This image is the cover for the book Truth and Duty

Truth and Duty



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.

Truth and Duty was made into the 2015 film Truth, starring Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Topher Grace, and Elizabeth Moss.

“Mary Mapes succeeds in telling her story fearlessly, humorously, and compellingly.” —The Dallas Morning News

A riveting play-by-play of a reporter getting and defending a story that recalls All the President’s Men, Truth and Duty 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’s well-respected twenty-five-year producing career, caused newsman Dan Rather to resign from his anchor chair early, and led to an unprecedented “internal inquiry” into the story . . . led by former Reagan attorney general Richard Thornburgh.

Truth and Duty 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. It is peopled with a colorful cast of characters—from Karl Rove to Sumner Redstone—and moves from small-town Texas to Black Rock—CBS corporate headquarters—in New York City.

Truth and Duty 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 an independent media, and asks whether it’s possible to break important stories on a powerful sitting president.

“An illuminating look into journalism and the challenges reporters face in an era of blogging, instant Internet analysis, corporate ownership and network news stars.”―The Buffalo News

Mary Mapes

For twenty-five years, Mary Mapes has been an award-winning television news producer and reporter—the last fifteen of them for CBS News, primarily for The CBS EveningNews with Dan Rather and 60 Minutes II. In 2004, her last year at CBS, in addition to the George W. Bush National Guard story, she broke the stories of the existence of Strom Thurmond's unacknowledged bi-racial daughter, Essie Mae Washington, and the Abu Ghraib prison tortures, for which she won a Peabody Award in 2005. She began her career at KIRO-TV in Seattle, Washington in 1979. She lives in Dallas, Texas.