Here’s a press release just forwarded to me by LGF reader Robert Bove:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

St. Martin’s Press Acquires Book by Former CBS Producer Mary Mapes

Veteran television news journalist Mary Mapes has sold the rights to her memoir to St. Martin’s Press. Mapes has worked in television news since 1979 and at CBS News—including stints at “The CBS Evening News” and “Sixty Minutes”—for the last fifteen years. The major deal for world rights was negotiated by SMP executive editor Elizabeth Beier with Wesley Neff of Leighco, Inc.

Mapes, an award-winning producer who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib prison tortures, was fired by CBS after producing Dan Rather’s lightning rod of a story on the George W. Bush National Guard documents. She will chronicle what really happened at CBS and reveal the corporate, political and ideological agendas that threaten the integrity of journalists and the news.

Publication is planned for Fall 2005.

She’s right about ideological agendas that threaten the integrity of the news. But somehow I don’t think she means it the same way I do.

UPDATE at 3/22/05 11:22:11 am:

More details at New York Business, where we learn that Mapes is being paid in the high six figures for her latest work of fiction, and the book will foolishly argue that the National Guard documents were not forged. (Hat tip: ganzo azul.)

St. Martin’s Press has agreed to pay in the high six figures to publish a book by Ms. Mapes tentatively titled The Other Side of the Story. According to publishing executives who met with the news producer last week, the book is still in the early stages, but will focus on the 60 Minutes Wednesday report that filled in the missing details—and painted a highly unflattering picture—of President George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service. The story was discredited when memos at the heart of the reporting could not be authenticated.

Ms. Mapes continues to insist that the story was accurate, and that the documents were not forged. The book will present a detailed counterattack against an independent panel’s findings that the segment should not have aired, and will include documentation and analysis that she says backs up her reporting and which the panel did not release.