| "I woke up smiling on September 9, 2004. My story on George W. Bush's Guard service had run on 60 MINUTES the night before and I felt it had been a solid piece. We had worked under tremendous pressure because of the short time frame and the explosive content, but we'd made our deadline and, most important, we'd made news..." (from the first line) 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 II"/George Bush National Guard controversy.
Annotation:
Television producer Mary Mapes was at the top of her game at CBS' 60 Minutes II until a September 2004 investigative piece about President George W. Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard National Guard in the 1970s encountered a storm of criticism. In January 2005, following the report of an independent panel, CBS News ignominiously dismissed the Peabody Award-winning producer. "Memogate," as it came to be known, also tarnished the career of Dan Rather, accelerating his retirement. In TRUTH AND DUTY, Mary Mapes gives her version of the events, in an almost minute-by-minute account of how the story was researched and how, later, she and her colleagues became the story and had to go on the defensive--even against her own bosses. At times angry, Mapes raises still unresolved questions about just what Bush was doing, and where he was, when he was supposed to be serving his country in uniform. Furthermore, she explores the issue of the growing influence of centers of power on our corporately owned media whose airwaves belong to the people.
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