Posted on 09/25/2007 10:55:31 AM PDT by theothercheek
Dan Rather told The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz in a telephone interview that by filing his $70-million wrongful dismissal suit against CBS, he is fighting for "the red, beating heart of our democracy," journalism.
Here’s how Kurtz describes Rather’s beef in a nutshell:
[H]e was made a "scapegoat" for a discredited 2004 story about President Bush's National Guard record because CBS wanted to "pacify the White House."
CBS management "coerced" the veteran news anchor "into publicly apologizing and taking personal blame for alleged journalistic errors in the broadcast," says the $70 million suit, which also names Sumner Redstone, chief executive of the network's then-parent company, Viacom; CBS Chairman Les Moonves; and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward.
Jeff Bercovici, a columnist at Conde Nast’s struggling business magazine, Portfolio, contends “the 32-page complaint reflects worse on the former anchor than the Memogate saga itself ever did.” Bercovici says the suit is “riddled with logical inconsistencies” and “is evidence of a man desperate to have it both ways”:
As anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News for 24 years, he claims credit for the broadcast's many awards and triumphs. Yet when it comes to the disputed Air National Guard documents, he reverts to the defense that he was too busy covering Bill Clinton's heart surgery and Hurricane Frances to pay them much attention.
I wonder: Had the National Guard story won a Peabody, would Rather have insisted it belonged to everybody else but him?
Kurtz reports that his former colleagues are “baffled” by Rather’s claim of being an uninvolved bystander, just reading words other people wrote off the teleprompter:
"I think he's gone off the deep end," said Josh Howard, who was forced to resign as executive producer of "60 Minutes II" after CBS retracted the story. "He seems to be saying he was just the narrator.
"He did every interview. He worked the sources over the phone. He was there in the room with the so-called document experts. He argued over every line in the script. It's laughable."
Rome Hartman, a former executive producer of "CBS Evening News" who now works for the BBC, said: "It's got to be about this lasting sense of hurt and pride. I was flabbergasted. I just don't get it."
While Rather’s ex-colleagues think he’s lost his mind, Los Angeles Times reporter Mary McNamara, for one, thinks he’s lost his edge. Writing about Rather’s appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” she pointedly advises Rather to “get better writers” if he is “going to set himself up as our last defense against corporate corruption of news organizations.” She notes that the interview consisted largely of “boilerplate,” and that Rather was “verbose, seemed at a loss for real talking points, lapsing instead into self-indulgent and maddening asides rather than sticking to the story.” With a final twist of the knife, McNamara concludes, “you'd think a man with as many years in front of the camera could do a little better than that.”
The smartest analysis of Rather’s suit, in The Stiletto’s opinion, is offered by MediaPost editor-at-large Diane Mermigas, who makes the case that both he and CBS are in a “time warp”:
It's sadly evident the lawsuit is a byproduct of both Rather and CBS clinging to old-line value systems and economics that are being dismantled by new always-on, interactive media.
The marquee news anchor, like the network's self-absorbed half-hour nightly network newscast, is an anachronism in an era when the connected consumer wants the news on-demand and, increasingly, online. …
You can hardly blame Rather for pursuing the same line of passé thinking in his lawsuit, as if the old broadcast TV network value system that gave him star power was still in place.
Given that the “voice of G-d” news anchor is yesterday’s news, one wonders what Mark Cuban was thinking when he hired Rather to front for his fledgling hi-def cable channel.
BTW, Rather has gone on record saying he would donate most of any court award to journalistic causes. Wanna bet the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University won’t get even one thin dime?
Note: The Stiletto writes about politics and other stuff at The Stiletto Blog.
Sounds like he is admitting he is only a newsreader and not a journalist. This is hugh!
Courage.
Since when does a leftist liberal media outlet like CBS want to appease a republican whitehouse. They think we are so stoopid!
What Rather wants and could possibly get is a settlement (sealed) with CBS that would:
A. Keep CBS from having to go through a rehash of how bad their “journalism” was and is.
B. Give Rather plausible deniability... it wasn’t my fault... I was just a scapegoat, etc...
and C. Leave it hanging open as a possiblity that the story really was true and just covered up by the “right wing conspiracy.”
jw
I think Jonah Goldbergs column sums it up best.
Pass the popcorn....
...bring the popcorn.
Dan Rather is living in some bizarro parallel universe!
LOL!
If only they’d find the right frequency for the ECT, they can cure him ...
But Dan committed the ultimate crime: He got caught red-handed. That’s why he gets to hold the bag for everyone else.
He always was.
“Dan Rather . . . is fighting for “the red, beating heart of our democracy,” journalism”
He further stated:
“Back home they’d say I’ve been whippin’ snakes, that I’ve been busier than a one-armed man in a marathon daisy-chain.
Just look at my eyes. I never really focus on anything, beady like a diamond-back rattler. And my facial expression: as poker-faced as the poker-face of a poker player.
Yes, I’ll fight the fight, I’ll fight all right. Until I get the right frequency, I’ll fight all night.
Like that time—way back in the piney woods, back when Caesar was a pup, in the hill country, my old tick-hound `Bullet’ was howlin’ like a tornado siren and, and . . . “
and then Mr. Rather was given some Thorazine.
I hope CBS counter sues Dan for beach of contract (there HAD to be a NDA in his network contract, or CBS is even more stupid than I think), fraud (representing to his superiors the documents were genuine long past the time any reasonable person could see they were not), journalistic malpractice (not vetting the story) and slander (blaming CBS for leving him high and dry to please the White House). I wonder if Danny Boy has thought about what a FOOL he is going to look like when a court proceeding reveals his Machiavellian attempt to stage a coup based on documents he knew, or should have known, were forgeries. I think Mr. Rather is receiving very short-sighted legal counsel - hope the lawyer had the sense to take this on an hourly basis with a huge up-front retainer.
Bush’s lead was “shakier than cafeteria Jell-O”
Democrats were “cross as a snapping turtle”
The election was “hotter than a Laredo parking lot”, not to mention “as tight as a too-small bathing suit on a too-hot car ride back from the beach”.
Sounds as if you have it correct.
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