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Dan Rather Sues CBS

Pani

Pani

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 30, 2007
72
0
Chicago
Dan Rather is suing CBS: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18440.htm

Personally, I say good for him! I don't believe he is doing it for the money. I think he is trying to call attention to the fact that mainstream media is more and more becoming both a giant commercial and propaganda machine. Maybe it will take a celebrity from the media itself to wake up the masses to this problem.
 
The elephant in the room: By suing CBS, Dan Rather is in effect admitting that he and other news anchors just read the news, they don't report it. Dan Schor did a commentary about this issue a day or so ago on NPR. The irony is that Rather might have saved his job had he been prepared to say this at the time these events transpired. Now in essence he's suing CBS for having too big of an ego. Imagine my sympathy.
 
IJ Reilly said:
The elephant in the room: By suing CBS, Dan Rather is in effect admitting that he and other news anchors just read the news, they don't report it. Dan Schor did a commentary about this issue a day or so ago on NPR. The irony is that Rather might have saved his job had he been prepared to say this at the time these events transpired. Now in essence he's suing CBS for having too big of an ego. Imagine my sympathy.
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You captured my thoughts.
 
NPR and the rest of public t.v/radio is increasingly coming under corporate control. They are no less corporate puppets than their commercial counterparts. So he was probably just towing the corporate line when he attacked Rather! No doubt some in media are resentful he took a stand and bucked the system. It also seems some people need to attach a certainty to their information, from academic theories to news, that just isn't there. I guess it is easier to quote facts than think about how complex things really are.
 
I don't get it.

Either he was a mere news reader or he was a company executive with responsibility for selecting, investigating or verifying the news.

If a mere news reader, then clearly it was unfair to sack the sock puppet.

If an executive, then yes he should have done his job better. Or have proof that his bosses leant on him to pass the story. (which I hope he has).

Sorry I'm in the UK, I dunno who this bloke is, and the linked article doesn't make his job description clear.
 
sushi said:
You captured my thoughts.
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Thanks. The ransom won't be cheap. ;)

Pani said:
NPR and the rest of public t.v/radio is increasingly coming under corporate control. They are no less corporate puppets than their commercial counterparts. So he was probably just towing the corporate line when he attacked Rather! No doubt some in media are resentful he took a stand and bucked the system. It also seems some people need to attach a certainty to their information, from academic theories to news, that just isn't there. I guess it is easier to quote facts than think about how complex things really are.
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Oh, nonsense. Do you know anything at all about Dan Schor? For one, he doesn't "attack" anybody.
 
Pani said:
NPR and the rest of public t.v/radio is increasingly coming under corporate control. They are no less corporate puppets than their commercial counterparts.
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Just wanted to chime in with agreement, here. I've been hearing Wal-Mart and McDonald's commercials on NPR. How do you think that'll affect their ability to report (or not report) on these and other corporations?

Anymore, it's hard to get "good" news. I lost hope in the networks long ago, and now it seems that the more "independent" news carriers (of the left and the right, not that there's too much difference) are more and more suspect.
 
IJ Reilly said:
NPR does not run any commercials.
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What, you don't regard those "... brought to you by...x, and y, and, z and.." as commercials?

They are creeeeeeping, no? They used to pretty much say "by X." now it's already "by X, making your banking easier (or your carpets cleaner or your commute time more fun or your carpets easier to clean or whatever).
 
I'm not trying to be flippant or argumentative, but what corporations control NPR and since when did they start running commercials? I haven't been in the US for awhile, so I'm not sure if things have changed or not.
 
LizKat said:
What, you don't regard those "... brought to you by...x, and y, and, z and.." as commercials?

They are creeeeeeping, no? They used to pretty much say "by X." now it's already "by X, making your banking easier (or your carpets cleaner or your commute time more fun or your carpets easier to clean or whatever).
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MacHipster said:
I'm not trying to be flippant or argumentative, but what corporations control NPR and since when did they start running commercials? I haven't been in the US for awhile, so I'm not sure if things have changed or not.
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NPR has had corporate sponsors for as long as I can remember, but no advertising. Often the NPR content is confused with the local NPR affiliate. The affiliates buy the content from NPR -- how they fund the purchase is up to them. Some of these stations sound a lot more commercial than others, but this is a local decision, not one from NPR. The same is true of PBS. Our local PBS affiliate has been running actual ads for several years now.
 
