is crumbling. I've got to say, if Roger Ailes and Fox had done something like this, you know, the world would be on fire, but they didn't. It's CBS that did it." <font size=3>
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