Former network news anchor and broadcast journalist Dan Rather is suing CBS and three of his former bosses for $70 million. He claims that they damaged his reputation in the aftermath of that whole fiasco where he insisted on reporting as real news what turned out to be forged documents questioning President Bush’s National Guard service.
Rather says that CBS made him “a scapegoat” so it could make nice with the White House. This included forcing him to read a public apology created by the PR department on his own newscast, “despite his own personal feelings that no public apology from him was warranted.”
All of which which means that Dan was lying when he told the nation that he was sorry for screwing up. And that has to make you wonder about the integrity of a guy who is suing to protect his integrity, given these exact words that he read to the camera on September 20, 2004:
“Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry.
It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.”
Dan Rather currently has a weekly news show on HDNet, which I and millions of Americans can’t find on our cable systems. The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric has meanwhile gone on to become the lowest-rated network news show.
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- New York Times | Rather suing CBS, saying it made him a “scapegoat”
