Former American evening news anchor Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (/raer/; born October 31, 1931) is a journalist and author. Beginning his career in Texas, Rather gained national prominence after his coverage of Hurricane Carla in September 1961 helped save thousands of lives.
It was somewhat impromptu that Rather made the first radar weather report by placing a translucent map on top of a radar image of Hurricane Carla. It all started with his first nationwide broadcast, which successfully prompted the evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather Also Gained Notoriety
For his coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963. Such influential reporting earned him a promotion to White House reporter at CBS News, where he worked beginning in 1964.
Over the next two years, he worked as a foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam before returning to his post as a White House correspondent. He reported on Nixon’s presidency from its beginnings to its end, covering Nixon’s journey to China, the Watergate crisis, and Nixon’s resignation.
Rather became the CBS Evening News anchor in 1981 and stayed in that position for the next two decades. From the early 1980s through the early 2000s, he was one of the “Big Three” American nightly news anchors, along with ABC News’ Peter Jennings and NBC News’s Tom Brokaw. The CBS news magazine 60 Minutes regularly featured his contributions.
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Controversy
Even after being fired from CBS News and starring in a film about the incident, Dan Rather still defends his original report.
The credibility of the former anchor was damaged when the Bush administration publicly disputed a 2004 story in which he questioned President George W. Bush’s military service. Truth, featuring Robert Redford as Rather, depicted the whole event on the big screen not long ago.
We told a true story,” they said. The 84-year-old actor admitted as much to The Hollywood Reporter. There were certain missteps we took in our pursuit of the truth. But the fact that we reported the truth remains unchanged.
When Bush was a member of the Texas Air National Guard, Rather and his producer Mary Mapes (portrayed by Cate Blanchett in Truth) ran a story claiming he had gone AWOL. A separate review was conducted after the Bush administration claimed the underlying documents were fake and it was decided that the article violated “basic journalistic norms.” Despite this, it was never established that the papers were fakes.
Following his dismissal from the anchor chair, Rather ultimately left CBS News for good in 2006, after having worked for the network for 44 years. Although Rather’s $70 million lawsuit against the news network was ultimately dropped, his departure was not without controversy.
Despite this, Rather maintains that the report’s core points were uncontroverted evidence
When the story was being put together, “partisan political forces and ideological forces that found this very inconvenient couldn’t attack the hard-rock facts, so they looked, ‘Where is the story weak?’
According to his account of the probe, “they focused on the records and they succeeded.” “They deluged CBS; they deluged us who reported it by shifting the emphasis from the unshakeable reality of the story to the means by which we arrived at that fact,” the reporter said.
Rather Departed CBS News without Any Harsh Feelings
(“I loved CBS and still do”) and went on to a prosperous career in journalism. Dan Rather has started hosting the web series “The Big Interview.” “I have made my blunders and have my wounds, some of them exposed, some of them self-inflicted,” he remarked. “That’s mostly the result of reporting on sensitive topics.”
And, despite it all, the journalist claims he has no regrets. “I am so pleased with the accomplishments I made in my professional life. I have a firm belief that your track record defines you, and mine does in this case, he said. To some who would object, “Well, but it didn’t end very well,” I would reply, “Well, life sometimes goes that way.”
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The Wall Within
The Wall Within, anchored by Rather on CBS News on June 2, 1988. Six Vietnam War vets were interviewed for the piece, and all of them reported seeing or experiencing something horrifying while serving their country in Vietnam.
Two guys admitted to killing civilians, while two others stated they saw the deaths of people they knew. They shared stories of how the war had changed their lives forever, whether it was via sadness, job loss, substance abuse, or homelessness.
Anne Morse published an article for National Review in 2004 titled “The First Rathergate.” According to her, practically everything described in The Wall Within was false.
Military records, according to Morse (who cites the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley), showed that the six veterans had lied about their experiences. Only one had seen combat, and the other two had never even visited Vietnam.