Ken Berwitz
As you may be aware, today is the release date for the movie “Truth”, starring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett.
The premise of “Truth” – as inappropriate a title as you will ever come across – is that CBS News anchor Dan Rather (played by Redford) and CBS producer Mary Mapes (played by Blanchett) may have based their “October surprise” hatchet job on then-President George Bush weeks before the 2004 election on fake documents…but even though they were fake, what they said was true anyway.
Which, not incidentally, makes Rather – who was gone from his anchor chair 5 months later and Mapes – who was fired outright, victims rather than lying frauds.
Today\’s Paragraphs Of The Day come to us from powerlineblog.com\’s Scott Johnson, this time writing for city-journal.org. Here are two paragraphs of what he has to say about this:
To investigate what happened, CBS commissioned a panelchaired by former attorney general Richard Thornburgh and former AssociatedPress president Lou Boccardi. The report, released in January 2005, providesample evidence that the entire segment was false and/or fraudulent. It findsthat CBS News was at the least grossly negligent in airing the story. As CBSputs it, the report finds that “CBS News failed to follow basic journalisticprinciples in the preparation and reporting of the Sept. 8, 2004 broadcast.” Mapes was promptly fired as were three other executives with responsibility forthe story. Rather stepped down from the CBS Evening News in March 2005and was let go from the network the following year.
Both Mapes (Truth and Duty, 2005) and Rather (RatherOutspoken, 2012) have written memoirs standing by the story. Hollywood hasnow produced the film Truth,based on Mapes\’s memoir, starring Robert Redford as Rather and Cate Blanchettas Mapes. Despite Mapes\’s responsibility for perpetrating a shocking journalisticfraud, the film portrays her as a heroic figure. Mapes not only gets a stellaractress to play her, she is also portrayed as a martyr to the First Amendmentand a victim of corporate cowardice. And Dan Rather gets to see Robert Redfordportray him. Calling the film Truth suggests confidence that public memories havefaded. The lapse of 11 years is apparently sufficient time to allow for therewriting of history.
George Orwell, in his classic “1984”, referenced “the mutabiity of the past”. Sadly exploiting mutability, by rewriting history in the hope that people either have forgotten what the truth was or never knew in the first place, happens a lot. And “Truth” is as perfect an example of it as you will ever see
Please use this link to read Johnson\’s entire piece, which is every bit as good as the above paragraphs, and see even more clearly what Orwell was talking about.
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UPDATE: In case you\’re wondering how the Hollywood elite come out on this, I just checked metacritic.com. There are 19 reviews of “Truth”: 15 positive, 4 mixed. Not one negative. Zip, zero, nil, nothing.
That should tell you something – actually, a great deal – about who Hollywood remains owned and operated by.
