Rather slaps CBS with lawsuit

On Wednesday, the former “Evening News” anchor filed a lawsuit against the network, its parent company, Viacom, and three of his former bosses.

Rather claims he was made a scapegoat for a bogus story about President Bush's service in the National Guard. He says his suit stems from CBS' "intentional mishandling" of the aftermath of the story.
It claims Rather was forced to take the fall to "pacify" the White House.

CBS says the lawsuit is without merit and that Rather’s complaints are old news.

In April of last year, I had an opportunity to hear Rather speak at the Radio and Television News Directors Association’s annual convention in Las Vegas. Rather was part of a discussion on media coverage of the war in Iraq. He provided some interesting perspective on combat reporting, based on his years of covering such conflicts as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Gulf War. He was upbeat, energetic, and insightful when sharing his stories and memories of being on the front lines. He was totally in command of the forum. I was impressed.

But his mood quickly changed when a member of the audience asked him to give his opinion on the hiring of Katie Couric at CBS. Rather paused, seemingly intentionally, for several seconds before finally complimenting Couric first on her looks, and then her popularity as co-host of the Today show. It was clearly a back-handed response to the question, and a less than ringing endorsement of his replacement in the anchor chair.

I think his reaction offered a rare glimpse at Rather’s bruised ego. Along with his war coverage, here was a man who had been in Dallas the day President Kennedy was shot. He’d gone toe-to-toe with President Nixon at the height of Watergate, and witnessed first hand the bloody crackdown at Tiananmen Square. Yet a simple question, one I’m sure that had been asked of him before, seemed to reveal the darker side of Rather. He was clearly still very angry over the circumstances surrounding his departure from CBS.

Rather’s problem isn’t that CBS made him the fall guy for the Bush story. It’s that, at least in this case, he doesn’t practice what he preached. Rather says he’s always prided himself in being a reporter first. Getting the story right, and being fair. An independent review for the network determined the Bush story was neither fair nor accurate. Rather claims he only read what a producer told him to read. That approach is at best careless and irresponsible, and at worst, incompetent. Any good reporter checks his facts, not once but twice, no matter if the source is a network producer, or a prison guard. When the target of a story is the President of the United States, in the middle of the election, the bar has to be set even higher.

By failing to do his job the right way, Rather lost what is most important to any journalist - his credibility with the public. Once that happened, CBS had no other option that to show Dan the door.

Now Rather wants his day in court and along with $70 million, a chance to have his name cleared and his reputation restored.

It will be interesting to see what happens if the case makes its way to court. My guess is all of America will then get to catch a glimpse of what I saw that April afternoon in Las Vegas.

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