Rather Litigious

Dan Rather is suing his old network for $70 million. He claims CBS made him a "scapegoat" for the flawed 60 Minutes report on President Bush's military service in Texas Air National Guard.

From the New York Times:

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.”

The timing of the lawsuit perplexes me. If Rather thought CBS was breaching his contract, why did he wait more than a year after he left to go to court? A friend of mine hypothesizes Rather is suing now to mess with the GOP in the presidential campaign, bringing out the disputed documents on George W. Bush's service once again.

From an AP report:

Rather claimed in the suit that his departure was ultimately caused by Viacom Chairman [Sumner] Redstone, who found it best for the company to curry favor with the Bush administration by damaging Rather. An "enraged" Redstone said the newsman and anyone associated with him had to go, according to the lawsuit.

I remind you of this: we still don't know if the documents are forgeries -- only that they can't be authenticated. And if they are fake, we don't know who faked them. I'm disappointed with the failure of any investigation, inside or outside CBS, to get to the bottom of this. Rather maintains the story was true, but he also claims he was used:

From the Times:

By his own rendering, Mr. Rather was little more than a narrator of the disputed broadcast, which was shown on Sept. 8, 2004, on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes” and which purported to offer new evidence of preferential treatment given to Mr. Bush when he was a lieutenant in the Air National Guard.

Instead of directly vetting the script he would read for the Guard segment, Mr. Rather says, he acceded to pressure from [former CBS News President Andrew] Heyward to focus instead on his reporting from Florida on Hurricane Frances, and on Bill Clinton’s heart surgery.

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.”

That's the risk you take when you read copy constructed by others, in this case ex-CBS producer Mary Mapes. I'm still waiting to hear if she will stand in Dan's corner. She also claimed she was a scapegoat. But which goat has the longer horns -- the producer who pushed a flawed story or the anchor who read it?

My guess is Rather waited until now to avoid casting a shadow over his successor, Katie Couric, or his interim replacement, Bob Schieffer. We now know Couric is more than capable of casting her own shadows. I'm sure Rather also heard about the Eye's payoff to Don Imus, hinted to be at least $20 million but downplayed by network officials. You can't blame him for wanting a taste of legally-approved hush money.

What Gunga Dan expects to gain from this remains a mystery, since no amount of money will buy back a reputation. He's still working, anchoring a show on HDnet, albeit for a minuscule audience and a lot less cash. Maybe it's just good 'ol revenge. But it really doesn't matter. Even though I was disgusted with the way CBS treated him in the final months of his employment there, he would not be in this position had he simply used his reporter instinct and demanded to have more of a hand in what came out of his mouth.