Dan Rather, dogged plaintiff

The ex-CBS newsman is paying a high price to clear his name over a discredited 2004 report on Bush's National Guard record.

By Matea Gold
LA Times
August 16, 2009

Reporting from New York

On a recent rainy summer afternoon, a familiar figure sat in the second row of a musty Manhattan courtroom, his head tilted expectantly as he listened to the judge. It was the latest hearing in the matter of Dan Rather vs. CBS Corp., and the plaintiff, as usual, was monitoring it in person.

"Their strategy is to string it out, wear me out, suck the will from me, and make it so painful on the pocketbook that I want to give up," Rather said of the network where he worked for nearly half a century. "Well, I have a lot of flaws and vulnerabilities, but I don't think anybody who knows me would say that there's any give-up in me."

Nearly two years after suing CBS for how it handled the aftermath of its controversial report about George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, the veteran anchor is still avidly engaged in the fight. In legal terms, the case is about breach of contract and fraud.

But to Rather, 77, the battle serves a much grander and more valiant end -- a counterpunch against corporate bullying of the press, "the red beating heart of democracy." The suit's outcome could ultimately determine his journalistic legacy: that of a champion of the truth, no matter the cost, or of a diminished newsman who let an egregious error slip by.

(Continued here.)