Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power [Hardcover]

Mary Mapes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 031235195X | ISBN-13: 978-0312351953 | Publication Date: November 8, 2005 | Edition: 1st

It was a great story. A true story. The kind of story any news producer would love to report, nail down and get on the air. And that's just what Mary Mapes and her producing and reporting team did in September, 2004, when Dan Rather anchored their report on President George W. Bush's dereliction of his National Guard duty for CBS News. The firestorm that followed their broadcast trashed Mapes' well-respected career, caused Rather to resign from his anchor chair a year early, and led to an unprecedented "internal inquiry" into the story--chaired by former Reagan Attorney General Richard Thornburgh.

TRUTH AND DUTY is Mapes' account of the often-surreal, always-harrowing fallout she experienced for raising questions about a powerful sitting president. It goes back to examine Bush's political roots as governor of Texas and answers questions about the solidity of the documents at the heart of the National Guard story as well as where they came from. Her book takes readers not just into the newsroom where coverage decisions are made, but out into the field where the real reporting is done. TRUTH AND DUTY is peopled with a colorful and vigorous cast of characters--from Karl Rove to Sumner Redstone, Bill Burkett to Dan Rather--and moves from small-town rural Texas to the deserts of Afghanistan, from hurricane season in Florida to CBS corporate headquarters Black Rock in New York City.

TRUTH AND DUTY is a riveting account of how the public's right to know--or even to ask questions--is being attacked by an alliance of politicians, news organizations, bloggers and corporate America. It connects the dots between the emergence of a kind of digital McCarthyism, a corporation under fire from the federal government, and the decision about what kinds of stories a news network can cover (human interest: yes; political intrigue: no).

An answer to Bernard Goldberg and the thunder from the right, TRUTH AND DUTY is always fast, sometimes furious, and often unexpectedly funny about the collapse of one of America's great institutions.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ms. Mapes details her rise and fall with a considerable amount of flair and self-deprecating humor…Simply put, she is woman, hear her roar--on behalf of both her instilled patriotism and her journalistic integrity….TRUTH AND DUTY is a good read from start to finish."--The Dallas Morning News
 
"Mapes musters a controlled, readable narrative about the story that became her professional undoing…the story…builds by increments (including) the memos themselves, and how they mesh--in ways large and small, in nuance and substance--with Bush's official Guard records."--The Washington Post Book World
 
"It's an illuminating look into journalism and the challenges reporters face in an era of blogging, instant Internet analysis, corporate ownership and network news starts."--The Buffalo News
 
"In…TRUTH AND DUTY, [Mapes] comes across as the kind of rip-snorting rodeo rider of the news I would have killed to work with as an editor. Her gallop through such Mapes-produced '60 Minutes II' scoops as securing Karla Faye Tucker's death row interview or tracking down Strom Thurmond's black illegitimate daughter or exposing the atrocities of Abu Ghraib gives us a heart-racing glimpse of a resourceful TV pro in her fearless prime."--Tina Brown
 
"TRUTH AND DUTY is a plainspoken…oftentimes sympathetic look at how the National Guard story came to be and why it fell apart."--The New York Observer
 
 
 

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

It was a great story. A true story. The kind of story any news producer would love to report, nail down and get on the air. And that’s just what Mary Mapes and her producing and reporting team did in September, 2004, when Dan Rather anchored their report on President George W. Bush’s dereliction of his National Guard duty for CBS News. The firestorm that followed their broadcast trashed Mapes’ well-respected career, caused Rather to resign from his anchor chair a year early, and led to an unprecedented "internal inquiry" into the story—chaired by former Reagan Attorney General Richard Thornburgh.

TRUTH AND DUTY is Mapes’ account of the often-surreal, always-harrowing fallout she experienced for raising questions about a powerful sitting president. It goes back to examine Bush’s political roots as governor of Texas and answers questions about the solidity of the documents at the heart of the National Guard story as well as where they came from. Her book takes readers not just into the newsroom where coverage decisions are made, but out into the field where the real reporting is done. TRUTH AND DUTY is peopled with a colorful and vigorous cast of characters—from Karl Rove to Sumner Redstone, Bill Burkett to Dan Rather—and moves from small-town rural Texas to the deserts of Afghanistan, from hurricane season in Florida to CBS corporate headquarters Black Rock in New York City.

TRUTH AND DUTY is a riveting chronicle of how the public’s right to know—or even to ask questions—is being attacked by an alliance of politicians, news organizations, bloggers and corporate America. It connects the dots between the emergence of a kind of digital McCarthyism, a corporation under fire from the federal government, and the decision about what kinds of stories a news network can cover (human interest: yes; political intrigue: no).

