Poor girl is in deep denial

Pity poor Mary Mapes who reveals in an interview with ABC that she is still in deep denial over just about everything.

A brief summary of her problem areas:

... Mary Mapes maintains that her controversial "60 Minutes II" story on President Bush's National Guard service was "true" and that "no one has proved that the documents were not authentic."

Only a complete idiot, or someone from out of the past, could think otherwise. Unless they were in deep denial, of course.

... Mapes says she is unrepentant about her role. "I don't think I committed bad journalism. I really don't," she says.

Perhaps she's a little fuzzy on the good-bad thing.

Mapes says Rather did not have "any obligation to resign" from his position, as CBS correspondent Mike Wallace recently suggested.

Apparently even Rather felt some sort of obligation.

Mapes says she is continuing to investigate the source of the controversial documents whose authenticity was seriously questioned by the CBS panel.

This violates the whole Dead Horse Principle: when you're riding a dead horse, get off.

She tells Ross that she had no journalistic obligation to prove the authenticity of the documents before including them in the "60 Minutes II" report. "I don't think that's the standard," she said.

Since when is truth not a standard?

Mapes says one of her few regrets in handling the story was her phone call to a member of Sen. John Kerry's Presidential campaign staff prior to the broadcast. "I wish to God I hadn't done it, because I think it was so wildly misinterpreted."

Can't imagine why.

"I did not have it in for George Bush," she said.

That's not what her co-workers said.

Mapes tells Ross she feels in no way responsible for what happened at CBS News in the wake of her "60 Minutes II" report.

But deep, deeper, deepest denial is coming right up:

"If you're talking about an investigation that basically gutted a news organization, and turned people one against another and made people afraid of each other, and really scooted the country's most experienced anchor out of his anchor chair, and now has the evening news casting about for some kind of format that will be zippy and new, I didn't do that. I had absolutely nothing to do with any of that," she said.

Now calm down, Ms. Mapes. Sure we believe you. Yes, now just lie down right here while we get the doctor.

ABC finishes off its report by quoting CBS News' own summary of the incident:

"Her disregard for journalistic standards — and for her colleagues — comes through loud and clear in her interviews and in the book that attempts to rewrite the history of this complex and sad affair," the statement said. It also pinpointed Mapes' notion that a news organization has no obligation "to authenticate such important source material" as only one of the "troubling and erroneous statements in her account."

How mean spirited of them!