RedTomato said:
Sorry I'm in the UK, I dunno who this bloke is, and the linked article doesn't make his job description clear.
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Dan Rather was the long time anchor of the CBS Evening News. He was fired after a story he did about President Bush that was found to be forged.
Wiki said:
is the former longtime anchor for the CBS Evening News and is now under contract and scheduled to serve as managing editor and anchor of a new television news magazine, Dan Rather Reports, on the new cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, from March 9, 1981 to March 9, 2005. He also contributed to CBS' 60 Minutes. Rather's career at CBS News ended in a 2004 credibility crisis when the contents of allegedly forged documents were broadcast in the heat of the 2004 US Presidential elections, which led to Rather's 2005 ouster from the anchor role, demotion to correspondent and later firing in 2006. On September 19, 2007, Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against the network, its former parent company Viacom Inc., and three of his former bosses. Rather said he was denied airtime on "60 Minutes," among other complaints outlined in the lawsuit, CBS Radio reported.
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What CBS argued was that Rather should of checked his facts first before running the story. The whole thing was a huge credibility hit for CBS News and that is why he was fired.
 
MacNut said:
Dan Rather was the long time anchor of the CBS Evening News. He was fired after a story he did about President Bush that was found to be forged.
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Alleged, not found, to be forged, as even the wikipedia article you quote says. The issue here is whether Rather is the person who should have been held responsible for a lack of reporting diligence. I think he was prepared to take the hit because he didn't want to admit at the time that he's a reader, not a reporter, and also because CBS was giving him a graceful way out. Now Rather is angry at CBS for not holding up their end of the deal, which again, seems to me to be more about ego than anything else.
 
Duff-Man says...oh c'mon...he has become an embarrassment and is just looking more and more petty and foolish now. He's not got a chance because he is wrong now and he was wrong before...oh yeah!
 
I agree that CBS was looking for an excuse to can Rather, ratings were falling and they wanted a new direction. Wether or not Dan Rather was just a puppet or did it on his own he still should of done his homework.
 
MacNut said:
I agree that CBS was looking for an excuse to can Rather, ratings were falling and they wanted a new direction. Wether or not Dan Rather was just a puppet or did it on his own he still should of done his homework.
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A scapegoat, really. Anchors don't do homework -- they just read from the TelePrompTer.
 
Yeah, I think that Rather held an editorial position as well. Also, I don't think that Rather was fired, but instead chose to resign as the walls were caving in. If CBS would have fired him after walking off the set during his hissy fit years ago like Walter Cronkite suggested then they would have had a much better leg to stand on in a court battle. As to why he went ahead with the Killian documents story I think his colleage at CBS, Andy Rooney, said it best: "there's no doubt that he (Rather) ran that thing (the unverified story) because it was negative towards Bush."
 
MacNut said:
Isn't Brian Williams senior editor of the NBC Nightly News.
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Cavemate K said:
Yeah, I think that Rather held an editorial position as well.
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As Dan Schor pointed out in the commentary IJReilly mentioned earlier, the lead anchors often take an editorial title in order to keep up the illusion that they are still (if they ever were) ear-to-the-ground reporters, when in fact they are nothing more that newsreaders. It was Rather's wish to preserve this illusion that led to him becoming the primary scapegoat. If he had been willing to admit that he was under the oppressive heel of the teleprompter, that his "editorial review" was a façade, then perhaps he'd still be blathering on CBS today.

Here's a link to the Dan Schor piece....judging by the controls, it requires Realplayer.
 
To MacHipster and anyone else who is interested in public t.v/radio coming under corporate control, here is just one article:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1905

Also, everyone should know what a VNR (Video News Release) is. It is a commercial, bought and paid for by sponsors, that is inserted in the newsprogram to look like legitimate news. It is getting harder than ever to separate legitimate news from corporate hype! That is why I am glad this lawsuit is going through. It will bring attention to the issue. Although, in typical Amercian fashion, we are already bringing it down to the most narrow scope, the responsibility of the newscaster himself. Personally, I am interested in the bigger picture, like how much corporate and government censorship exists at the top.
 
The big guns never report the news, they make it.

Dan seems to be attempting to salvage what was once a great reputation.

lanray said:
Just wanted to chime in with agreement, here. I've been hearing Wal-Mart and McDonald's commercials on NPR. How do you think that'll affect their ability to report (or not report) on these and other corporations?

Anymore, it's hard to get "good" news. I lost hope in the networks long ago, and now it seems that the more "independent" news carriers (of the left and the right, not that there's too much difference) are more and more suspect.
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Too late. NPR is already slanted and may be beyond salvaging its image. Hopefully not. They have a lot of potential but their production style is way to creepy for me. I keep waiting for them to tell me to drink the kool-aid.

If they don't become too slanted they may avoid circling the bowl as Air America did.
 
I'm all for making it public and glaringly obvious why it's bad for a handful of people to pretty much control everything this country hears, watches, and reads, but I really can't feel for Rather here. As IJ has said, Rather is seemingly changing his story from "the buck stops here" to "no, I was really a patsy". Pick one and live w/it. If Rather was championing someone else's cause against CBS, or going on a speaking tour talking about the dangers of consolidation of media ownership then that would be one thing. But w/the lawsuit just feels like he wants to rewrite his place in journalistic history.


Lethal
 
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