You'd be smiling like this too if you're chances of winning 70 Million were as good as his. Dan, your employer used you as the fall guy in the botched reporting of President Bush's National Guard service. They embarrassed you worldwide, pretty much ended your career that's lasted decades, and then fired your ass. Someone at CBS really did not like you. They could have chosen to fire an executive producer (like CBS did with Katie Couric's ratings so low--I still love Katie, though). If that happened me, I would have filed suit as soon as my hangover subsided. But you waited 2.5 years! What the heck took you so long man? Maybe we can blame it on your age. Let's not mince words, you're old. You might have forgotten. But, that is being VERY generous to you.
You used to be a tenacious, aggressive journalist who wasn't afraid of asking tough questions and basically pissing people off to uncover the real story. Acting like that takes balls. What happened to yours when you got fucked by CBS? Ok, we'll use old age as the reason again. I guess old age really shrinks your balls and by 75, there's really nothing left. I'd have to guess that at this point, since it took you so long to pull the trigger on suing CBS, your balls have to be no bigger than pencil erasers. Sorry, but someone had to say it.
After all of my insults and name calling, Mr. Rather, I wish you the best of luck in your revenge suit. If you'd like to read more on this, please see the New York Times article posted below.
_________________________________________________________________
CBS Is Sued by Rather Over Ouster
Published: September 20, 2007
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 lawsuit yesterday against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors, including Sumner M. Redstone, the executive chairman of CBS.
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 National Guard broadcast in order to “pacify the White House.”
Asked yesterday in his lawyer’s office why he was taking such action now, Mr. Rather said he had been unable to let go of numerous lingering questions about the Guard report and CBS’s handling of its fallout. In recent months, he said he had even assembled “a team” of associates at his own expense — he declined to say whether it included private investigators — that had turned up new information. Among his findings, he said, was that a private investigator hired by CBS after the report’s broadcast had unearthed evidence that might exonerate him, at least in part.
“I’d like to know what really happened,” he said, his eyes red and watering. “Let’s get under oath. Let’s get e-mails. Let’s get who said what to whom, when and for what purpose.”
The suit, which seeks $70 million in damages, names as defendants CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Mr. Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News. In a statement CBS said, “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.” Mr. Heyward said he would not comment beyond the CBS statement. A Viacom spokesman said he had no comment.
In the suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt placate the Bush administration, 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 as telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ” Mr. Rather 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.
For both Mr. Rather and CBS, the filing of the suit threatens to once again focus attention on one of the darker chapters in the history of the network and its storied news division, at a moment when its flagship evening news program continues to lag. Mr. Rather’s permanent successor as evening news anchor, Katie Couric, has remained stuck in third place in the network news ratings since taking over the broadcast a year ago. She has not only attracted fewer viewers than Charles Gibson of ABC and Brian Williams of NBC, but has thus far failed to bring in the new viewers that were part of her mandate.
The portrait of Mr. Rather that emerges from the 32-page filing bears little resemblance to his image as a hard-charging newsman.
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 Mr. 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 concluded that the report had been 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.”
The panel led by Mr. Thornburgh, as well as Louis Boccardi, a former chief executive of The Associated Press, did not single out Mr. Rather for the broadcast’s failures, but did fault several producers and executives for rushing the report to broadcast without sufficient vetting. Mr. Rather now leads a weekly news program on HDNet, an obscure cable channel in which he is seen by a small fraction of the millions of viewers who once turned to him in his heyday.
Mr. Rather’s suit seeks $20 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages. Among the pivotal points of contention in his complaint are the definitions of the words “full-time” and “regular.” As quoted in the filing, Mr. Rather’s contract — which he signed in 2002, and which stipulated he be paid a base salary of $6 million a year as anchor — entitled him to a job as a “full-time correspondent” with “first billing” on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes,” should he leave the anchor chair before March 2006.
As it turned out, Mr. Rather did leave the anchor chair a year early, and was indeed reassigned to “60 Minutes II.” When that broadcast was canceled a few months later, Mr. Rather’s contract called for him to move to the main “60 Minutes” broadcast on Sunday evening, where he would “perform services on a regular basis as a correspondent.”
During the 2005-6 television season, Mr. Rather had eight segments broadcast on the main “60 Minutes,” half that of other correspondents.
“He was provided with very little staff support, very few of his suggested stories were approved, editing services were denied to him, and the broadcast of the few stories he was permitted to do was delayed and then played on carefully selected evenings, when low viewership was anticipated,” the filing contends.