An answer to Bernard Goldberg and the thunder from the right, TRUTH AND DUTY is always fast, sometimes furious, and often unexpectedly funny about the collapse of one of America’s great institutions.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (November 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031235195X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312351953
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,018,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Warning, January 7, 2006

By 

Dan - Seattle (Seattle, Wa United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power (Hardcover)

This book is a warning to people who use the networks as their only source of news. The alphabet networks are anything but unbiased. I long for the "good old days" when all they did was report the news, with integrity.

92 of 143 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Warning for American Who Value a Free and Independent Press, December 1, 2005

By 

Ed Powell "Ed" (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power (Hardcover)

Unlike many of the "reviewers" on this Web site, I have read Mary Mapes' book and it is excellent. All concerned Americans should read this book which tells the story of the CBS "Documents Scandal" from the perspective of the CBS 60 Minutes II producer who lived it. For those who do not have an anti-CBS or Dan Rather agenda and who read this with an effort to get the truth rather than the hate-filled rhetoric of a partisan right-wing blogger, you will come away with a lot of respect for Mapes. She was a hard-working, dedicated, and professional journalist. She had award winning programs to her credit with the Abu Ghraib story and the sensitive, warm story of Senator Strom Thurmond's illegitimate bi-racial daughter. Her bravery got her into Watts to cover the Rodney King story and her story to find out the truth about George W. Bush's service or lack thereof in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War got her fired. Not because she didn't tell the truth...she got a former Lt. Governor of Texas to admit he had used his influence to get Bush a slot in the guard unit when others could not get in. She got the secretary of Bush's commanding officer to verify that the information in the questioned documents was correct regarding the situation with Bush's failure to take his flight physical and the pressure brought to bear on Bush's commander to give him an outstanding officer rating when he did not deserve one. Her confirmations of these facts went unnoticed in the hail storm of hatefilled partisan blogs written by GOP operatives and partisan hacks who wanted to kill the story. Anyone who understands the Bush administration's lack of respect for honesty and fairness will quickly see where the attacks on Mapes began and from where they were directed. They will also see that CBS out of fear of the Bush administration was willing to throw an award winning producer to the wolves and thereby give credence to the partisan bloggers and Internet liars that they did not deserve. Mapes was more loyal to CBS and to Dan Rather than they were to her, although Rather has had nothing but praise for her. If you do not come away from this book fearing for a free and independent press, uncontrolled by the government, and with a better appreciation of how the Bush Administration controls the press in this country, then you need to search your reasoning ability for a lack of objectivity and chalk it up to the kind of partisan hatred that is dividing this country in a very dangerous way! Mary Mapes made some mistakes but NO ONE HAS YET PROVED THE DOCUMENTS WERE FAKES! Many of the claims made by the bloggers have proved to be wrong and misleading. Many of the bloggers had an agenda and a mission to destroy CBSand Dan Rather and they almost succeeded. Instead, Mary Mapes has suffered unfairly for telling the Truth! Remember that and remember that she found people to substantiate the information contained in the documents. Who do you really believe? Read her book and then decide!

27 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Can I Prove the Memos Didn't Happen?, June 22, 2006

By 

myself "Carl N." (State of Franklin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power (Hardcover)

I have been through chapter one of Marry Mapes' book;
I also have been through the Thornburgh-Boccardi report.
There are so many misrepresntations of fact in Chapter One,
I will not waste my time with the rest of the book.

Free Republic web logger "Buckhead" is not the only person
with decades of computer publishing experience who spotted
the CBS memos as not 1970s typewritten documents. Mapes
sets "Freeper blogger Buckhead" up as a demonized strawman
to distract attention away from the documents themselves.

I worked at Kingsport Press for thirty-four years in computer
assisted typesetting, starting with IBM 1130 punching paper
tape to drive Linotype linecasters, through the VideoComp
and Linotron typesetters, ending with various Mac and Win PCs
producing PostScript.

When I followed Joseph Newcomer's demonstration on the Web that
the CBS memos were typeset recently and were not typewritten in
the 1970s, it was like Composition 101. I followed along with
PDFs of the four CBS memos downloaded from their website. Plus
a PDF of an authenticated Lt Col Killian memo promoting Lt Bush
in Nov 1970. Plus my experience typesetting hundreds of books
and quarterly journals, and creating dozens of fonts for the
VideoComp, Linotron, and Postscript typesetters.

The fact that another typesetter "Buckhead" found the same
flaws confirms my observations.

The bottom line is: those memos could not have been created on
TexANG clerk-typist Knox's Olympia typewriter; although Knox did
receive an IBM Selectric (after Bush left the TexANG) she did not
receive the "Executive" or the "Composer" models; even with those
models, she could not have done the kerning of letter pairs,
like "fr", which is shown in the CBS memos. At the time those
memos were allegedly written, Lt Col Killian's office used an
Olympia and did not use any model of IBM electric until 1975.

