A Rare Glimpse Into the Mysterious World of Journalism

Mary Mapes granted an interview to ABC News and has an important message for the people who might have felt somehow betrayed by the CBS debacle known as Memogate.

She's working on it.

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

Mary Mapes...ladies and gentlemen...former CBS producer, is investigating the source of the documents. I guess, like Hollywood marriage and babies, the investigating is now scheduled for after the story. I suspect we'll be seeing Mary Mapes sharing a golf cart with O.J. real soon.

But wait, there's more:

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.

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. Seriously. They may or may not be authentic, but apparently that is not of great concern.

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." She says she made the call only as a way to gain favor with the source who provided her with the documents.

I don't know about anybody else, but I interpreted her call to Kerry's campaign staff as an attempt to gain favor with Democratic operatives. My mistake.

To recap: report, then investigate; authentication not my job; I was only trying to curry favor.

I feel much better now. Thank God she went on the air and explained all of this. I was under the mistaken impression that journalism was in trouble in this country. 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.