Rather VS CBS-Paramount: Are we go for discovery?

By Number Six

Thursday, January 10, 2008 at 06:28 PM

Aha! Neat! Seems a judge said that the lawsuit between former CBS anchor Dan Rather and his former employer, CBS may begin...well, somewhat, that is....

From Raw Story:

A judge said Wednesday that he was leaning toward allowing Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit over his being fired by CBS to proceed.

"I concluded there was enough in the complaint (by Rather) to continue with discovery (pretrial research)," state Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman said at a hearing on CBS' motion to dismiss the case.

That is, yes, most interesting, as legal folk know, the "discovery" phase of a trial is where both sides purchase John Deere backhoes....and go a-diggin', yep.

It's pretty obvious what Rather and his team want to know: Why did a news story...that very much mirrored one done earlier by gadfly journalist Greg Palast on the BBC...how did that get him canned? Yes. Greg says as much: (from his own site)..

Just three months before the election, Rather had a story that might have changed the outcome of that razor-close race. We now know that Dan cut a back-room deal to shut his mouth, grab his ankles, and let his network retract a story he knew to be absolutely true.

In September 2004 when Rather cowered, Bush was riding high in the polls. Now, with Bush’s approval ratings are below smallpox, Rather has come out of hiding to shoot at the lame duck. Thanks, Dan.

It began on September 8, 2004, when Rather, on CBS, ran a story that Daddy Bush Senior had, in 1968, put in the fix to get his baby George out of the Vietnam War and into the Texas Air National Guard. Little George then rode out the war defending Houston from Viet Cong attack.

The story is stone-cold solid. I know, because we ran it on BBC Television a year before CBS (see that broadcast here). BBC has never retracted a word of it.

But CBS caved. So did Dan.

Indeed, why? At no time did Mr. Palast appear before Das Chimperor and apologize...as has been alleged that someone at CBS did. Why? Simple, the story was 100 percent accurate. So, what lies ahead for Rather and this discovery deal? Among such things, the details of a White Slum-CBS connection of some sort, yes. It will, indeed, be most interesting to see where this story goes.