March 22, 2016 -- The Killian documents controversy, also known as “Rathergate” caused a major blow to the journalistic reputation of CBS News. It also damaged all American journalists, indirectly. This film takes another look at the controversy from the point of view of Mary Mapes, a “60 Minutes” producer who was fired in the wake of the controversy. The film is based on her memoir, “Truth and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power.”

This film reminds me of other similar films about journalists who got into trouble, like “Kill the Messenger” and others ruined by the conservative establishment, like CIA analyst Valerie Plame in “Fair Game.” These films offer various kinds of conspiracy theories in which liberals are victimized by conservatives. There is more than a little similarity to “X-Files” episodes in these films.

In this case, Mary Mapes (played by Cate Blanchette) learns of evidence indicating that President George Bush got into the National Guard, thereby avoiding combat duty in the Vietnam War, because of political influence from Bush family friends. Bush reportedly also got preferential treatment in the National Guard while he was there

Mapes and CBS News anchorman Dan Rather (played by Robert Redford) rushed to get the documents and get the story on the air in a very short time frame, less than a week. They thought they had some supporting documents authenticated, but it turned out CBS never could authenticate the documents conclusively, in part because they were copies, not originals.

This led to a series of events that ended with Mapes being fired and Rather resigning from CBS. Rather would later sue CBS over the events leading up to his leaving the company, but the suit was dismissed before it ever went to trial. According to the film, several others at CBS lost their jobs as well.

The movie makes it look as though CBS, Mapes and Rather got the story right, except for the part about not being able to authenticate the documents. There are some who believe that to be the case. The story became about the documents, not about Bush avoiding combat duty thanks to his family's political influence.

As a journalist, I look at this differently than a political partisan or an outsider might. What I noticed is that there was a real rush to get this on the air. Was the need to get this on the air quickly a real need, or a perceived one? There were doubts about the documents to begin with. Couldn't the story be told without featuring the documents? If you are going to accuse a sitting president of something like this during an election, you need to nail the story down, and it didn't look nailed down to me.

It all comes down to news judgment, and that is the responsibility of Mapes, her supervisors and Rather himself. I am not impressed with their news judgment on this story and I feel let down by them. I've always thought that CBS news erred in giving its top spot to Rather, when I think it should have gone to Bob Schieffer, who I feel is the better newsman. Another newsman who agreed with me about Schieffer versus Rather was the late Walter Cronkite.

As far as this movie goes, it is a powerful drama with a lot of suspense. Cate Blanchette is superb in the role of Mapes, exactly the kind of performance you expect from an Academy Award-winning actress. Topher Grace is very effective as a journalist working on the story, and Dennis Quaid is solid playing an ex-military officer working on the story as well.

As far as a depiction of journalism, however, I think this movie glosses over some of the journalistic decisions that went wrong, while concentrating on politics and conspiracy theories. That is unfortunate, because I think the CBS journalists who lost their jobs over this story were trying to be politically neutral when they produced the story. The movie is not neutral, however. It is trying to make a political point, as well a point about corporate money corrupting the broadcast news business.

The movie is not subtle as it hammers home these political arguments. The movie also tries pretty hard to suggest some conspiracy theories to explain what happened, some involving the corporate owner of CBS seeking political favors in Washington. All that gets in the way of the story about exactly what went wrong in developing a flawed news story that led to the downfall of one of the most powerful people on television. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2016 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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