Rather Explains Suit Against CBS: "The Only Punishment They Understand Is Money"

Washington Post:

He's not giving up. He feels he has been wronged. He wants to prove it. And he is determined to stick it to CBS executives in the process.

"The only punishment they understand is the money," Dan Rather said yesterday, explaining why he filed a $70 million lawsuit this week against the network he called home for 44 years.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[msfiskvletterman]

04:58 PM on 09/21/2007

9/21/07
4:51pm
UVM
Burlington, VT

Here's a tip for Dan Rather since I sued these same people back in 2003 and am just now filing the appeal because my case was dismissed (thanks to various low maneuvers--like the US Marshals having problems finding my defendants and serving them, etc., etc.,):

If CBS did a favor for the WH by burying the Bush story, then various Exec. Branch agencies will now do favors for CBS and try to screw up Dan's case.

Yeah, it's illegal.

[HBeachbum]

05:10 PM on 09/21/2007

Filing the appeal ... meaning you lost your case. I'm sure Dan is looking for your advice.

[themainpoint]

02:06 PM on 09/21/2007

Rather is a respected journalist with a long record of first-rate journalism. He's courageously joined a growing group of credible voices attesting to the fact that the US media puts out propaganda for the benefit of a few interest groups and corporations.

So unfortunate that we lost Rather, Peter Jennings and the rest of our trusty, old-timers right when the WMD nonsense was being pushed and during Bush's reelection.

I recently attended a private conference with some top journalists and alumni from one of America’s top universities. A man on a discussion panel asked the audience of around 200 people how many felt the media was no longer credible. Every hand in the audience shot up without hesitation. I read a lot of foreign news, so I already knew US news was untrustworthy on some key issues, but this was startling.

US media won’t address key issues that would upset the corporate or special interest apple cart. Instead, they divert public attention away from the key issues and play endless hours of Paris Hilton or neutral news like whether some hurricane will get big. Key news is hidden in the back pages or topped with misleading headlines.

When key issues get “out of the bag” some other way, US media jumps to spin those issues and control what the public thinks. They stack the so-called “experts” deck and we see endless panels, committees and pundits who Profit-- in one way or another-- from saying what they are expected to say.

How US media operates from the horses mouth: go to Grist.org and search for an interview with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, called “Murdock She Wrote.” Like Oz behind the curtain, Murdoch admits that when it seemed his business would attract more viewers and higher profits from the global warming issue…only then did he give the go ahead to (his) News Corp’s pundits, tv shows, and book publishers to weave in more talk on global warming. Now there’s a news source we can trust to offer no public benefit.

[deepintheheartoftejas]

01:38 PM on 09/21/2007

Yada yada, "fake but accurate". Just like the Nigerian Yellowcake Forgeries. George Tenet and Collin Powell both vouched for them!

The story, and any retrospective of Rather's career, is always going to be tainted by the fact that, like Bush, CBS rushed to judgment and publication without any kind of critical examination.

[Will7]

01:29 PM on 09/21/2007

Some of you folks are treating Gunga Dan as some kind of poor waif. Let's all remember that this was a man who, along with his producer, Mary Mapes, were trying to bring down a sitting President several days before the election. Their Bush hatred was so intense, so white hot, that it led them to make stupid mistakes.

Or were they even mistakes?

[StillAmused]

09:47 PM on 09/21/2007

Check back on Page 1, dimwit... posted some reading assignments for you.

[StillAmused]

09:52 PM on 09/21/2007

Correction: Page 2.

... and you're still a dimwit.

[electricphoto]

12:59 PM on 09/21/2007

"Many of his friends think he has lost it..." yeah who? How many?

Smell the smear? See the entire fifth paragraph use words to disgrace his credibility, and suggest motive, all from people unnamed?

Watch the same style show up in story after story in the press. - wonder how that happens?

Many people say the Washington Post reporter who wrote this is a pedophile - I'm not saying this, but many people say that. Is that OK - gotta problem with that?

It's a technique right out of the book on propaganda... used by some of the best in the media industry.

Tell us who said that, how many and why is that important to the story?

It's important because Rather knows how to get at the truth and people in power know it and fear what he can uncover. So keep up the smear to keep his voice from gaining traction.

When will someone ask was Armstrong Williams the only columnist or reporter who received money ($241,000) to say what the white house wanted said?

When will people ask reporters and pundits who give prominent voice to the party line and participate in attacks if they are just loyal or are they receiving payment or benefits.

America now has the finest press money can buy.

Rather is washed up, has no credibility, like those liberals and MoveOn and, here let me check my GOP memo, oh yeah and the Huff post... many people say that. I'm not saying that.

What is the cost to get a smear run in article after article?

Follow the money and find the truth - a lesson taught to us by a young Dan Rather on a news program called 60 minutes.

[dezzertguy]

12:10 PM on 09/21/2007

If that were true, they would have gotten rid of him a long time ago. And, they woud not keep Kouric. These anchors are money losers. Neither have the confidence of the viewing public. Rather is trying to keep his name in the public and maybe get some gravy. I still say he is upset Imus was fired but got a settlement on his contract. Rather was a a pet of the MSM and did what they wanted. Just getting caught is not enough to stop the gravy train. At least not in his opinion.

[Crozier]

12:07 PM on 09/21/2007

Dan Rather's career began when news departments of national networks were non-profit. His career was launched by the JFK assassination in 1963, and by his Vietnam war reporting for the next decade.

