Posted on 11/23/2004 8:26:52 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Dan Rather announced yesterday that he would step down next year as anchor and managing editor of "CBS Evening News." The move came two months after he acknowledged fundamental flaws in a broadcast report that raised questions about President Bush's National Guard service.
Mr. Rather's last broadcast will be on March 9, the 24th anniversary of the night he succeeded Walter Cronkite. He plans to continue to work full time at CBS News, as a correspondent for the Sunday and Wednesday editions of "60 Minutes."
The network has yet to select a successor to Mr. Rather, who is 73, but two CBS executives said that the front-runner was John Roberts, 48, CBS News's chief White House correspondent, who also serves as anchor of the network's Sunday evening news program.
Though Mr. Rather and senior CBS executives had begun last summer to discuss a possible departure date within the next couple of years, Mr. Rather's announcement yesterday signaled an abrupt end to the nearly quarter-century that he spent in one of the most visible jobs in broadcast journalism. [Page C1.]
Both he and Leslie Moonves, CBS's chairman and co-president of its parent company, Viacom, emphasized that the timing of the announcement was dictated by events largely out of their control.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Rather said that he and Mr. Moonves believed that it was important that he make his announcement well before the forthcoming release of a report by an independent panel investigating the journalistic breakdowns that led CBS News to broadcast and then vigorously defend the National Guard news segment.
"I wish it were not happening while this panel is looking into the '60 Minutes' weekday story," Mr. Rather said at his office at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in Manhattan. "One reason I wanted to do this now was to make the truth clear - this is separated from that."
Mr. Rather said the most intense round of conversations among himself; his agent, Richard Leibner; and Mr. Moonves began about 10 days ago at Mr. Moonves's office at Viacom's headquarters in Times Square. At a certain point, Mr. Leibner excused himself and Mr. Rather spoke alone to Mr. Moonves.
"Dan was very emotional," Mr. Moonves recalled yesterday. "Clearly, this job and CBS News mean a lot to him. It was a very hard decision for him. Dan said to me, 'I'd like to do this on my own terms.' We totally supported him."
Mr. Rather - after a series of conversations last weekend with his wife, Jean, and his grown son and daughter - said he called Mr. Moonves, who was in California, on Monday afternoon and told him that he had made up his mind to go. In a measure of the awkward predicament in which CBS finds itself, Mr. Moonves said he felt compelled to inform the investigative panel of Mr. Rather's plans.
The volatile endgame surrounding Mr. Rather's announcement of his departure was in many ways true to the ups and downs of his career. He vaulted to fame, in part, as a CBS correspondent who was stationed along President John F. Kennedy's motorcade route in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the day the president was assassinated. But the dogged reporting he demonstrated that day also played a role in his most highly publicized confrontations.
These included a clash with President Richard M. Nixon during a White House news conference at the height of the Watergate scandal and a tense live interview in 1988 with George H. W. Bush, who was then vice president, where Mr. Rather observed, "You've made us hypocrites in the face of the world."
Such comments, and others, made Mr. Rather a lightning rod for conservative critics who complained that the mainstream news media were too liberal. But it was not just conservatives who sometimes found Mr. Rather too hot for the medium of television.
While often folksy and gentlemanly, his frequently tense on-air bearing was cast as a turnoff by some television critics. Many of them gave him little chance in 1981 of holding on to Mr. Cronkite's dominance in the ratings. Initially they were wrong: Mr. Rather proceeded to finish first for the next seven seasons, ending in 1989. But his broadcast's ratings have dropped fairly steadily ever since.
Mr. Rather is departing at a moment of generational transition at the top of the network news divisions, as their audiences age steadily and their flagship programs continue to lose viewers. Next Wednesday, Tom Brokaw, 64, will deliver his last broadcast as anchor of "NBC Nightly News," the highest rated of the three evening newscasts. He will be succeeded the next night by Brian Williams, 45.
Both Mr. Rather and Mr. Moonves said in separate interviews that they went out of their way to time the announcement so it would not distract from Mr. Brokaw's departure.
"My feeling was that Tom should have his moment leaving the chair," Mr. Rather said. "Insofar as it's possible to do so, don't take any of that light; don't mix it up with that."
