Ex-Anchor Adrift After CBS News Cuts His Workload

While some CBS staff members say the network is treating Rather shabbily, many believe that he badly damaged the news division with his mishandling of the Guard story and that his departure is overdue. A number were shaking their heads over his recent comment to the New York Times that, having had little to do lately, he had gone five times to see the George Clooney film about Murrow, "Good Night, and Good Luck," sometimes by himself.

Rather covered wars from Vietnam to Yugoslavia to Iraq, political conventions and plenty of hurricanes in between, landing big interviews along the way. He was the first to interview President Bill Clinton after his impeachment, and the last Western journalist to sit down with Saddam Hussein before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

But Rather was also a lightning rod for conservatives, especially after his confrontational 1988 interview with Vice President George Bush over the Iran-contra scandal.

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, confirmed on his blog that he is in discussions with Rather about launching a program on HDNet, a high-definition channel that reaches about 3 million homes. "We hope to do a deal where he produces a show that uncovers news. Information with a payoff. . . . I will tell you that there won't be any corporate considerations. No earnings per share issues. No worries about advertisers and what they might think," Cuban wrote.

Rather, who commanded a multimillion-dollar salary as the face of CBS News, maintained yesterday that "too much is made of anchors and their personalities, their ups and downs," as opposed to questions about the role of a free press and the "corporatization" of news.

Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair columnist, called the CBS executives "a bunch of phony balonies" for praising Rather while dismissing him. "They looked at this with some amount of cold logic," Wolff said. "He's disgraced, he's old and we have a whole new era that's beginning, so let's get rid of him. It has no decency or compassion."

John Hinderaker, a lawyer whose conservative blog raised early questions about the disputed Guard documents, said it was "really indefensible" for Rather to have stood by the story for nearly two weeks. But, he said, "I've got some sympathy for the view that he had a long and distinguished career and that one episode shouldn't negate a lot of years of hard work. I always kind of liked the guy. He was a little quirky, an old-fashioned anchorman."

Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review, said Rather "certainly brought on a lot of his own problems with the National Guard story. But given his long history with CBS and all the work he's done, you just wish there would have been a more graceful way to end this saga. One of the hardest things in life is knowing when it's time to go."