After becoming anchor, Dan Rather's beloved CBS was first made a vassal of WMD manufacturer Westinghouse and then Viacom International. I am unaware which international corporation owns CBS today.

Yes, Rather was a whore for multimillions. He felt that his personna could overcome the newstertainment and scandalous management of truth that these "parent companies" would exert.

After all, these megacorporate international fascists bought many nation's aural, written and visual media in order to damage control their true motives and objectives: greed and power, and a 21st century return to feudalism.

MoveOn.Org was censored by the Democratic Party senators as well as the neocon Rethuglicans. This is after the POTUS told the "democrat party" (aka Democratic Party) that unlike Swiftboat and Max Cleland's hatchet job, this telling the truth about a political general was an "abomination."

Holy Hypocrisy, Batman !!!!!!

[Crozier]

12:09 PM on 09/21/2007

Dan Rather had to lie - after being betrayed by these neocon immoral fascists - about George W. Bush and his expunged records of drink and drugs turning the devil himself into a canonised saint.

Rather had the real information with falsified documents that ironically revealed the truth about what happened. How Machievellian or how Rovian !!!!

[Will7]

12:56 PM on 09/21/2007

And your proof of expunged documents, please?

Didn't think so.

[cryingeagle]

11:34 AM on 09/21/2007

''The fact is, I had always overestimated the amount of freedom that was allowed.'' This laconic lament by a Chinese journalist who spent most of his working life in Maoist purgatory may be the understatement of the year. Liu Binyan portrays himself in this moving memoir as a wise fool. Again and again he calls attention to the wrongs he sees in Chinese society in the belief that the Communist Party, his party, will put things right. Again and again he is gagged, purged or incarcerated for telling the unpalatable truth.

A HIGHER KIND OF LOYALTY
A Memoir by China's Foremost Journalist.
By Liu Binyan.

[olivia]

10:42 AM on 09/21/2007

Howard Kurtz tried hard to smear Dan Rather in this piece. What does WaPo have to hide here? I love how he quotes "friends" of Rather without actually naming any. This is the new way for the neocons to smear people and they must be called out on it, every time. "Some say," "some would say" ... you hear that more and more.

You can tell Howard Kurtz what you think of his piece here:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/howard+kurtz/

[olivia]

10:30 AM on 09/21/2007

$70 million seems much too little for destroying Dan Rather AND deceiving the American public.

Yes, deceiving the American public. CBS did not do its job, which would have been to research and tell the WHOLE STORY about the faked documents.

CBS lost all credibility with me then. There is no journalism left in broadcast news.

[ownsthepodium]

10:24 AM on 09/21/2007

Why are liberals so illogical, immature and intolerant?
Explanation here: http://tinyurl.com/35b48v

[olivia]

10:31 AM on 09/21/2007

Don't you have any place to go where people actually like you? What are you doing here? Poor lonely thing!

[ownsthepodium]

10:36 AM on 09/21/2007

I'm here keeping an eye on you huffkid hatemongers. The day jihadist tools like you 'tards like me will be a sad day indeed.

[WilliePilgrim]

10:19 AM on 09/21/2007

Statements like this always carry more weight when they come from someone for whom the money means nothing. In Rather's case, I'll believe his sentiments when I know the awared amount is going to go to a charity in its entirety.

[AcitizenNJ]

10:00 AM on 09/21/2007

i just hope this does go to a full trial and the Mr. Rather has the funds to fight the the fight. because if the real journalist behind the corporate media don't feel the need to stand and be counted then Mr. Rather is in a deep hole by himself. what i'd like to see is that a trial might reveal the forces behind and within cbs that send Mr. Rather packing. go get'em Mr. Rather !

looking back it was interesting that the allegation of his military service record or lack of came down to a typewriter which decided the outcome. please, we all have known someone that was rich or politically conected that avoided vietnam at all costs, which he did.

[Will7]

10:25 AM on 09/21/2007

The typeset was part of it. Another Rather lie was that there was a waiting list of pilots for the TANG. Totally false.

Another Rather lie was the Killian memo, which turned out to be a forgery.

Another Rather lie was ther reference to military standards that didn't exist at the time.

Another Rather lie was the reference to President Bush's physical exam.

Another Rather lie was the reference to the Officer who supposedly pressured this matter. Trouble is, he had retired eighteen months before all this transpired.

Ol' Dan is even too stupid to lie well.

And on and on and on and...

[fitz]

09:44 AM on 09/21/2007

Rathergate is even more egregious than the Imus firing.

Don Imus was paid big bucks by CBS radio to be irreverent, obnoxious and offensive. Then CBS fired him for being irreverent, obnoxious and offensive.

Dan Rather was paid big bucks by CBS television to be a wacked out liberal shill, whore for the democrat party, an operative who would attempt to sway public opinion toward unpopular socialist causes through misrepresentation and deception, and a character assasain highly trained in fraud and forgery.

Then they fire him because just because he gets exposed as the charlatan that he is, the charlatan that they trained him to be.

I say foul! Go get 'em Dano! I want to know who knew what, and when at CBS. We all know you are way to stupid to have attempted to pull your last hoax off all by yourself.

You were just doing your job at CBS, faking the news in an attempt to reach a desired outcome. That is just standard business practice at CBS.

Stick it to the Man, Dan!

[Will7]

09:34 AM on 09/21/2007

You have to understand that ol' Dan wasn't the brightest bulb in the socket even back in the 50's at that esteemed institute of higher learning, the Sam Houston State Teacher's College.

Seems he's about as bright now as he was back then.