Little did I know when I wrote about CBS’s many issues last February just how hard they were going to crash. It seems now that Howard, Murphy and West, the three members of the infamous Bush National Guard story that garnered so much criticism and network backlash, have been asked to resign by Les Moonves, the president of CBS. But they are not going gently.
Howard is fighting back, threatening a lawsuit for slander. Apparently, Howard sent a memo of concern about the story before it was aired and Moonves (or perhaps his administrative assistant) ignored it; so all of the statements Moonves has made about Howard’s incompetence are now fodder for hungry lawyers crying, “defamation!”
Either way the axe falls, CBS is in dire straits. When Moonves proclaims his network to be “99% fair and balanced” and promises “to make lemons from lemonade”, the straw grasping is evident. Civil war has this funny way of being neither civil nor beneficial.
