Dan Rather

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Earlier this evening I watched Dan Rather’s last broadcast as anchorman of the CBS Evening News. A few hours later, I watched an hour TV special in which he reflected back on memorial moments of his reporting career. I have watched Dan Rather give the news for many years and it was with a great deal of sadness that I saw him exit the CBS Evening News. Rather’s approach to the news is the essence of what being a reporter is all about because instead of just reading the news, he lived it in every far away port of call where a story was breaking or a war was being fought. The fact that some of his assignments were quite dangerous didn't seem to phase him at all or slow him down one bit.

The far right delighted in throwing vicious barbs at Rather as it called him everything from a liberal (a compliment in my book, but not in theirs) to a left wing biased reporter. All such names missed the mark badly, as Rather is in reality, a journalist who makes a very difficult job look easy.

He was there when President Kennedy was assassinated. He covered the debacle called the Viet Nam war. When the world Trade Center crumbled at the hands of terrorists, he was there. When the Berlin wall fell, he was there. When hurricanes struck or when nature dealt some other type of massive blow, Dan Rather was there. He was there at a Richard Nixon press conference when Nixon peevishly asked him if “he was running for something.” Rather’s answer was the stuff legends are made of when he answered, “No, I’m not. Are you?” And because Dan Rather was in all those places and more, we in the viewing audience felt as if we were there, also. He brought the world into our living rooms like no other reporter (save perhaps Edward R. Murrow) has ever done before.

Recently, the neo-cons delighted in what they like to call memo-gate, when a memo detailing some National Guard transgressions by George W. Bush could not be authenticated as genuine after being aired by Dan Rather. Rather took heavy heat for it and before it was all over, four CBS staffers lost their jobs. Of course overlooked in the conservative backlash over all this was the fact that no one could prove that the memo wasn’t true, either. Also swept under the rug were the many questions about Mr. Bush’s National Guard service that have yet to be answered. Like a magician, Karl Rove and the rest of the Bush manipulation team directed our attention to one hand so we wouldn’t notice what was going on in the other hand.

If Dan Rather is guilty of anything, it’s that he was always outspoken. He called it as he saw it and that made a lot of career politicians (on both sides of the aisle) uneasy. He sugarcoated nothing and believed that giving an accurate picture of how things were was far more preferable than giving a picture of how some people wanted things to be. He saw the horrors of war and reported them to us that way. He saw a public official make a misstep or violate the public’s trust and he reported it that way. He saw the misery in the eyes of natural disaster victims and he reported it that way. Outspoken? Yes, but he gave us his absolute best for over forty years.

Dan is a Texan as am I. He's from a town near Houston while I grew up in San Antonio. Texans sugarcoat cookies and even have been known to put a little brown sugar in their homemade barbecue sauce, but they rarely sugarcoat what they see or what they believe. Be they liberal or conservative, Baptist or Catholic, short or tall, a Texan will usually tell you exactly what is on their mind, and that’s the way it is with Dan Rather.

I will miss the professional, yet easy down home style that Dan brought to the CBS Evening News. I will miss his folksy and very Texas style phrases, with which he often peppered his reporting. But, the good news is, Dan will return to 60 Minutes where he will continue to do what he has always done best and that is to be a reporter. I will look forward to seeing him there for what I hope will be a very long time to come.

Thanks, Dan, for being our eyes to the world and for bringing that world (both the good and the bad) into our homes every evening. It’s not good-bye, but instead, as you are often fond of saying, “We’ll see you Sunday on 60 Minutes.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ken Kreps lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife. He has written a number of published articles, essays and short stories, as well as numerous consumer and business pieces. Ken has also written scripts for Imagination Theater, an award winning audio drama series heard on over 150 commercial radio stations across the nation.

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