Marc Cuban painted a big red
kick me sign on himself when he hired Dan Rather.
Here is what the former CBS anchor had to say about his current employer, Marc Cuban recently:
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2008/10/17/rather-mark-cuban-is-a-modern-day-paley Later, Rather, who now works for HDNet, suggested that the cable channel's owner, Mark Cuban, will prove to be a savior of independent journalism.
"So much depends on whether, at the very top, particularly the ownership goes back to at least some semblance of seeing news as a public trust and has some commitment to making sure that news is practiced in the public interest," said Rather.
Them is fighting words if you are Karl Rove and your vision has been a cowed, complacent corporate media which toes the Republican Party line. The Bush administration can not touch St. Dan, who was martyred by his own network and who is now battling giants in court---with embarrassing results for the Grand Old Party.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/media/17rather.html Rather’s Lawsuit Show Role of GOP in Inquiry at CBS
Using tools unavailable to him as a reporter — including the power of subpoena and the threat of punishment against witnesses who lie under oath — (Rather) has unearthed evidence that would seem to support his assertion that CBS intended its investigation, at least in part, to quell Republican criticism of the network.
Among the materials that money has shaken free for Mr. Rather are internal CBS memorandums turned over to his lawyers, showing that network executives used Republican operatives to vet the names of potential members of a panel that had been billed as independent and charged with investigating the “60 Minutes” segment.
Snip
But the judge has permitted Mr. Rather to go forward with the core of his case, including his argument that CBS had limited his work as a correspondent after he left the anchor desk and, in the process, damaged his reputation. The case is on track to go to trial soon, possibly early in the new year.
Snip
Another memorandum turned over to Mr. Rather’s lawyers by CBS was a long typed list of conservative commentators apparently receiving some preliminary consideration as panel members, including Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan. At the bottom of that list, someone had scribbled “Roger Ailes,” the founder of Fox News.
Rather does not have to
win the lawsuit against CBS. He is rich. He is famous. He has one of the highest name recognitions and one of the highest favorability ratings of any television journalist in America. Rather just needs a good closer for his book. Win or lose, getting his case to court for a good old fashioned legal
showdown that will allow him to create a suspenseful finish to the memoir---and then the major motion picture---will ensure that millions of Americans finally learn the truth about CBS and the Bush administration. And that means Bush’s AWOL adventures in the National Guard, too.
The many executives at CBS are afraid. Bush is afraid. Harry MacDougald, aka “Buckhead” is afraid. All of them will be portrayed by character actors in a less than unflattering light----unless they can get someone to exert pressure on Rather to stop this suit.
That is where the Martha Stewart strategy comes in. Remember Martha? The Democrat who was burned at the stake, because of the Enron scandal? Her crime was not insider trading. Her crime was publicly denying insider trading---which the feds said was a crime designed to prop up her own stock prices (yeah, in America it can be a crime to insist upon your own innocence).
Here is an analysis of what Cuban actually did.
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/did-mark-cuban-commit-insider-trading-In an article entitled “Did Marc Cuban commit insider trading?”
If the allegations in the SEC's press release are true and complete, the answer is most likely "yes." Mark Cuban's argument is likely to be that he did not break a duty of confidentiality. This is probably why, its statement of fact, the SEC goes to great lengths to suggest that he did.
Basically, if Cuban can show that he was informed of changes in the company, but that he did not promise to keep the information confidential---i.e. he was ready to tell the world what he had learned---then he is not guilty of insider trading. Maybe this is why we are seeing civil but not criminal charges filed.
Another online article called “Why the Case Against Marc Cuban Smells Fishy” suggests that the head of the SEC chair Christopher Cox is trying to make up for the scolding Congress gave it for its failure to pursue securities fraud cases. So, they are going after a VIP that will get them lots of press.
http://gigaom.com/2008/11/17/why-the-case-against-cuban-smells-fishy/I would like to toss out a third theory, which is that Marc Cuban has been under investigation for the last two years, because he has been Dan Rather’s boss for two years, since the fall of 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/business/18insider.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper Mr. Cuban swiftly fired back, accusing the regulator of “prosecutorial misconduct” and alleging that he was the victim of a political vendetta by the agency in the waning days of the Bush administration.
“I am disappointed that the commission chose to bring this case based upon its enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions,” Mr. Cuban said. “The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned.”
“Results-oriented, facts be damned” sums up the case against Rather which a Republican lawyer named Harry MacDougald posing online at the Free Republic as an expert in typewriter font named “Buckhead” made just hours after the “Bush AWOL” story aired.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002039080_buckhead18.htmlReal Renaissance man, that Buckhead. I never have figured out how he got his hands on faxes of the AWOL Documents. My best guess is still wiretaps of CBS set up by the NSA after their Abu Ghraib story, under the pretext of monitoring them for contact with foreign terrorists.
Years later, it just amazes me how many seemingly sane people still buy MacDougald's story about fonts, despite the gaping holes in it, some wide enough that you could drive a Hummer through them--like the part about how you can judges fonts on faxes, even though faxing changes the appearance of type (thanks to Mary Mapes for tracking this one down). The reaction of mainstream media giants was especially surprising. Were they glad to see the playing field cleared of a titan so that their own careers could prosper? Did Rather make them look bad?
Or was being the target of a Republican vendetta proof of guilt?If so, I guess Marc Cuban is guilty, too, and we can expect the same people who denounced Dan Rather to shun the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
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