Dan Rather: Victim of r/w conspiracy?

A Rather Controversial Ending
Dan Rather’s $70 million lawsuit alleges there was more to his CBS departure than meets the eye. But former colleagues aren’t convinced.

Web Exclusive
By Johnnie L. Roberts
Newsweek
Updated: 1:37 p.m. ET Sept. 21, 2007

Sept. 21, 2007 - In parts, it reads like a political thriller, with a cast of “right-wing” hit men out to force a powerful journalist to heel. Or a tale of corporate deceit, in which Machiavellian suits sacrifice their own to cozy up to the president of the United States. Or a behind-the-scenes saga of a network news division assembling a story that could help unseat an incumbent president at the polls.

In fact, the 32-page document is former CBS anchor Dan Rather’s stunning, $70 million lawsuit filed yesterday against the network, its corporate owners and his bosses stemming from “Memogate,” the flawed three-year-old report on the nearly four-decade-old military record of President George W. Bush—an account that blackened the eye of CBS News and apparently hastened the end of Rather’s 44-year career at the network.

In dropping the legal bombshell, Rather, 75, alleges that CBS and his former bosses “coerced” him into apologizing for a controversial story in which his role was little more than that of a narrator. Two months after the broadcast, he was bounced from the anchor desk, two years earlier than originally planned. Rather also maintains that he was subsequently marginalized in his new full-time job at “60 Minutes,” robbed of airtime and shortchanged on staffing. And although he was found largely blameless, Rather contends that a CBS-commissioned probe of the story was “biased,” asserting in the suit that the investigation reached “conclusions that were preordained to find fault with the broadcast and those persons responsible for it.”

There was a motive, he argues, for this “egregious conduct toward him.” He was being made the “scapegoat” by, among others, CBS executive chairman Sumner Redstone and CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves. Their motives were “to pacify the White House,” “appease angry government officials” or “to curry favor with the Bush administration” as a means of advancing the corporate interest of CBS owner Viacom. In addition, Moonves’s “wrongful acts” partly reflected unspecified “personal interests.” Among other things, Rather contends, the acts constituted a “breach of contract, fraud … and interference with prospective economic advantage.” He asserts that he suffered “significant financial loss” and serious damage to his reputation. The suit appears designed to burnish his image and recover his financial losses.

more...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20906349/site/newsweek/

That would be really funny if it wasn't true.

TC

Unlike most around here, I never denegrate the intelligence of Freepers. It is too easy to say they are stupid. They are not. In fact, in some ways, they are much smarter than we are.

One of those ways is how to change the subject. In thhe Bush-=AWOL story, the Freepers -- in one week -- managed to change the topic from a phoney frat boy president evading his obligations into questioning the morality of the reporter trying to TELL people that the frat boy president evaded his obligations.

Of COURSE Rather was framed.

Do not underestimate Freepers.

Or any other form of Nazi.