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"It's emblematic of the problem that readers face in trying
to get to anything resembling the truth," the Oscar-winning
actress, who plays Mapes in the movie "Truth," told Reuters.
"The film asks, did the punishment meted out by CBS merit the
so-called crime?" Blanchett said.
"Truth," out in U.S. theaters on Friday, is based on former CBS
producer Mapes' 2005 memoir "Truth and Duty: The Press, the
President, and the Privilege of Power" about CBS's 2004 "60
Minutes" report on the Killian documents.
The documents, supposedly written by late Lieutenant Colonel
Jerry B. Killian, purported to show then President Bush had not
completed the required amount of training and hours in the
military in the 1970s and was given preferential treatment.
Airing two months before elections in which Bush was seeking a
second term, CBS's report was challenged by critics and other
media who said the papers were fake.
Mapes, Dan Rather and their team came under investigation for
their reporting process; Mapes was subsequently fired and
Rather, one of the most respected figures in television news,
stepped down shortly after acknowledging that he should not have
gone ahead with the story as it was aired.
In striving for the "Truth," be it in the reporters' actions,
veracity of the sources and the onslaught that decimated Mapes'
career, the relationship between Blanchett's Mapes and Robert
Redford's Rather anchors the film.
"They're very devoted to one another," Blanchett said. "They
traveled to war zones together, they've been in hurricanes
together, they've been in newsrooms together and I think they
have shared distaste for hypocrisy and bullies."
Blanchett said she admired "the tenacity and the drive and the
chutzpah that investigative journalists have to have in order to
ask the question that no one else will ask."
When researching Mapes, Blanchett said she watched interviews
online in which the producer, post-firing, was "very closed and
very defensive."
"When I met her, I felt it was very difficult to reconcile this
vivacious, bubbly, engaged, hilarious, vital, searingly
intelligent, available woman," the actress said.
"That's a really interesting journey, from the Mary in front of
me to the Mary I saw in lockdown."
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and
Marguerita Choy)
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