Variety: Dan Rather Blasts ‘Shameful’ CBS and ABC Settlements With Trump, Draws Parallels to His Bush-Era Ouster

Story from Variety:

In 2004, Sumner Redstone was looking to add TV stations to the CBS portfolio and needed the approval of a then Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission. At the time, President George W. Bush was facing a tough opponent in his bid for reelection in Democrat nominee John Kerry. The late Viacom chairman made little secret of who he wanted to prevail in the race for the White House.

“The election of a Republican administration is a better deal,” said Redstone. “Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in.”

The Bush endorsement wasn’t just a shocking political reversal for a self-described “liberal Democrat.” It coincided with a campaign against Dan Rather, the broadcast legend and face of CBS News stemming from his “60 Minutes II” report that questioned Bush’s military service. As a downstream employee of Redstone, Rather would soon be out of a job, just like four other CBS News staffers who were fired.

“Corporate had a lot of money at stake in getting additional stations. They didn’t want to irritate the people in power,” Rather tells Variety in an exclusive interview. “That’s what ended my career at CBS News and the careers of a lot of other very good journalists.”

Fast forward two decades, and history repeated itself amid another contentious presidential election, this time between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. A “60 Minutes” interview with Harris stoked Trump’s ire not long before he retook the White House for a second term. This time, the stakes were much higher given that Redstone’s daughter Shari needed FCC approval for a Paramount sale to Skydance Media at a moment when Trump was suing CBS News for billions over the segment. In July, CBS settled the lawsuit for $16 million, and 22 days later, the FCC approved the sale. (In an exclusive column for Variety, Rather called the settlement “a sell-out to extortion by the president.)

With parallels so undeniable, the Frank Marshall-directed documentary “Rather” is a cautionary tale for those trying to make sense of the spate of cases that illustrate a media landscape eroded by overt political pressures. The Netflix film, which was released on DVD on Aug. 12, gets another shot at finding an audience at a timely juncture. Rather, who continues to work in journalism at age 93, did little press when the documentary, which traces his decades at the forefront of journalism, launched last year. But the recent state of the news business, which also saw ABC settling a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $16 million over George Stephanopoulos’ comments on a “This Week” segment, prompted Rather to reflect on a Fourth Estate under siege.

“It’s shameful,” he says of the CBS and ABC settlements. “What we are seeing is not normal.”

Rather, who has covered everything from the Vietnam War to 9/11, says the existential crisis journalists are facing began long before Trump or even Bush. Until the mid-1980s the three major networks — ABC, NBC and CBS — were owned and operated by people who believed that news should be viewed as a public service and not an arm to prop up a global conglomerate. During the Watergate scandal in 1972, for instance President Nixon tried to pressure CBS into having Rather removed for asking “impertinent questions,” as he recalls.

“The difference between yesterday and today is that [CBS founder] William S. Paley, even though he was a Republican and a Nixon person, didn’t put any pressure on the news division,” Rather adds. “Even then, there was tremendous pressure from the political powers to bring the news operation to heel. But by and large, what they got when they tried that was cold steel. Now, they get cold marshmallow at best.”

Revisiting his own ouster from CBS was painful for Rather, who was portrayed by Robert Redford in 2015’s “Truth,” a film that chronicled that chapter of his career.

“It was so unpleasant, but I fully understood it had to be in the documentary and that I didn’t want to and I did not control how they handled it,” Rather says. “We did not do [the Bush story] perfectly, but to this day, I’ll maintain the story was correct.”

Marshall, the producer behind the “Jurassic Park” and “Indiana Jones” franchises, insisted on revisiting that time when Rather was harshly critiqued by even his fellow journalists including reporters at the New York Times.

“I didn’t want to do a puff piece,” Marshall explains. “I had to pick those moments that I felt were big turning points in his career.”

Ultimately, Marshall had no idea the documentary would prove so resonant four years after he began working on it and more than two years after it was first released at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023.

''I think a healthy democracy is held accountable by the Fourth Estate,” Marshall adds. “These journalists are uncovering uncomfortable things, but it keeps people honest, and we need somebody to hold people’s feet to the fire. The truth keeps people on their toes. In today’s fragmented news, you can’t really tell where you’re getting the real truth, and that’s kind of sad.”

As for the idea that the elder Redstone called for Rather’s termination, Marshall thinks it’s possible.

“I don’t really know, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” he says. “I don’t put anything beyond anybody nowadays.”