"I would say if Tom were not leaving next week," he added, "we'd probably have waited until next week to do it."
Among the emotions that had long kept the fiercely competitive Mr. Rather from announcing his own retirement in recent years was his hope that he might pick up a substantial share of Mr. Brokaw's viewers after his departure, enabling "CBS Evening News" to pull up out of third place, where it has lagged behind "World News Tonight" on ABC for nearly a decade.
Until recently, Mr. Rather had told colleagues that he hoped to remain behind the CBS anchor desk until March 2006 and the 25th anniversary of the day he succeeded Walter Cronkite. But for Mr. Rather, that calculus was apparently complicated by the strain and scrutiny of the investigation.
The inquiry's two panelists, Louis D. Boccardi, a former chief executive of The Associated Press, and Dick Thornburgh, a former United States attorney general, have interviewed dozens of people - from the highest echelons of CBS News to its rank and file, as well as outside it. They are expected to submit their report to senior network executives in the first two weeks of December.
Among the central questions they are examining is why Mr. Rather, who was anchor for the segment, and Mary Mapes, its producer, were so convinced of the authenticity of four memorandums purportedly drawn from the personal files of Mr. Bush's Vietnam-era squadron commander.
In the documents, which were dated in the early 1970's, Mr. Bush's commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who has since died, appeared to describe the pressure he was under to "sugar coat" the record of Mr. Bush, then a young lieutenant.
Coming to attention less than two months before the presidential election, the documents were presented by CBS as filling gaps in Mr. Bush's official record, including questions about why he had failed to take his annual pilot's physical.
Right after the report was first broadcast, on Sept. 8, Mr. Rather drew intense criticism from Internet bloggers, who produce online commentary, and from other commentators who contended that the documents, all apparently copies, appeared to have been typed on a modern computer, not a typewriter typically in use in the early 1970's.
For nearly two weeks, Mr. Rather - sometimes speaking from behind the anchor desk - asserted that the questioning of the records was coming, in large measure, from Republican partisans.
But on Sept. 20, Mr. Rather and his bosses reversed course. Speaking again from the anchor desk, Mr. Rather told his viewers that a former Texas National Guard officer had misled him and his producers about how the officer had obtained the documents. Relying on them to buttress the report, he said, had been a "mistake in judgment."
"I want to say personally and directly I'm sorry," Mr. Rather said, before adding, "This was an error made in good faith."
His apology represented a low point in a year when he had recorded some of the more memorable achievements in his more than four decades at CBS News.
A few months before the Guard report, he joined forces with Ms. Mapes, one of the most respected producers at the network and one who is still working there, for a segment on the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes," then known as "60 Minutes II," which reported in detail on the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
Earlier, he landed the first broadcast interview with former President Bill Clinton discussing his memoir, "My Life."
In a statement from CBS News yesterday, senior executives made no mention of the controversy over the documents and instead hailed Mr. Rather's longevity at the anchor desk and the record he has compiled throughout his career.
"Dan's 24 years at the 'CBS Evening News' is the longest run of any evening news anchor in history and is a singular achievement in broadcast journalism," Mr. Moonves said.
Though CBS announced Mr. Rather's plans in a statement sent by e-mail to other news organizations just after noon yesterday, Mr. Rather also chose to say a few words to his viewers, some 16 minutes into last night's broadcast.
"It has been and remains an honor to be welcomed into your home each evening," he said. "And I thank you for the trust you've given me."
Mr. Rather has appeared tense and drawn to colleagues in recent weeks, perhaps no more so than about a month ago, after he spent almost a full day answering questions before the investigative panel in a conference room at Black Rock, the CBS corporate headquarters.
But yesterday, sitting in a cowhide-covered easy chair from his native Texas, Mr. Rather appeared at peace. Cradling a cup of coffee and wearing a crew-neck cashmere sweater, he spoke more of the assignments yet to come than those long since passed.
"I'm just crazy enough to get up every morning saying to myself with great enthusiasm, 'I'm sure the next big story, the biggest story I'll ever cover, is right there around the corner,' " he said. "It might happen today. And, boy, do I want to be there covering it."
