(2005) Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. By Mary Mapes. (ISBN: 031235195X / 0-312-35195-X)

Book Description: St. Martins Publishing, New York, NY, U.S.A., 2005. Stated First Edition November 2005, number line on copyright page reads: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1, First Printing Thus. Navy Blue Hard Cover Cloth Boards and Spine with Gold lettering. 371 pages, 6.5" x 9.5" tall, 1.125" thick. No underlining, No highlighting, No owner names, No remainder marks, this is a Brand New book. New copy - Never read - Not price clipped. Beautiful gift quality copy of book and dust jacket.

Book Condition: Brand New.

Dust Jacket Condition: Brand New. NON price-clipped DJ [$24.95 US].

About This Book: For 25 years, Mary Mapes has been an award-winning television producer and reporter, but for many Americans, she didn't exist until the 60 Minutes/Bush National Guard brouhaha. In the post-broadcast firestorm, Peabody Award winner Mapes was fired by CBS. 'Truth and Duty' presents the full story of the National Guard flap, including new details on George W. Bush's stint in the military reserve. Just as important, it describes how news organizations are collapsing under political and commercial pressures.

FROM THE PUBLISHER A riveting account of how the public's right to know is being attacked by an unholy alliance among politicians, news organizations and corporate America, from the producer at the heart of the 60 Minutes/George Bush National Guard controversy. For twenty five years, Mary Mapes has been an award-winning television producer and reporter-the last fifteen of them for CBS News, principally for the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and 60 Minutes. She had the bedrock of respect of her peers-in the last year alone, she broke the story of the Abu Ghraib prison tortures (which won CBS The Peabody Award) and the existence of Strom Thurmond's illegitimate bi-racial daughter Essie Mae Washington. But it was Dan Rather's lightning rod of a story on George W. Bush's National Guard Service that brought Mapes into an unwanted limelight. The firestorm that followed the broadcast led not only to Mapes' firing and Rather's stepping down from his anchor chair a year early, but to an unprecedented "internal" inquiry into the story-chaired by former Reagan Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. Peopled with an historic and colorful cast of characters-from Karl Rove to Summer Redstone to John Kerry to Col. Bobby Hodges-this groundbreaking book about how the news is made (and unmade) will make news when it appears this fall. But this, it turns out, is only part of the story. Mapes talks for the first time about the riveting behind-the-scenes action at CBS during this frenzied period and exposes some of the largest political and social controversies that have broken in this new age of dissonance.

Synopsis: Truth and Duty is Mape's account of the often surreal, always harrowing fallout she experienced for raising questions about the powerful sitting president. It examines Bush's political roots as governor of Texas and sheds light on the solidity of the documents of the heart of the National Guard story as well as where they came from. AND, MUCH MORE!.

On the privilege of power: "Not only did Viacom cringe at alienating conservative viewers and consumers of its news division's programs as well as its theater chain and radio and entertainment empire kingdom. The company could not afford to alienate the Bush administration. An angry administration could make trouble in a hundred ways and kick Sumner the where it really counted: in teh wallet."

On the President: "Bush didn't keep his promise to his country. He swore he would fly military jets until May 1974 in return for being removed from the danger of being drafted. He didn't even come close....He walked away from his duty."

On attack Politics: "Reality didn't matter. Right and wrong didn't matter. Winning was the only thing that mattered to any of the people masterminding the slash-and-burn campaigns that benefited George W. Bush."

About The Author: Mary Mapes is an American journalist and former television news producer. She was a Peabody Award-winning producer for the American television show 60 Minutes (on the CBS network), from which she was fired for her part in the Killian documents scandal.

Early life: Mapes grew up with four sisters in Burlington, Washington where her family had lived for generations. She graduated from Burlington-Edison High School in 1974 and studied communications and political science at the University of Washington. In the 1980s she worked at the KIRO-TV in Seattle. There she also met her husband Mark Wrolstad when she was a producer and he was a reporter. They married in 1987.

Work at CBS: She went to work for CBS News in Dallas in 1989 and joined 60 Minutes Wednesday in 1999, working exclusively as a producer assigned to Dan Rather.

At 60 Minutes Wednesday, Mapes produced the story that announced the US military's investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the story that exposed Strom Thurmond's unacknowledged bi-racial daughter, Essie Mae Washington, winning a Peabody Award in 2005 for the former.

2004 election, Killian documents controversy: For months prior to the 2004 US Presidential election, Democratic candidate John Kerry's record in Vietnam had been subject to fierce criticism from a group called Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. In response, Mapes produced a segment for 60 Minutes Wednesday that aired criticism of President George W. Bush's military service, supported by documents purportedly from the files of Bush's commanding officer, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B Killian. Those documents had been delivered to CBS from Bill Burkett, who was a retired Lt. Colonel with the Texas Army National Guard. During the segment, Dan Rather asserted that the documents had been authenticated by document experts, but ultimately, CBS could neither confirm nor definitively refute their authenticity. Morever, CBS did not have any original documents, only faxed copies, as Burnett claimed to have burned the originals.

After the report was aired, it was immediately the subject of harsh criticism, primarily from the blogosphere, primarily due to the allegation that some of the documents referenced in the report were forgeries. As a result of the controversy over the use of the documents, CBS ordered an independent internal investigation. The panel in charge of investigation was composed of former governor of Pennsylvania and United States Attorney General, Dick Thornburgh and retired president and chief executive officer and former executive editor of the Associated Press, Louis Boccardi. The panel investigated the memo scandal, subsequently dubbed "Memogate" or "Rathergate." Following the investigation, Mapes and others involved were accused of lapses in judgement and were fired.

Among the allegations in the 60 Minutes report were that Bush, the son of an ambassador, Congressman and future President, had received preferential treatment in passing over hundreds of applicants to enlist in the Texas Air National Guard in order to avoid being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam after he had graduated from Yale in 1968. Then-Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes had admitted making phone calls to get Bush into the Guard, as he claimed to have done for the children of several other influential Texans.

The Thornburgh/Boccardi report, however, stated that some of Bush's former instructors or colleagues had told Mapes that Bush had told them that he wanted to go to Vietnam, but that he could not go because there were others ahead of him with more seniority. Mapes was criticized for failing to air them in the 60 Minutes Report to balance the claim that Bush had enlisted in the Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam.

Mapes was also faulted for calling Joe Lockhart, a senior official in the John Kerry campaign, prior to the airing of the piece, and offering to put her source, Bill Burkett, in touch with him. The panel called Mapes’ action a "clear conflict of interest that created the appearance of political bias." Mapes was terminated by CBS on January 10, 2005. Also asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy.

Mapes herself continues to deny any wrongdoing. She said that the authenticity of the documents had been corroborated by an unnamed key source and that journalists often have to rely on photo-copied documents as the basis for verifying a story. Further, Burkett admitted lying to Mapes and the 60 Minutes team regarding the source of the documents. Further, she suggested that she would have preferred to do more work on the story, but that her superiors, including CBS News president Andrew Heyward, pushed for the story to be aired on September 8. Mapes later claimed that she was the victim of a right-wing Internet smear campaign, and is dismissive of opinions that the Killian Documents are forgeries.

2005 book publication: In 2005, Mapes published a book, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power, in which she defends her record. Her view is that she was sacrificed when CBS caved in, without a proper investigation, to right-wing attacks as reported by its competitors without due diligence.

Source: Read more at Wikipedia.