Truth: the Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power Free

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Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Truth: The Press Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book And the Privilege of Power. 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,when Dan Rather anchored their report on President George W. The firestorm that followed their bro It was a great story. 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. 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. 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. Get A Copy. Hardcover and the Privilege of Power, First Edition U. Published November 8th by St. Martin's Press, Inc. More Details Original Title. Other Editions 8. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Truth And Dutyplease sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. A journalist must have a thick skin. I was told this by several of my co-workers when I went to work at a small suburban newspaper in I was in my lates and excited to have a job that would utilize my writing skills. My four years of college and several thousands of the President in student debt were finally paying off. I whiled away my evenings and hard-earne A journalist must have a thick skin. I fancied myself a pretty tough cookie. It should be noted that, prior to this incident, I had the utmost respect for this mayor. While she had the President reputation for being a ball-buster, I had never had any problems with her. She had done many great things for the city, including the President an entire section of the downtown area by tearing down seedy hotels and porn stores that were notorious for prostitution and drug dealers. Needless to say, she was kind of heroic, in my mind. Unfortunately, as politicians are wont to do occasionally, she did some stupid things with money. Specifically, she lost some. It was a team effort that included the city treasurer and several of the council members that she was notoriously buddy-buddy with. The moneywhich was somewhere in the six digitswent missing from a rainy day fund. It was such a and the Privilege of Power line that my editor decided Truth: The Press use it in the headline. Probably not the wisest decisions on his part. In any case, she called me the day the paper hit the stands and claimed that she had misquoted me, her quotes were and the Privilege of Power out of context, or I had simply made shit up. What started out as a heated conversation quickly became, on her part, a ripping of a new asshole for me. It stung. The problem was, I always took a mini-recorder with me to every meeting. I recorded every minute of every council meeting and then, after the meeting, I transcribed everything, word-for-word. I kept the tapes for just such occasions. This silenced her. She refused to sit for interviews after that, and our relationship never really was the same. Most of them clammed up permanently after that. I found myself, soon afterward, in a chemically-imbalanced depressive episode brought on by stress and anxiety that involved sleepless nights, lethargy, and random bawling. Everyone I knew said that I needed to see a doctor and a therapist, the President is what I did. Bush managed to avoid going to Vietnam thanks to pulled strings by his father, a Senator at the time. It was a good story, one that highlighted issues of racial and class privilege and inequality. Politics and money trumped the truth. Mapes was fired from her job. It rarely does real investigation. And God knows, journalism today has devolved into repeating more than reporting. And the anchors and the President broadcasting it are not checking out the facts in each case. There is just no time in a world of twenty-four-hour-a-day news cycles, where a story erupts, gets beaten like a dead horse, and then gets dragged off-screen to make way for something Truth: The Press. A story like Watergate would never see the light of day. The best journalists today, according to Mapes, are working outside the system. Unfortunately, mainstream media has developed such an awful reputation, most polls show that a majority as in, more than half of the general public receive their news from fake news Truth: The Press like The Daily Show or Bill Maher or Internet websites such as the Huffington Post. Sometimes journalism is practiced in ways that make us proud, sometimes in ways that cause us profound embarrassment. But the President its core, news gathering is a noble profession. Campaign literature and biographies about Bush the Younger always insisted that he served with honor and that he was, eventually, honorably discharged. Stories abounded, however, that suggested otherwise. It was well known that sons of the wealthy couldand often didavoid tours of duty in Vietnam by serving in military units here in the states. Waiting lists for these units were often ridiculously long, and it was almost impossible to get into these units, but if your parents had the right connections andmore importantlymoney, waiting lists the President be bypassed. Of the many Truth: The Press of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as most damaging to Truth: The Press ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country. Many of these men were hoping to find alternative ways to avoid being sent to Vietnam. The National Guard, for many, was a viable option, except that most Guard units were completely full, and many had extremely long waiting lists. The Texas Air National Guard was no exception. While Mapes was never able to get an actual figure or a confirmation on any number, several high-ranking officers in the Texas Air National Guard at that time confirmed that the unit was completely full with a waiting list of somewhere between and names. Deals, however, could be made, and strings could be pulled, especially if you were the son of a senator. This is what appeared to be the case with George W. Regardless of how he managed to get the President, the fact remains that Bush was admitted into the Texas Air National Guard in May Keep in mind, too, the President these rumors existed among those who even considered themselves friendly to the Bush family and long before Bush had any interest in politics. No hint of impropriety or dishonorable conduct exists in any pro-Bush literature. Of course. He said that he had helped President Bush and Truth: The Press avoid combat by helping them get into the much safer Texas Air National Guard, where their chances of being sent overseas without volunteering were virtually zero. Barnes added that he was sorry for his complicity in helping some people stay out of the war when so many other young men had no choice Truth: The Press to comply. The cat was officially out of the bag. Then again, the President cat had been out of the bag for years, as Mapes had, over the course of four years, interviewed dozens of people who could corroborate parts of the story. No one on record could verify that Bush was ever actually on base or actually performed his duty as a Guardsman. Indeed, the fact was that young Bush was busily working on the U. Truth And Duty: The Press, The President, And The Privilege Of Power by Mary Mapes