He added that a Bob Dylan lyric had been rattling around his head for the last few days that "he not busy being born is busy dying."
"I feel born again," Mr. Rather said. "Not in a religious sense. Born again because I see the path."
The title of the 1965 song, however, belied Mr. Rather's apparent calm: "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)."
And he can take Helen Thomas with him!!!
Methinks this officially marks the end of an era (the old mainstream media.)
Methinks this officially marks the end of an era (the old mainstream media.)
Abrupt? This was announced months ago. What's the big deal?
I hope you are right. There is no way that he should be kept on in "any capacity".......
When I read the comments on ratherbiased.com. I am amazed he has lasted as long as he has.
I figure 60 Minutes is going down also. When MSM networks start advertising, you know they are in trouble.
I almost felt a twinge of pity for Dan, but got over it very quickly. He had his agenda, and has made it clear what it was. He could have changed his reporting when he was first called on a few things, but never did. He thought he was above it all. The arrogance of these guys still continues to amaze me.
Goodbye to Dan and "Kenneth".......
I understand that a complaint has been filed with the FEC by BoycottCBS.com, a project of the Framers Institute, Inc.
See http://www.boycottcbs.com/fec.php
On another Free Republic thread re Rather/CBS, one of the "posters" suggested an FCC complaint or criminal charges.
Now that career is EXTINGUISHED.
Time for a celebration!
Dan Rather who??? I've been boycotting him since he insulted Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush in his 1988 interview. So he will not be missed by me, nor will I notice that he is gone. I don't and won't watch CBS--I get my news from Fox and the internet.
Well Danno(to bad you are my name sake) you mess with Texas's real man, you get your ass whooped, even thou you are from Texas.
Dan, it looks like you lost your roots, where you came from and what journalism is all about, namely reporting the news of the day, no more no less.
Instead you chose to "change/better" the world, to socialize our society,with/thru your slanted/politicized and biased so called reporting which in terms and finally caught up with you, finishing up your carrier in disgrace and forcing you into early retirement with the stigma "Phony Blather".
In closing to my rant I would say that after your 25+ Years of "Journalistic Integrity" to end up like this it is pretty pathetic...Danno you never grew up!
Let me tell you this about that. This is the origin of the spin that perturbs the truth of that. That is NOT separated from this. This is intimately entwined with that.
You sir, are a...see?...BS artist. This is the message of that...
Rrrrrright...
Probably should read more like:
Dan Rather, informed of the investigative panels plans by Mr. Moonves, decided that a swift exit was more to his liking than sticking around fighting to restore his shattered creditability.
I'd like to add 1)Andy Rooney(CBS), and 2)Daniel Schoor(PBS).
This mouldering group of four represents some of the most distorted, vile, bitter and biased newsreporters alive today.
To the gallows with them all.
Yea Dan, like Clinton is seperated from Lewinsky.
This is the problem. They are all looking to blow the smallest thing into a huge mega-story. Why don't they just report the day's events instead?
I can assure you the '60 Minute' gig will be over very soon
Yeh, I think so, too. That will be the next announcement. The pukes at 60 Minutes (Sunday edition) were a tad miffed that Dano had tarnished their image w/ memogate. I got a hoot out of it, but all that matters is that the 60 Minutes crew believes it.
Tom Brokenjaw was at least smart enough to realize when it was time to hang up his microphone. Blather needed a scandal to get him dislodged...I still expect him to chain himself to his chair at the last minute and point a gun at the camera, saying, "If you think I'm gonna let those effing bastards in pajamas do this to me..."
Wayda go! FR takes down a leading liberal mouthpiece.
Fired in disgrace. A fitting end.
"If Roberts becomes the anchor. 2 of the big 3 alphabet evening news anchors will be Canadian."-xp38
Years ago (Pre-Impeachment days), I used to watch CBS News. One time Roberts was filling in for Rather. All of a sudden Roberts said "mor-e-al." Huh?
After a moment I realized Roberts meant Montreal.
Rather and Roberts are closer than Lassie and Timmy.
Dave
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