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We live in a weary age of fable. The latest Hollywood mythology is entitled "Truth." But the film is actually a fictionalized story about how CBS News super-anchor Dan Rather and his "60 Minutes" producer supposedly were railroaded by corporate and right-wing interests into resigning. In reality, an internal investigation by CBS found that Rather and his "60 Minutes" team -- just weeks before the 2004 election -- had failed to properly vet documents of dubious authenticity asserting that a young George W. Bush had shirked his duty as a Texas Air National Guard pilot. The fabulist movie comes on...

CBS has refused to run advertising for Truth, the film starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford that revisits a painful episode in the network's past involving a discredited 2004 news story on former President George W. Bush's military service record. CBS has denounced the movie, which opens Friday, as a disservice to the public and journalists. Redford plays Dan Rather in Truth, with Blanchett as producer Mary Mapes. Together, they were behind a 60 Minutes II story that questioned Bush's Vietnam War-era commitment to service in the Texas Air National Guard. But CBS apologized for the story after documents used...

The episode known as Rathergate represents one of the great journalistic frauds of our time. The scandal erupted from a 60 Minutes Wednesday segment rushed to air on the evening of September 8, 2004, in time to influence the approaching presidential election pitting George W. Bush against John Kerry, as it was clearly intended to do. The segment consisted of two parts that didn’t quite fit together except in their antipathy to Bush. In the first part, based on an interview with the vice chairman of Kerry’s national finance committee, Dan Rather essentially claimed that political influence had been brought...

The film “Truth” will be released commercially later this month to retell the Rathergate scandal from the perspective of Mary Mapes. The film is based on Mapes’s almost laughable 2005 Rathergate memoir. The left routinely seeks to rewrite even yesterday’s news; events eleven years ago, when Mapes committed her misconduct, have now attained the status of ancient history. John and I therefore sought to reiterate the basic facts of the Rathergate scandal in the Weekly Standard article “Rather shameful.” Our article is intended to constitute Rathergate 101. Now comes Atlanta attorney Harry MacDougald — the pseudonymous “Buckhead” — to give...

When CBS’s 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast its lead story—reported by Dan Rather and produced by Mary Mapes—on the evening of September 8, 2004, it was given the anodyne title “For the Record,” as though it constituted little more than a disinterested historical footnote. In reality, the story was a bold fabrication about President George W. Bush’s long-ago service in the Texas National Guard, intended to damage him in his campaign for reelection against John Kerry. Within hours of the broadcast, after CBS News posted online PDF copies of four memos highlighted in the segment, the story began to fall apart...

Just how bad is the movie 'Truth' that will be released tomorrow? So bad that even the notoriously liberal Vox is mocking it. Vox writer Todd VanDerWerff goes so far as to describe it as an example of why "so many people hate Hollywood liberals." As we shall see even Dan Rather in 2004 disagreed with the premise of "Truth."

Did anyone just hear Rush give credit to Free Republic? First he named the Freeper Buckhead then second time he said Burkehead. Pretty cool.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one, but I asked Rush to give Freeper Buckhead credit and he just did! (Called him Burkhead! Oh well!)

Rush just acknowledged and credited FReeper Buckhead with exposing Dan Rather's and Mary Mape's forgery!! Kudos!

Matt Lauer pushes a rewrite of history with the movie "Truth".  On the Today Show, at about 08:44 central time, Lauer gave discredited Dan Rather the opportunity to rewrite history.   Lauer shamelessly promots the movie based on the book written by Mary Mapes, who uncritically accepted the fraud that advanced the narrative she was promoting. Rather made the outrageous claim that the story that he promoted to stop President George Bush's re-election bid was "true".   It echoes his response at the time that the fraudulent documents that he used in his attempt to discredit President "Dubya" Bush were...

