Dan Rather Lawsuit Against CBS Tossed

Dan Rather




Mary Mapes

The worst in American journalism


Although I am no fan of CBS News, I am gratified to hear that a court has tossed out Dan Rather's lawsuit against the network for 70 million dollars. Rather was involved in one of the most disgraceful episodes in American journalism history in 2004 when he and reporter Mary Mapes broke a story about George W Bush's service in the National Guard that relied on forged documents. As a result, CBS shortened his tenure as anchor.

Not only did the Bush story center around forged National Guard documents, Rather and CBS had been alerted to their suspect nature by document examiners. They still stood behind the documents and ran with the story.

Not only that, but Mapes, a highly-partisan reporter like Rather, turned the story over to the Kerry campaign in the run up to the 2004 presidential election. Thus, the breaking of a negative story about Bush, given to the Kerry campaign and timed to break shortly before the November 2004 election, was a blatant attempt to affect the outcome of said election. Once the facts came out, an embarrassed and discredited CBS decided to replace Rather as their anchor-though he had planned to retire in the coming year. They put him on a show that was better suited to his "talents", namely "60 Minutes" and continued to pay him a hefty salary.

Still, Rather decided to sue.

It might also be pointed out that the untruthfulness of the story had to be uncovered by conservative bloggers-a harbinger of things to come-as the Main Stream Media proved unwilling or incapable of cleaning its own house and rooting out fact from fiction in its reporting. (Mapes still claims that she was unfairly done in by the right-wing".)

The Rather/Mapes episode should be standard textbook fare in journalism schools as how not to break a news story. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that the scandal is probably downplayed or ignored in journalism classrooms around the country. Hopefully, yesterday's decision will again shine the spotlight on this disgrace.