In the 1970s I had access to a RCA GSD VideoComp 830 with
Times-Roman font; I could with great difficulty have produced
copies of the CBS memos on a machine that cost the Press $500,000.
Sept 2004 I was able to make a mirror-image of one of the CBS memos
in minutes by just typing the text into Microsoft Word default
settings for Truetype Times New Roman on my son's old PC.

I went a step further: I captured Killian's signature off the
validated Nov 1970 memo. I tweaked pointsize and setwidth of
Postscript Courier Bold to match the Olympia typewriter font
and offset the Courier figures 35679 to mimic Olympia Old Style
figures. Following the Nov 1970 memo TexANG document style,
I created my own "Killian" memo placing FDR guiding the Pearl
Harbor attack and Harry S Truman shooting the UFO aliens at
Roswell NM. I pasted in Killian's signature and printed the
memo. I then crumpled the printed document, rubbed it
on the floor to get random dust specks, scanned it slightly
off center, and violin! I had my own 60 Minutes quality
documentation, that "meshed" with the official record: FDR
was president 7 Dec 1941 and HST was president in 1947.
Mary Mapes has the documentation standards of Criswell in
Plan Nine From Outer Space: "Can you prove it didn't happen?"

Problems with the CBS memos are not limited to the style
or form.

May 4, 1972 Lt Col Killian orders Lt Bush to report for a physical examination no later than May 14, 1972.
- In TexANG squadron officers did not write orders for flight physical exams.
- Physical exams were routinely scheduled based on officer's birth date.
- There is no record of Lt Col Killian writing orders for physical exams.
- Officialy Bush could take his exam as late as 31 Jul 72.

May 19, 1972 File memorandum, Lt Col Killian discusses Lt Bush
transfer request to Alabama for personal reasons
- This does mesh well with Bush's efforts to transfer to non-flying status so he could live and do political work in Alabama.

August 1, 1972 Lt Col Killian verbally orders Lt Bush suspended from flight status.
- Bush's suspension from flying status was actually handled by Col Harris, and the tone of Harris' memo is routine and not at all like this memo attributed to Killian.
- Standard Texas Air National Guard abbrv. was 'TexANG' not 'USAF/TexANG'.
- Lt Col Killian abbreviated 'lieutenant' as 'Lt' not 'Lt.' period.
- There is a 'flight evaluation board' but NO 'flight review board.'
- Lt Col Killian and Tex Air NG did not use the Army term 'billet.'
There are many clues that the author was not Lt Col Killian TexANG.

June 24, 1973 Lt. Colonel Killian authors a Memorandum to 'Sir,' about Bush not receiving a TexANG annual evaluation while stationed in Alabama.

- Again, Lt Col Killian did not put a period after 'Lt' or 'Lt Col'
- Killian abbreviated Fighter Interceptor Squadron as 'FIS' not as 'F. I. S.'
- Lt Col Killian never addressed memos to 'Sir' and was very strict about addressing people by their rank and name, another clue that the author was not Killian.
- Otherwise, this meshes with Bush's transfer to non-flying in Alabama.

August 18, 1973 Lt. Colonel Killian authors a CYA File Memorandum stating as follows:
1. Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I'm
having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave
me a message today from Grp regarding Bush's OETR and Staudt
is pushing to sugar coat it: Bush wasn't here during rating
period and I don't have any feedback from 187th in Alabama.
I will not rate. Austin is not happy today either.
2. Harris took the call from Grp today. I'll back date but
won't rate. Harris agrees.

- General Staudt had been retired for at least 17 months by the date ascribed to this memo and by all TexANG sources had no involvement with TexANG internal affairs after his retirement.
- Group is abbreviated as "Gp" in all other TexANG memos, not "Grp".
- 'OETR' is not the correct TexANG abbreviation for Officer Efficiency/Training Report (OER), another clue that the author was NOT TexANG.

Well before the segment aired, the four document examiners
hired by CBS tried to warn CBS that there were problems with
authenticating the documents. Mapes in her five year crusade
against Bush refused to listen. When the "holy grail" the
obviously faked documents were posted in PDF format on the CBS
website, people with font and type composition experience got
to see them and raised questions. Mapes and Rather dismissed
critics with the sign-off "FTA" F--- Them All. Mapes and Rather
both were arrogant and full of themselves to the bursting point.
Mary, Dan and fans: I hope you live long, learn the error of
your ways, and repent.

Before writing this, I downloaded and read fifty-nine Amazon
revoews of "Truth and Duty." Quite frankly, the blindness of
the Bush-haters and Mapes-idolizers does not speak well for
the future of America's left wing.