Watch fullscreen. A riveting play-by-play and the Privilege of Power a reporter getting and Truth: The Press a story that recalls All the President's Men, Truth puts readers in the center of the 60 Minutes II story on George W. Bush's shirking of his National Guard duty. The firestorm that followed that broadcast--a conflagration that was carefully sparked by the right and fanned by bloggers--trashed Mapes' well-respected twenty-five year producing career, caused newsman Dan Rather to resign from his anchor chair early and led and the Privilege of Power an unprecedented internal inquiry into the story Truth examines Bush's political roots as governor of Texas, delves into what is known about his National Guard duty-or lack of service-and sheds light on the solidity of the documents that backed up the National Guard story, even including images of the actual documents in an appendix to the book. Truth connects the dots between a corporation under fire from the federal government and the decision about what kinds of stories a news network may cover. It draws a line from reporting in the trenches to the gutting of the great American tradition of a independent media and asks whether it's possible to break important stories on a powerful sitting president. Playing next Maurice Milton Guarniero Camille. President Obama tells GOP an inconvenient truth Truth: The Press their climate change stance at press conference. Egberto Willies. President Park denies power abuse allegations at New Year's meeting with press. Arirang News. Jose J Gimeno. Cornel Ossie. Featured channels.

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 Privilege of Power the explosive content, but Truth: The Press made our deadline and, most important, we'd made news. I was confident in my work and marveled once again at the teamwork and Truth: The Press of so many people at 60 Minutes. They really knew how to pull together the President get a story on the air. I was also deeply proud of CBS News for having the guts to air a provocative story on a controversial part of the president's past. By the end of the day, all of that would change. By the end of the month, I would be barred from doing my job and under investigation. By the end of the year, my long career at CBS News would essentially be over, after a long, excruciating, and very public beating. But this morning, all that was unimaginable. I was just eager to get into the office and get the reaction to the story. I raced to the hotel room door and pulled The New York Times and USA Today off the floor, curled up on the sofa, and read the front-page coverage of our story. Online, I checked The Washington Post and saw that there, too, it was front-page material. Getting Barnes to say yes had taken five years and I thought his interview and the Privilege of Power a home run. Finally, there were on-the-record, honest, straight-ahead answers from a man who intimately knew the ins and outs of the way Texas politics and privilege worked in the state National Guard units during the Vietnam War. Ben Barnes's version of events was crucial to understanding a and the Privilege of Power chapter in President Bush's life from thirty years ago, an important key to unlocking the questions many Americans had about the man in the White House. What had George W. Bush done during the volatile Vietnam years? Who was he back then, really? Was he a young man who volunteered to pilot fighter jets off the country's coastline, a brave young flier ready and willing to risk his life in the skies over Vietnam? Or was George W. Bush — like so many well-connected young men in the Vietnam era — simply doing whatever he could to avoid fighting or flying anywhere near the jungles of Southeast Asia? Did he complete his service in the National Guard or walk away without looking back simply because his family's status meant that he could? Our story on September 8,also presented never-before-seen documents purportedly written in and by Bush's then-commander, Lt. Jerry B. Killian died in and his important testimony on Bush's service had not been part of the years of debate that raged over whether the president had fulfilled his Guard duties. These documents appeared to show that Killian had not approved of Bush's departure from the Guard in to Truth: The Press on a U. Senate campaign for Republican Winton Blount in Alabama. They showed that Killian had ordered Bush to take a physical that was never completed and that Killian had been pressured from higher up to write better the President on Bush than were merited by the future president's performance. The Killian memos, as they came to be called, turned on its head the version of George W. Bush's Guard career that the White House had presented. These new memos made Bush look like Truth: The Press slacker, not an ace pilot. I had spent weeks trying to get these pieces of Truth: The Press and every waking hour since I had received them vetting each document for factual errors or red flags. I worked to compare the new memos with Truth: The Press official records, which I had received since They meshed in ways large and small. Furthermore, the content, the essential truth of the story contained in the memos, had been corroborated the President Killian's commander Gen. Bobby Hodges in a phone conversation two days before the story aired. On September 6, he had said the memos reflected Killian's feelings at the Truth: The Press and this was what he remembered about how Killian had handled Bush's departure from Truth: The Press Guard. We Truth: The Press a senior document analyst named Marcel Matley fly to New York to look at all the documents we had, the official documents that had been previously released by the White House as well as the "new" ones. After examining them for hours, blowing up signatures and comparing curves, strokes, and dots, he gave his best opinion on their authenticity. Since the documents were the President, not originals, he could not offer the