Dan Rather Quits CBS Anchor Spot Effective March 9

Dan Rather announced that he is leaving the anchor desk of CBS News on his 24th anniversary of taking the seat. He leaves with a legacy that was tarnished by a poor judgment call during the late election, but which is an impressive one in TV news. A journalist to the end, he is one of a dying breed, TV reporters who actually worry about the story instead of their hair. The soft-spoken Texas lilt will still be around on various projects, but the job of anchor has stopped being the voice of authority, and he has, perhaps, stayed too long.

At the age of 73, he doesn’t have anything more to prove to anybody. He came into the national spotlight forty years ago during the assassination of JFK. When Walter Cronkite, the definition of anchorman, retired, Mr. Rather had rather large shoes to fill. That he failed was not his fault so much as it was the takeover of the newsroom by business interests and of the TV networks by business conglomerates. While the evening news on any of the big three networks was usually gleaned from the New York Times of earlier that day and the wire services, helped along with a few of their own correspondents filing from wherever the news was being made, there was journalism practiced in TV.

The news as business, though, is not a big draw. CNN needed a significant war to make it into the black, while the main networks slashed their foreign operations and turned to soft features rather than the more complicated news of the day. The late and great David Brinkley said that he wouldn’t have had a chance in today’s TV news game because, face it, he wasn’t pretty enough.

Mr. Rather, though, had a few brushes with those in power that led many to believe that he was not an objective journalist (and there is no such thing, children). His relationship with Richard Nixon was a deliciously tense one. The president once asked him, “Are you running for something?” Mr. Rather, with a shaking microphone hand replied, “No, Mr. President, are you?” Another famous exchange started with Mr. Rather saying, “"I want to state this question with due respect for your office." President Nixon interrupted with, “That would be unusual.”

It is difficult to imagine today’s housebroken media ever taking on the president in such a way. The White House would pull the reporter’s credentials, the corporate office would apologize for showing insufficient deference, and the reporter would never work in DC again. The press has allowed the White House far too much leeway for the likes of Mr. Rather or Sam Donaldson to ever work there again. Which is a loss to the democracy, and even to the administration which needs some kind of opposition to keep it sharp.

This year, Mr. Rather lost a great deal of his personal credibility when he vouched for documents regard Mr. Bush’s non-service in the National Guard, documents that turned out to be forgeries. Still, just as Hugh Trevor-Roper’s career as a historian was not undone by the Hitler Diaries he thought were genuine, Mr. Rather’s career as a journalist will not be undone by those documents. However, it does show that he probably should have moved on some time ago.

Then again, he may have been hoping to inspire another R.E.M. hit as he did by being attacked in New York by men who demanded to know “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” If Mr. Rather has any inclination as an investigative journalist any more, one would love to know the details behind that odd event.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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