Rather's Last Evening News Broadcast
New York – Just as he promised last year, former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather has won the right to interrogate his former bosses, including CBS president Leslie Moonves, about the handling of his dismissal in 2005.
After lengthy and costly legal wrangling, New York State Supreme Court judge Ira Gammerman has ruled that former CBS News president Andrew Heyward and CEO Moonves can be deposed by Rather’s attorneys.
Dan Rather's Goodbye
In a previous ruling Judge Gammerman set aside Dan Rather’s personal claims against CBS executives, while permitting Rather to continue to pursue his claim that CBS Corporation, as an entity, had breached his contract. Taken together, the two rulings put CBS Corporation squarely on the defense while forcing both Heyward and Moonves to testify about their actions and knowledge relating to Rather’s firing.
At issue in the case is whether CBS wrongfully violated Rather’s contract by limiting his on-air exposure and/or participation in news related programming including, but not limited to 60 Minutes.
Leslie Moonves, President, CBS Corporation
Whatever it is that CBS and Rather might gain or lose in what is largely an ego driven contest of wills pales in comparison for the stakes for broadcast journalism in particular and the Honorable Professional in general. Whether one likes or dislikes how Les Moonves has run CBS is not the issue that matters most. To the contrary, it’s how corporate interests impact what’s proffered as legitimate journalism.
Somewhere along the ownership chain following the William Paley ownership era, CBS reversed its hands-off policy towards CBS News. One result was the commercialization of news programming even as internal journalistic standards were relaxed and on-air talent made into entertainers.
But there’s more here than managerial directives to reduce news costs while optimizing news related income. What’s become more obvious in recent years is corporate involvement in journalistic values and judgments. Since it became Viacom, CBS has been involved in journalism by lawyers and bean counters. Insiders write about what happens behind closed doors, yet the public record reveals a very seamy reality.
Andrew Heyward, President, CBS News
One need look no further than the embarrassing Weigand affair ( Bergman Returns To CBS ) in which CBS lawyers persuaded Don Hewitt and Mike Wallace to drop plans to broadcast a 60 Minutes program devoted to internal misdeeds uncovered at R. J. Reynolds by Jeffrey Wigand in 1966. No matter how one feels about Dan Rather, or his lawsuit, the events surrounding his termination may be the only way the light of day might shine on the destruction of probative news by concentrated media ownership.
Rather wants to ask the embarrassing questions journalists everywhere need to hear answered.
