Dan Rather Wins One

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Dan Rather has won access to a whole bundle of internal CBS documents in his lawsuit against his former employers. This all goes back to a controversial “60 Minutes” report on George W. Bush’s time in the military. The report was disputed, and CBS ended up essentially firing Rather. He sued in 2007, saying the panel CBS set up to review the 60 Minutes report was biased. Now Rather’s lawyers will have access to e-mails between CBS and the law firm that it hired to investigate the segment. Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert explains why this new development is important [emphasis mine]:

The picture painted by the CBS memos and documents already reviewed by Rather suggest a craven news organization that was less interested in uncovering the truth about the disputed memos, and more interested in appeasing Rush Limbaugh. It wanted to “mollify the right,” as one internal CBS memo put it.

You can probably expect this to get juicy.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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