Truth Isn't True Selling a big lie. October 14, 2015 Bruce Bawer 6 625 The movie Truth isn't yet officially out, but it's been the subject of enough early reviews to establish that it strongly communicates one great and important truth: that if you want to sell a Big Lie that's been definitely and very publicly exposed as a lie, just wait a decade or so and then make an all-star Hollywood movie presenting that lie as the unvarnished truth. Promote the hell out of it. Then sit back and watch history get rewritten in the mind of a whole...

There are many things that real people do to become the subject of sympathetic movies. Make a flawless emergency landing in the Hudson River with a disabled jet full of passengers. Survive a devastating storm atop Mt. Everest. Become the most lethal sniper in the history of the US military. Before the advent of the movie “Truth,” no one would have thought broadcasting a shoddy and immediately discredited report that ruined the careers of the journalists involved and gave their storied network a black eye would make the list. In a better world, the bloggers who exposed the malfeasance of...

Interview with Harry MacDougald the Atlanta lawyer who's initial questioning of the validity of the Killian documents exposed the flaw CBS report about George W. Bush's National Guard Service.

RUSH: This movie with Mary Mapes about Dan Rather and this National Guard business. You have Robert Redford as Rather. You have Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes. This is what the left always does. Dan Rather and Mapes totally fake the story. They totally made up and forged documents, and they were caught red-handed. And what did they do? At the time, the other two leading anchors, ABC and NBC were Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw, and they put together an awards banquet for Dan Rather. This was in weeks of all this happening, because they realized that what was...

Someone needs to correct Rush Limbaugh. He just said on his radio program that it was Roll Call that exposed the Dan Rather fake letters during the Bush presidential campaign.I believe it was our own FReeper 'Bulkhead' who exposed the fake.

“Truth” is revisiting a painful chapter for CBS News. The upcoming movie, starring Cate Blanchett as producer Mary Mapes and Robert Redford as Dan Rather, is an unwelcome reminder of past mistakes for several people who lived through the saga of the 2004 “60 Minutes II” report on President George W. Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard. Some who are depicted in the controversial film, which is based on Mapes’ 2005 book “Truth and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power,” are critical of the conclusions drawn by the veteran investigative journalist. They were hopeful...

The classic definition of chutzpah — the guy who murders his parents and then begs for mercy because he’s an orphan — is getting a rewrite with the Oct. 16 release of “Truth,” a movie that insists forged documents are real. Robert Redford, who makes no effort whatsoever to look or sound like Dan Rather, plays the CBS newsman undone after he presented to the public obviously forged documents about then-President George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service in the early 1970s.

"You Can't Handle the Truth!!!" ---A Few Good Men.Apparently former CBS producer Mary Mapes can't handle the truth at least according to her portrayal by actress Cate Blanchett in the newly released movie trailer for the upcoming fictional movie "Truth." I say fictional because Mapes in the film somehow maintains the truth of her story about George W. Bush getting favorable treatment in the Texas Air National Guard based on documents that were proven to be forgeries.

Before its acclaimed premiere at TIFF, 'Truth' — about the scandal that ended the anchor's CBS News career — was screened for a special viewer: CBS president and CEO Moonves, who was not impressed. Truth, director James Vanderbilt's drama about the "Memogate" scandal that ended Dan Rather's CBS News career, was touted as a world premiere at Toronto. Rather himself turned up at the event to praise the film's accuracy and its (very sympathetic) portrayal of him. CBS mostly comes across as the villain in Truth, with news chief Andy Heyward appearing to fire Rather (Robert Redford) and 60 Minutes...

"A film called 'Truth' should be accurate," the iconic CBS news anchor said of director James Vanderbilt’s movie about his 2006 exit and the events leading to it. Iconic CBS news anchor Dan Rather on Saturday praised the Robert Redford-starring Rathergate movie Truth for its accuracy and performances ahead of its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. "Naturally I was pleased, and pleasantly surprised. This film is very accurate. A film called Truth should be accurate," Rather told the Hollywood Reporter during a pre-screening party. James Vanderbilt's movie centers on Rather's 2006 exit from CBS after a 60 Minutes...