Politics

Reality Check Checks Out

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 3, 2002 / 5:54 PM EST / CBS

CBS News correspondent Eric Engberg is retiring. In his latest Against the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer says goodbye to a partner and a teacher.

2002 opens with a goodbye for CBS News. Eric Engberg, who spent two decades covering and uncovering Washington for CBS, is retiring. When he leaves, a giant slice of this storied bureau’s character, humor and collective wisdom will walk out the door.

Engberg’s reporting and his approach to journalism reflect many of the virtues of broadcast journalism at its best. And he was fortunate that much of his career coincided with a reign of excellence in television news.

But Engberg was also the first heavy hitter at CBS News to make a real commitment to online journalism by writing the “Reality Check” column for this site in the wild election year of 2000. His brand of reporting, analysis and storytelling are marks of excellence that Internet journalism should aspire to as this new medium develops.

But I'm biased -- totally. Engberg and I were partners from 1993 to 1999 when we reported and produced the “Reality Check” feature for The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. Eric grew up in the town next mine outside of Chicago. He gave me the best Christmas present I’ve ever received. And most importantly, he likes to go fishing, especially in Northwest Ontario lakes.

By the time Engberg came to CBS News, he had covered local politics, cops, and Watergate. CBS sent him to Texas for a couple years before bringing him back to Washington.

Some years later, the Washington Journalism Review called Eric one of Washington’s great “firemen” – a reporter who could crash into any story, any investigation and have the sources, experience and tenacity to cover it properly. The secret truth is that Eric would rather have been a real fireman any day. I think the story irritated him. But then Eric is easily irritated.

In Washington, Engberg was something much more rare than a “fireman.” He was a student, connoisseur and anthropologist of “inside” Washington but never an “insider.” He had the sort of obvious integrity and stubborn independence that led his bosses to give him some of the toughest assignments. When General William Westmoreland’s libel suit against CBS News came to trial, CBS News assigned Engberg to the story.

He broke story after story about the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. His reporting led to the only criminal conviction the government made stick on Oliver North. Engberg connected the infamous Willie Horton ads used against Michael Dukakis in 1988 to the Bush campaign, after years of obsessed sleuthing (and he’s taking the files with him to Florida). I got to help Engberg, along with reporter Vince Gonzales, reveal to the country that the Vietnam veteran honored at the Tomb of the Unknowns was ot unknown, but an Air Force pilot from Missouri named Michael Joseph Blassie.

Eric liked to say that the idea of “Reality Check” was to show that the biggest scams in Washington were the perfectly legal ones. He was a bit too gruff to admit that he had other, more idealistic aspirations to shine some light into dark corners of the bureaucracy, Congress and K Street ignored by the networks, and to make those stories fun. That’s how we ended up spending months counting the government's population of p.r. workers, and getting rousted by the police while hiding in the back of an SUV, staking out a chiseler from the Agriculture Department.

Our bureau isn’t going to see a guy like Eric again. I’ll never have a partnership like I had with him again. Except maybe in a boat, someday.