Jay Goldberg, a civil litigator who has represented Donald Trump, said...if a chief executive made public statements about employees that cannot be supported by facts—i.e., by the narrative of the Thornburgh report or, worse, other unreported material—it could open the company up to trouble. "They were very foolish to go public with an attack on these people, because they lose their immunity to be sued for defamation," Mr. Goldberg said. "Whereas if they had put these very same things in court paper, they could not be sued."

First Amendment expert Martin Garbus says:

....Mr. Moonves’ statement may well give Mr. Howard grounds for a defamation suit. "He has a claim," said Mr. Garbus. "Anything that they say bad about him, and that impugns his reputation in the business in which he’s in—basically, they’re saying that he’s incompetent. That’s not opinion, that’s specifically stating. One way in which you protect yourself from libel is that you always say ‘in my opinion.’ But [Mr. Moonves] didn’t say it. He’s saying, ‘The producer did this, the producer did that.’"

CBS disputes Howard's allegation that he told CBS to stop stonewalling after the segment aired. If a lawsuit is filed, Howard reportedly will go after Moonves and other brass at CBS as to their role in standing by the story after it aired.

There's problems for both sides. There's also problems with report. The investigators' interviews inexplicably were not recorded and the subjects were not allowed to take notes. The report doesn't conclude the documents were false. The report finds that that CBS News President Andrew Heyward gave the go-ahead to the segment the day before it aired and viewed it an hour before airtime.

There's probably plenty of blame to go around. And dirty laundry. A lawsuit means both sides will seek all the e-mails of everyone involved. That will be damaging to CBS. On the other hand, even if Moonves is found to have mis-stated the facts about Howard's role and responsibility for the segment, it could still be a long time before Howard regains his reputation in the journalistic community.

Ron Reagan, Jr. and Monica Crowly will be discussing these developments today on their new 5:30 p.m. (ET) MSNBC show, Connected Coast to Coast. Hugh Hewitt and I will be providing some commentary.