Mary Mapes on Rathergate
Mary Mapes, the former CBS producer who was made the fall gal, mostly, for the 60 Minutes story based on the almost-certainly-forged Killian memos about Bush’s spotty National Guard service, has a book out. As profiled in the WaPo: Ousted CBS producer comes out swinging.
Mapes is now pushing a book, called “Truth and Duty,” about the botched “60 Minutes II” story on Bush’s National Guard service that led to her firing. She ladles out plenty of blame but largely defends what she still considers a fair piece of reporting, although an independent panel accused CBS of having “failed miserably” to authenticate the documents before rushing the story to air.
The article is pretty old, but I meant to link to it when it came out, and forgot to until now. I find it interesting both as an example of someone working to salvage her reputation in the face of a pretty cut-and-dried case of error, and because big stories like this tend to get clearer, rather than murkier, with the benefit of a little hindsight.
