Dan Rather on Your World
Dan Rather appeared on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” this afternoon to discuss the latest developments in his lawsuit against CBS. Transcript highlights follow…
Cavuto: Dan, you and I work in a system where contracts can be torn up for a variety of reasons, right? Maybe you’re not getting ratings, or you’re at the whim of management. You were in the middle of something very controversial. End of story, right?
Rather: No, not end of story. It is true that big corporations such as Viacom and CBS can make their own decisions. But a written contract is a written contract. And this contract was written in such a way that if they remove me from the anchor chair, which they had the right to do, they were obligated by contract to make me a full-time regular correspondent– first a combination of 60 Minutes II and 60 Minutes, but any time 60 Minutes II was to be taken off the air, that I was to go immediately to 60 Minutes as a full-time correspondent.
Cavuto: How far along were you in your contract? How many years did you have to go?
Rather: When the Bush/Guard story started, that was 2004 in September. And the contract ran until the end of 2006. But fair dealing is part of this lawsuit.
Cavuto: Sounds to me like they were just waiting you out, right? He’s off the Evening News, we put him on 60 Minutes or 60 Minutes II, at our discretion how much time we give him. Wait him out and say goodbye.Rather: Sorry– that wasn’t a fair description. They were contractually obligated to make me a regular full-time correspondent.
Cavuto: But you had already apologized on air for the story, right?
Rather: That is true.
Cavuto: See what I am saying? Some people come back now and say, this suit doesn’t make sense. He’s already apologized. He’s already all but said, hey I screwed up.
Rather: People are going to think what they think, and they are entitled to make their own opinions.
Dan’s a big crybaby.
Comment by Roger C. — September 22, 2007 @ 11:09 am
It’s all about the money..Imus got an settlement so he’s betting he’ll get one too…but as far as the merits go..Dan tried to help the Kerry campaign and so ran this story with forged documents and got caught so CBS canned him…seems cut and dry to me.
Comment by mlong — September 22, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
Dan claimed in that interview that he wasn’t 100% comfortable with that story, but was pressured to run it. Later on in the interview, he said that he was the main editorial guy of the broadcast or something… so maybe he pressured himself to run it? Either that, or someone well above him forced him to do it, which I would say is pretty unlikely.
Comment by Nobody — September 22, 2007 @ 11:57 pm
Rather was the Managing Editor & anchor for CBS News. That means every fact, every detail, every source needed to be looked over, and ultimately approved, by him. He failed miserably.
They used a source they knew was unreliable and openly hated Bush. They used documents their own experts had serious questions about. Rather blew it and his attempts to reestablish his legacy are pathetic.
It’s over Dan. Show some of your famous “courage” and get on with your life.
Comment by bigred — September 23, 2007 @ 2:45 pm