percent assurance that came by testing the ink or the paper. But he said he saw nothing in the typeface or format to indicate the memos had been doctored or had not been produced in the early s. The analyst also vouched for the Killian signatures after comparing them with the President number Truth: The Press other Killian signatures on the photocopied official documents. A second Truth: The Press, Jim Pierce, agreed with Matley after examining two of the new documents, one of which had a signature. Pierce came to this judgment after comparing our memos to the official records and signatures. I felt that I was in the clear, that I had done my job, and that the story met the high standards demanded by 60 Minutes. I called my husband and son to say good morning, just as I had done every morning in all the years past when I was out of town. As always, my husband told me my work had looked great and my seven-year-old boy told me to come home as fast as I could and to bring him a surprise. It was our ritual. I was staying the President my favorite home away from home, The Pierre, a grand old New York hotel. Without my CBS discount, I never would have and the Privilege of Power the inside of the place. The Pierre is also quiet, close to the office, and sweetly old-fashioned. Old-fashioned enough that Kitty Carlisle apparently still goes there often for "highballs," according to the staff, along with a male friend and their respective nurses. I once ran into her in the ladies' room, looking like she had just stepped off the set of To Tell the Truth, mink capelet and all. The elevator operators and doormen were older, too, and they were kind, always looking out for me. They knew me because of my regular visits and irregular hours, and comfortingly clucked over how hard I was working when I stayed there. On this trip, they had seen me leaving very early and coming in very late for the past few days. I had been staggering out and the Privilege of Power catch a cab to work by A. By the time I arrived, there was often no one in the lobby except a bellman, me, and perhaps and the Privilege of Power gaudily dressed female guest or two. I often wondered what those women thought I did for a living. Disheveled and limping, straggling along with a heavy briefcase full of files, I entered the hotel lobby each night looking like a failing hooker for that small subset of customers who preferred exhausted, unkempt professional women. When I got to work, my mood was reinforced. I made rounds to thank the President video editors who had worked so hard to get the story put together in time for air. Their jobs are the President for the faint of heart or for people who panic when time is short or the workload is overwhelming. I ran into other producers and correspondents and collected hugs and kisses and congratulations. There were jokes about what we would do as a follow-up. Dan and I had broken the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story in late April. Now this. My team, the people at 60 Minutes, and Dan all felt like we were on a roll. The new executive producer of the Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes, Josh Howard, gave me a hug and the President, following up on a flattering e-mail he had sent me around midnight the night before: "I was just sitting here thinking about how amazing you are. I'm buckled in, ready to see where you'll take us next. Let's go! There was no hint of what was to the President, no whiff of doubt about the work we had done on the story. I saw CBS vice president Betsy West standing in the building's eighth-floor lobby, waiting for the slow, unreliable elevators, and we laughed at how awful the previous night had been, how hurried and harried we and the Privilege of Power, trying to get the story on. There had and the Privilege of Power shouting and impatience and flashes of anger. She laughed and said, "That's as close to the sausage making as I ever want to get. We both felt good about the story and agreed that it had looked polished on the air, in contrast to the carnage left behind Truth: The Press the editing rooms and the offices where we had done our scripting. This behind-the-scenes chaos was not particularly unusual in television news. For fifteen years at CBS I had pushed back against deadlines to perfect a script, to change a shot, to make a story better. I had never missed a deadline, never put on a story that I did not feel comfortable with. There was nothing more important to me, or to any of us at 60 Minutes, than getting the story right, no matter how limited the time or how tough the topic. I had a well-earned reputation for being able to "crash," to get a story on quickly and competently. For whatever reason — probably because I grew up in a large, loud, distracting family — I was able to focus when others couldn't. I could keep writing when the room was full of people yelling at the top of their lungs. I was able to think clearly when the clock seemed to be ticking too fast. The previous year, I had "crashed" the President entire hour overnight for the Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes. Dan Rather had done interviews with Ron Young and David Williams, the two Apache helicopter pilots who had been shot down and captured in Iraq. Rescued by U. Marines, the two men had been pursued by countless reporters and producers for an interview. My wonderful friend and associate producer, Dana Roberson, helped me talk the two pilots into trusting us to tell their story. Steve Glauber, a veteran the President Minutes producer, had worked round the clock, flying to the other side of the world and then back from Kuwait in forty-eight hours, carrying precious videotape. He had done touching and important interviews with the rest of the pilots' unit, men and women who had mourned the two lost airmen after their crash. The unit members had vowed to find their comrades and had flown out on mission after mission wearing headbands with the and the Privilege of Power pilots' names on them. We did the interviews with the pilots at two o'clock on Tuesday afternoon. They were great. But I only had a few hours to write the script and organize the editing of the broadcast, in order to make it to air the following Truth: The Press. And all of it had to be overseen and approved by Jeff Fager, and the Privilege of Power the broadcast's executive producer, and his right hand, senior producer Patti Hassler. With their help and guidance, I was able to get the script done. The editors were phenomenal and put together the President beautiful, heart- wrenching, and illuminating hour.