Theodore O. Rogers, the head of the labor and employment group for the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, said that this could be the strongest of Mr. Rather’s arguments.
“Potentially, if he could point to evidence that when they negotiated, there was an established meaning of ‘regular’ that was breached, there could be a claim,” said Mr. Rogers, who is not involved in the case. Among the most egregious indignities he suffered, Mr. Rather says, was the network’s response to his request to be sent as a correspondent to the scene of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005.
“Mr. Rather is the most experienced reporter in the United States in covering hurricanes,” his lawyers write in the suit. “CBS refused to send him,” thus “furthering its desire to keep Mr. Rather off the air.”
Published: September 20, 2007
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 lawsuit yesterday against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors, including Sumner M. Redstone, the executive chairman of CBS.
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 National Guard broadcast in order to “pacify the White House.”
Asked yesterday in his lawyer’s office why he was taking such action now, Mr. Rather said he had been unable to let go of numerous lingering questions about the Guard report and CBS’s handling of its fallout. In recent months, he said he had even assembled “a team” of associates at his own expense — he declined to say whether it included private investigators — that had turned up new information. Among his findings, he said, was that a private investigator hired by CBS after the report’s broadcast had unearthed evidence that might exonerate him, at least in part.
“I’d like to know what really happened,” he said, his eyes red and watering. “Let’s get under oath. Let’s get e-mails. Let’s get who said what to whom, when and for what purpose.”
The suit, which seeks $70 million in damages, names as defendants CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Mr. Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News. In a statement CBS said, “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.” Mr. Heyward said he would not comment beyond the CBS statement. A Viacom spokesman said he had no comment.
In the suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt placate the Bush administration, 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 as telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ” Mr. Rather 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.
For both Mr. Rather and CBS, the filing of the suit threatens to once again focus attention on one of the darker chapters in the history of the network and its storied news division, at a moment when its flagship evening news program continues to lag. Mr. Rather’s permanent successor as evening news anchor, Katie Couric, has remained stuck in third place in the network news ratings since taking over the broadcast a year ago. She has not only attracted fewer viewers than Charles Gibson of ABC and Brian Williams of NBC, but has thus far failed to bring in the new viewers that were part of her mandate.
The portrait of Mr. Rather that emerges from the 32-page filing bears little resemblance to his image as a hard-charging newsman.
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 Mr. 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 concluded that the report had been 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.”
The panel led by Mr. Thornburgh, as well as Louis Boccardi, a former chief executive of The Associated Press, did not single out Mr. Rather for the broadcast’s failures, but did fault several producers and executives for rushing the report to broadcast without sufficient vetting. Mr. Rather now leads a weekly news program on HDNet, an obscure cable channel in which he is seen by a small fraction of the millions of viewers who once turned to him in his heyday.
Mr. Rather’s suit seeks $20 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages. Among the pivotal points of contention in his complaint are the definitions of the words “full-time” and “regular.” As quoted in the filing, Mr. Rather’s contract — which he signed in 2002, and which stipulated he be paid a base salary of $6 million a year as anchor — entitled him to a job as a “full-time correspondent” with “first billing” on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes,” should he leave the anchor chair before March 2006.
As it turned out, Mr. Rather did leave the anchor chair a year early, and was indeed reassigned to “60 Minutes II.” When that broadcast was canceled a few months later, Mr. Rather’s contract called for him to move to the main “60 Minutes” broadcast on Sunday evening, where he would “perform services on a regular basis as a correspondent.”
During the 2005-6 television season, Mr. Rather had eight segments broadcast on the main “60 Minutes,” half that of other correspondents.
“He was provided with very little staff support, very few of his suggested stories were approved, editing services were denied to him, and the broadcast of the few stories he was permitted to do was delayed and then played on carefully selected evenings, when low viewership was anticipated,” the filing contends.
Theodore O. Rogers, the head of the labor and employment group for the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, said that this could be the strongest of Mr. Rather’s arguments.
“Potentially, if he could point to evidence that when they negotiated, there was an established meaning of ‘regular’ that was breached, there could be a claim,” said Mr. Rogers, who is not involved in the case. Among the most egregious indignities he suffered, Mr. Rather says, was the network’s response to his request to be sent as a correspondent to the scene of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005.
“Mr. Rather is the most experienced reporter in the United States in covering hurricanes,” his lawyers write in the suit. “CBS refused to send him,” thus “furthering its desire to keep Mr. Rather off the air.”
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