Former CBS News anchorman Dan Rather claims that the network won’t release archived film footage of his career that he requested.

From the Daily Beast

The titanic legal struggle between Dan Rather and CBS seems to get pettier by the day.

The trouble started with Rather’s much-criticized, ultimately career-ending 60 Minutes II report on President George W. Bush’s military record, just before the 2004 election. It resulted in his 2007 breach-of-contract and fraud suit against the network and its parent company, Viacom. But as the $70 million suit heads for possible trial in January—with yet another preliminary hearing scheduled next Monday in New York State Supreme Court—the tone has grown increasingly bitter, and the shrapnel is flying thick and fast.

The latest contretemps involve such momentous issues as: whether the forced-out anchorman, who held the job for 24 years, would be welcomed at the recent funeral and memorial service for his legendary predecessor, Walter Cronkite; whether the 77-year-old Rather was sufficiently represented in a CBS News special celebrating Cronkite’s life and times, or in photos displayed during the memorial service at Avery Fisher Hall; whether an independent filmmaker hoping to make a Rather documentary would be granted access to CBS News archival footage; and whether CBS, in Orwellian style, is trying to make Rather a non-person and erase him from the corporate memory.

Several of these questions, floated by the Rather camp, are open to varied interpretations depending on who’s answering them—the journalistic equivalent of a Rorschach ink blot. The CBS loyalists reject them as unfounded. But as with nearly everything regarding the congenitally controversial Rather—who anchors Dan Rather Reports on Mark Cuban’s HDNet and occasionally writes for The Daily Beast—the reality is a tangled web woven by tangled people.

In another display of apparent pique, CBS refused Rather’s request to purchase archival material from his four decades at the network (although he does, per his severance agreement, have access to the video and photos that were used in a one-hour special on his career that aired when he stopped anchoring The CBS Evening News in 2005). What’s more, CBS recently denied archival material to an independent filmmaker exploring the possibility of a Rather documentary.

According to Jeff Ballabon, CBS News senior vice president for communications: “The documentarian asked CBS only to provide video of Dan Rather’s ‘misstatements and embarrassing moments.’ CBS declined that request, as we likely would decline any similar request aimed at embarrassing our talent.”

But filmmaker Fritz Mitchell’s account is very much at odds with Ballabon’s version: “We didn’t say that. We said the documentary would include his entire career, warts and all, and the majority of the footage we were going to be looking for was Vietnam, the Kennedy assassination and stuff like that.” Mitchell said he was told that “CBS’s position was they were in the middle of a lawsuit, and it was just not a good time to play that game, and give out footage of Dan, but we never really found out the reasons why.”

Maybe it was just a misunderstanding but since the court fight has been particularly nasty I wouldn’t be surprised if CBS decided to play a little tit for tat game until the suit is settled.

 

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