• NY Times, Monday, November 21, 2005 1:30 PM

Newsweek's estimable Jonathan Alter, writing in The New York Times over the weekend, afforded no comfort whatsoever to Mary Mapes, the onetime CBS News producer whose new book, Truth and Duty, he tears to shreds. If Mapes' book was intended to adequately explain her role in the "60 Minutes Wednesday" debacle which eventually led to her dismissal and Dan Rather's premature retirement, she failed, said Alter. Mapes did not do her job as a journalist, and CBS was equally to blame for its immature and stubborn behavior leading up to and following the segment about President Bush's National Guard service. Alter: "Mapes has written a high-spirited, if overwrought and self-serving, account of how 'the ho got the old heave-ho.' She tries to look inward but never quite cops to what happened--namely, that a well-regarded, if headstrong, TV producer with a solid 15-year track record at CBS News and a big recent success in helping to break the landmark Abu Ghraib prison story was given more reportorial freedom than she could handle." Alter, it should be noted, is a contributing correspondent to NBC News, which the Times acknowledged following his review of Mapes' book.

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