Mary Mapes is still whining, this time to Howie Kurtz (who seems to be largely humoring her). But what tickled me was the bottom line:

Despite her career implosion, Mapes hopes to stay in journalism.

"It's what I'm good at," she said. "I like making a difference."

"Making a difference," ever since Woodward and Bernstein, has become the cliche reason for people to go into the profession of journalism. But judging by the results, "making a difference" seems to be more important than "improving the situation," or understanding logic or reality.

Or, you know, "factually reporting the news".

Ever notice how close "make a difference" and "make it up" are?

What -- making CBS's utter lack of credibility obvious to even the two caveguys in the Geico commercial, isn't "making a difference"?

Here's this from the ABC interview:

“I’m perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there’s proof I haven’t seen.” Ross asked Mapes if the standard ought not to have been for her to prove their authenticity, to which she responded, “I don’t think that’s the standard.” (If that’s not a basic standard of journalism and professionalism, I don’t know what is).

CBS added the parenthetical and even sent out a press release stating:
"The idea that a news organization would not need to authenticate such important source material is only one of the troubling and erroneous statements in her account."

That goes along way to rebuilding CBS credibility with me (though there's still a long road ahead).

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2005/11/09/publiceye/entry1028391.shtml

"The idea that a news organization would not need to authenticate such important source material is only one of the troubling and erroneous statements in her account."

Of course, if Dan Rather had brought up the source material, there would have been NO trouble whatsoever. You're absolutely right about a long road ahead for them to redeem themselves.