Synthstuff - music, photography and more...

Dan Rather's lawsuit dismissed

Ex-Journalist Dan Rather tried to pawn an obvious fake document (the George Bush TANG papers) as legitimate in an attempt to discredit President Bush. It took Charles Johnson about an hour to to scan the document, type the same document in Microsoft Word (default settings) and alternate the two images in this animated GIF: One of these images was supposedly written in 1973, one of them was written in 2004. There is no typewriter that could produce a document like that in 1973. You could do this on a phototypesetter but you would not use one for a casual memo. Rather was summarily let go and he sued CBS for $70,000,000 worth of lost income and damages. Today, the suit was dismissed. From Yahoo/Reuters:

Appeals court dismisses Dan Rather's suit vs. CBS
A New York state appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former TV newsman Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS Corp in which Rather claimed he was made a scapegoat in a scandal over a 2004 report on then-President George W. Bush's military record.

The ruling on Tuesday by a panel of judges of the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division said Rather's $70 million complaint should be dismissed in its entirety and that a lower court erred in denying CBS's motion to throw out the lawsuit.

Rather says CBS breached his contract by not giving him enough on-air assignments after he was removed as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" in March 2005.

The appeals court ruled he failed to sufficiently support his claim that he lost business opportunities due to CBS's failure to release him to seek other employment.

Rather sued CBS, parent of the CBS television network, Viacom and others in September 2007, claiming he had been made a scapegoat to "pacify the White House." CBS was part of Viacom until the companies split in 2006.

Emphasis mine. I love that line about pacifying the White House. There was no pacifying needed -- the document he hinged his story on was so patently fake he should be ashamed of himself AND his support staff for not recognizing it for what it was. He wanted to believe and that was enough for him. That is not journalism... Posted by DaveH at September 29, 2009 7:19 PM