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.

Truth and Duty is a fascinating read and a very sad commentary on the state of the news media in our FauxNews World.

Mary Mapes worked very hard on every story that she had ever done and did it with professionalism, that is, she gave an unbiased and fair account of every story that she had covered. However, when she prepared a story on the Bush National Guard years, she was bloggerized and demonized.

Bush was, for most of his two terms, a Teflon President; one protected from the truth by a non-stick surface, Internet bloggers; and, as David Brock would call it, the Republican Noise Machine.

I was a victim of the same type of attacks but on a much smaller scale. Before the Iraq war, I wrote columns for a local newspaper, the Lee's Summit Journal. I had written on many topics and offered my views with a touch of humor. I was well liked by readers, the editor and the publisher, until I wrote a column that criticized Bush for preparing this country to go to war with Iraq. I turned his own propaganda on him using his language to describe George W. Bush as an "evil man". That was too much for the publisher of the Journal who promptly blackballed me from writing in that paper ever again. Today, over five years later, I am still blackballed at that and another paper where the former publisher of the Journal is now publisher.

Bloggers did not attack me as they did Mary Mapes, but local neo-con apologists wrote scathing letters to the Journal to attack and slander me. When I demanded a disclaimer from the publisher, he told me, "You will never write for this paper again."

After two and a half years of writing free columns for the Journal, I was ostracized for writing what most people now recognize is the truth. So, I can totally understand how Mary Mapes, without political bias, reported the truth and suffered for it. I was an unpaid columnist; I lost nothing but my column space. Mary was a professional who, for doing a thorough job, suffered great damage to her reputation and financial harm, so, to a lesser extent, I can certainly relate to her experience.

Mary Mapes, Dan Rather and the rest of the crew that reported the Bush National Guard story made one huge mistake. Instead of offering real evidence, they should have adopted the FauxNews tactic of saying repeatedly, "Some people say". On Fox, they never identify the "people" who say what Rupert Murdoch wants them to say, people who are probably other Fox employees standing around the coffee machine making up tripe.

If you want to read a great story, written by a professional writer who suffered from the political fall out of the Republican Noise Machine, read Truth and Duty. And if you want to know more about how the news media has become infiltrated by the neo-con fifth column, read David Brock's great book, the Republican Noise Machine.

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!

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