Mary Mapes
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Mary Mapes is an American journalist and former television news producer. She was a Peabody Award-winning producer for the American television show 60 Minutes (on the CBS network), from which she was fired for her part in the Killian documents scandal.
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[edit] Early life
Mapes grew up with four sisters in Burlington, Washington where her family had lived for generations. She graduated from Burlington-Edison High School in 1974 and studied communications and political science at the University of Washington. In the 1980s she worked at the KIRO-TV in Seattle. There she also met her husband Mark Wrolstad when she was a producer and he was a reporter. They married in 1987.
[edit] Work at CBS
She went to work for CBS News in Dallas in 1989 and joined 60 Minutes Wednesday in 1999, working exclusively as a producer assigned to Dan Rather.
At 60 Minutes Wednesday, Mapes produced the story that announced the US military's investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the story that exposed Strom Thurmond's unacknowledged bi-racial daughter, Essie Mae Washington, winning a Peabody Award in 2005 for the former.
[edit] 2004 Election, Killian Documents Controversy
Several weeks prior to the 2004 US Presidential election, Mapes produced a segment for 60 Minutes Wednesday that aired criticism of President George W. Bush's military service, supported by documents purportedly from the files of Bush's commanding officer, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian. During the segment, Dan Rather asserted that the documents had been authenticated by document experts, but ultimately, after bloggers raised questions about the documents' origin, CBS stated the documents had not been authenticated and that CBS could not confirm their authenticity. CBS also stated that they did not have any original documents, only faxed copies of the alleged documents.
As a result of the controversy over the use of the documents, CBS ordered an independent internal investigation. As a result of the investigation, it was determined that Mapes and others involved had shown serious lapses in conduct and judgement.
The panel in charge of investigation was composed of former governor of Pennsylvania and United States Attorney General, Dick Thornburgh and retired president and chief executive officer and former executive editor of the Associated Press, Louis Boccardi. The panel investigated the memo scandal, subsequently dubbed "Memogate" or "Rathergate."
Mapes was faulted for calling Joe Lockhart, a senior official in the John Kerry campaign, prior to the airing of the piece, and offering to put her source, Bill Burkett, in touch with him with regards to the then raging Swift Boat ads attacking Kerry's service in Vietnam. The panel called Mapes’ action a "clear conflict of interest that created the appearance of political bias." Mapes was terminated by CBS on January 10, 2005. Also asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy.
Mapes herself continues to deny any major wrongdoing. She said that the authenticity of the documents had been corroborated by an unnamed key source and that journalists often have to rely on photo-copied documents as the basis for verifying a story. At the same time, she suggested that she would have preferred to do more work on the story, but that her superiors, including CBS News president Andrew Heyward, pushed for the story to be aired on September 8. Mapes later claimed that she was the victim of a right-wing Internet smear campaign, and is dismissive of expert opinions that the Killian Documents are forgeries.
[edit] 2005 Book publication
In 2005, Mapes published a book, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power, in which she defends her record. Her view is that she was sacrificed when CBS caved in, without a proper investigation, to right-wing attacks as reported by its competitors without due diligence.
