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Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power
Mary Mapes
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.
St. Martin's Press
November 2005
384 pages ISBN: 031235195X Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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).
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