Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers

Newsman Looks Back At 44-Year Career At CBS News

(CBS) 
In October 1986, Rather was assaulted on a street in Manhattan. "I get blamed for a lot of things, but I can't be blamed for this," says Rather. "I was walking about Park Avenue, and things happened very suddenly. Fair to say, I got the hell beat out of me, by someone I didn't know."

Police asked Rather if anything was said to him during the attack. "I vaguely remembered at one point, it was, 'What's the frequency,'" says Rather. "And then, I thought, somebody had addressed me as Kenneth. And that got compacted into, 'What's the frequency, Kenneth?' And the next thing I knew, it was all over the news."

Rather later found out that R.E.M. had written a song about it. "I sort of said, 'Damn, you know, here we go again. But then, I listened to that song and got it in perspective," he says. "I had reached a point where I thought, 'Well, it may never be explained,' although always there was a small part of me that thought, 'Someday, we'll know what happened.' And someday, we did find out what happened."

In September 1994, a North Carolina man was charged with murder in New York City for the death of an NBC stagehand who was shot outside a Rockefeller Center studios. Police arrested William Tager, 46.

"And the authorities have clearly established that he was the person who'd attacked me. He knew some details of the attack that only he and I knew. And when they separately interviewed us, they matched up the stories and, no question that he did it," Rather recalls.

Rather adds: "I was very lucky and blessed that he didn't kill me that night."

Of some of the hard-hitting stories he's had to cover during his career at CBS, Rather says, "One way a reporter in this country should be judged is how well he or she stands up to the pressure to intimidate."

"I remember the first time someone accused me of being an 'N' lover. There was a lot of that during the '60s when I covered the civil rights movement," says Rather. "Then you move forward from civil rights to the Vietnam War. 'We're gonna hang a sign around you which calls you some bad name: anti-military, anti-American, anti-war.'"

Then, Watergate happened, and Rather says that "was the first time I began to hear the word liberal as an epithet thrown my way."

"People who have very strong biases of their own, they come at you with a story. If you won't report it the way I want it reported, then you're biased," says Rather. "Now, it's true about me, for better or worse. If you want to see my neck swell, you just try to tell me where to line up, or what to think, and mostly what to report."

His philosophy? "Pull no punches, play no favorites," says Rather.

On Sept. 8, 2004, Rather did a report for the Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes which raised questions about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Included in the report were documents that purported to show that Mr. Bush received preferential treatment.

But after further investigation, CBS could no longer vouch for the authenticity of the documents. Rather apologized for the report: "I want to say personally and directly, I'm sorry."

"We should have been more rigorous in trying to establish the validity of the documents," says Rather, adding, "First and foremost is that four people lost their jobs over it. And I never have them far from my mind. I regret every nanosecond when I let anybody at CBS News down, and even more, when I let the audience down. It's painful to me."

An independent panel looked into the matter and concluded mistakes were made in the competitive "rush to be first on the story," but found no political bias.

"I suppose, on one level, there's a continuity between this story and Dan's experience. Because the story of Dan's journalistic career is one of pursuit of a story. And this was pursuit of a story," says Stringer, former president of CBS News, and now chairman and CEO of Sony Corp of America.

"You could say that playing it safe would have had Dan always be an anchor man, and never get attached to dangerous stories. But he's inclined to be lightning," Stringer adds.

"I have my weaknesses," admits Rather. "I've made my mistakes, but the one mistake I've tried hard not to make is to say, 'OK. I know which way the wind is blowing, and I'm gonna tailor my reporting to fit that.' Ain't gonna do that. Haven't. Don't. Won't."

"Time has a way of introducing wisdom to someone's legacy and history," says Stringer. "You'll remember Dan for all those images of Dan on the front lines of every major story since the Civil Rights crisis - and being committed to the telling of those stories. That legacy will be a window into broadcast journalism that will become more valuable as time passes."

Of his years as anchor of CBS Evening News, Rather says: "It's gone by so much faster, more than I ever imagined it ever could. My only thought is how lucky I've been and how blessed I've been. And you can't do it for that long and love it as much as I have loved it, and do love it, and not have some sense of, 'I'd like to have another day, another week.'"

"Looking back on the anchor years, it's gone by so much faster more than I ever imagined it ever could," Rather says.

On March 9, 2005, Rather signed off the air as anchor of the CBS Evening News by saying, "And, to each of you, courage."

"I look back on the time at CBS News as a time when I was very lucky, and mightily blessed," Rather says. "Forty-four years I had there were magnificent for me."

"To those who watched and listened and stayed loyal over the years, the CBS core audience, you know, I say thank you," he says.

"I think Dan would like to be remembered as somebody who made a difference," says Stringer. "I've never seen anybody as comfortable in the field. It's an extraordinary body of work."

"I would, when I walk down the street, like for people to say: 'There goes a real reporter,'" Rather says.

"Time moves on, and you move on. What’s changed is the location where I’m working, but the nature of the work doesn’t change," says Rather.

"Right now, I want to get onto the next thing, flat our, full out, full throttle," Rather says. "I believe my best work is ahead of me, I hope my best work is ahead of me."