Rather Sues CBS for $70 Million, Says He Was Scapegoated to Pacify White House

Posted by GottaLaff at 2:00 PM on September 19, 2007.

This post, written by GottaLaff, originally appeared on Brave New Films

I can't seem to stay away from CBS today:

The NYTimes' Jacques Steinberg breaks news about former CBS News anchor Dan Rather. Rather "filed a $70 million lawsuit this afternoon against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors."

Rather, Steinberg writes "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 [National] Guard broadcast and, in the process, 'seriously damaged his reputation.'"

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. [...]

Mr. Rather says in the filing that he allowed himself to be reduced to little more than a patsy in the furor that followed, after CBS and later the outside panel it commissioned concluded that the report was based on documents that could not be authenticated. Under pressure, Mr. Rather says, he delivered a public apology on his newscast on Sept. 20, 2004 written not by him but by a CBS corporate publicist despite his own personal feelings that no public apology from him was warranted.

He now leads a weekly news program on HDNet an obscure cable channel in which he is seen by only a small fraction of the millions of viewers who once turned to him in his heyday to receive the news of the day.

Tagged as: media, bush administration, cbs, rather

GottaLaff is a regular blogger for Cliff Schecter's Blog