Posted on 09/19/2007 12:30:52 PM PDT by abb
Dan Rather, whose career at CBS News ground to an inglorious end 15 months ago over his role in an unsubstantiated report questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service, filed a $70 million lawsuit this afternoon against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors.
Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005. He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed Guard broadcast and, in the process, “seriously damaged his reputation.” As plaintiffs, the suit names CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its chief executive, Sumner Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News.
In the suit, filed this afternoon in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt “to pacify the White House,” though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect. To buttress this claim, Mr. Rather quotes the executive who oversaw his regular segment on CBS Radio, telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ”
He also continues to take vehement issue with the appointment by CBS of Richard Thornburgh, an attorney general in the administration of the elder President Bush, as one of the two outside panelists given the job of reviewing how the disputed broadcast had been prepared.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What is this? Rather and OJ come back in the same week? It's like the cosmos just threw up!
RE:66. One for the ages. FR needs a “Hall of Fame” vault.
ROFLMAO!
So...does the money get sent to Michelle Malkin or Free Republic?
Cheers!
WOW! ...NOW if we could just get the DNC to sue ‘Move-on’ we could go ahead and start another batch of popcorn.
I hope there is a lengthy trial and every last one of these CBS scumbags, from Mapes to Heyward to Rather, is grilled about why a network news organization figured it could fix a Presidential election for its party (the ‘rats) by claiming that candidate George W. Bush failed to take a physical in 1972.
Or versie-vise-ah.
Works for me.
Ow! Ow! OW! OW! OW!
“...I believe they’ll come to a settlement with Danny-boy to avoid a lawsuit in the public limelight.”
Dan certainly knows where the bones are buried at CBS, that’s for sure. I hate to think of that hopeless, arrogant fool getting any more money, but I’m afraid you’re right. There is one glimmer, though...I would imagine that CBS had Rather sign a non-litigation clause Release of All Claims in order to get the generous severance package he got out of them.
Maybe they owed him (or Mark Cuban) a favor.
This has the chance to do the opposite.
Well heck, maybe SeeBS will decide to put the Danster back in the anchor chair...and oust Couric.
LOL
Which of course would prove everything we have said about the slime.
ROFL!
LOL! I think Rather is saying that CBS mighta' conducted the investigation using info derived from anonymous sources feeding a Kinkos fax machine somewhere.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/19/AR2007091901445.html
Dan Rather Sues CBS, Seeking To ‘Restore His Reputation’
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 20, 2007; Page C01
snip
Rather’s lawyer, Martin Gold, said last night: “Dan is bringing this lawsuit to restore his reputation. He’s not doing this for the money,” he added, saying that Rather would donate most of any court award to journalistic causes.
snip
The debacle over the National Guard story, which the suit says became known as “Rathergate,” turned on 30-year-old memos said to have been written by Bush’s late squadron commander. Several newspapers, including The Washington Post, and conservative bloggers gathered evidence that the documents were unlikely to have been typed on government typewriters of that era.
snip
Gold, Rather’s lawyer, maintained that “nobody’s proved the documents were forgeries. The way we look at it, it’s more than likely the documents are authentic.”
snip
O.J.’s Old Lawyer: ‘Nobody Proved He Murdered Two People’
O.J.’s New Lawyer: ‘Nobody Can Prove He Broke The Law’
Rather’s Lawyer: ‘Nobody’s Proved the Documents Were Forgeries’
lgf | Sep 20, 2007 | lgf
Posted on 09/20/2007 11:17:56 AM EDT by george76
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1899589/posts
ping
Must read.
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/09/20/dan-you-oaf/
Dan Rather is proves himself once again to be such a egotistical fool. He’s crying — puffy red eyes and all — and suing CBS because they eased him aside (when they should have dumped him long before). He still refuses to take responsibility for muffing a story and harming his own credibility and that of the network and, for that matter, the profession — the Times said he doesn’t think there was anything to apologize for and, indeed, says the apology he did give was “coerced.”
snip
And right there is the problem with all this: the elevation of the reporter, the presenter, the hack — to use the better British terms — into overexposed, overpaid, undermanaged, self-important personality. And as the Times story notes, the new overpaid, overexposed personality in Rather’s chair isn’t helping the network either. The anchor model is not only broken, it’s dangerous. It produces Dan Rathers.
snip
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