Emptying out his cubbyhole office in the CBS News building on West 57th Street in New York, wading through stacks and boxes of memorabilia accumulated over the years, Dan Rather came upon a piece of framed embroidery made and sent to him a couple decades ago by a nun who was, one might say, among the faithful -- a regular and loyal viewer.
"Be thou a soul to fullness grown," says one of her meticulously embroidered mottos. "Arise to gain thy dreams." Rather's voice warms. "Pretty nice, huh?" he says. Among the other embroidered words of wisdom: "Today's trials were meant to make you strong."
With a few parting words and possibly -- but unlikely -- a few parting shots, Dan Rather will make his last appearance tonight as anchor of "The CBS Evening News," 24 years to the day since his first telecast as anchor and a full year sooner than he planned. As virtually all of our world knows, Rather agreed to step down in the wake of a scandal involving a discredited "60 Minutes Wednesday" story on George W. Bush's supposed preferential treatment while in the National Guard.
The case, which resulted in four of the top people in CBS News being told to leave, has caused a tremendous schism within the organization, ruining Rather's exit not only by moving it up a year but also by hanging a dark cloud over it. Rather, who's had many trials and certainly seems a soul to fullness grown, is told it's a shame he couldn't be leaving on a high note.
Rather: 'Leaving on a high note'
"First of all, from where I sit, I am leaving on a high note," Rather says, "and a higher note than I deserve and certainly a higher note than I ever thought possible when I walked into this job. Secondly, what's gone on these past few months, it all goes with the territory, as the cliche goes. It's part of the turf, particularly if you're determined to at least try to be an independent reporter. And I understand that very well."
(Rather's amazing 42-year career at CBS News, including a discussion of the flawed Bush report, will be recapped in a fascinating and evocative documentary, "Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers," produced by Judy Tygard and airing at 8 tonight, after Rather's farewell newscast.)
In addition to the indignity of leaving the anchor chair prematurely, for weeks Rather has had to endure attacks from not only outside but inside CBS News -- like a combination of Davy Crockett and Julius Caesar. In a devastating Ken Auletta piece for the New Yorker, such venerable CBS personalities as Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite were quoted as saying they preferred watching Peter Jennings over Rather and basically dismissed him.
Then on Monday, just two days before Rather's farewell, old man Cronkite, the anchor Rather replaced, had the stupefying temerity to say that he thought Bob Schieffer, the "Face the Nation" host who'll fill in on the "Evening News" until a remodeled program is hatched later this year, would have made a better anchor. "I would like to have seen him there a long time ago," Cronkite said of Schieffer on CNN. He also said Rather "gave the impression of playing a role more than simply trying to deliver the news to the audience."
Talk about bad form. "A codgerly old ass," one Rather loyalist, asking not to be identified, said of Cronkite. "He stayed alive just so he could see this moment." However pathetic Cronkite's remarks make him seem, they enforce the image of "Dan Rather -- Alone at the Top." Unlike some of Rather's adventures over the years -- the coolest anchor, he's one of the few men over 60 who can successfully still wear jeans -- this one is dead serious.
Rather will not be dragged into a mud fight. "I've said consistently to everybody that I'm not going to respond to that," he says. But he agrees to continue.
"First, this is parenthetical, but I've been moved, and I like to think I'm not moved easily, by how many people, particularly people who make the place go -- technicians, editors, writers, researchers, producers, people I've worked closest with -- have taken the time and trouble and had the grace to come up to me and say encouraging and supportive things. And that means a lot to me. . . . . Now, close parentheses." Rather often includes punctuation in his remarks.
"This is no big deal, but when you ask me about those specific quotes from those specific people, this is what I have to say, and it's all I have to say: That the accomplishments of these men speak for themselves. Individually and collectively, they've had some of the truly great careers in television news, at CBS or anywhere else. Since that's the way they feel, they're entitled to express their opinions. They've earned the right to voice them. Period."
Although Cronkite's later comments made things worse, Wallace said yesterday he and Rather are still friends, and that Auletta's piece was originally going to be about changes in network news generally, not just Rather and CBS. "I wrote a note, and Dan wrote a note, and I wrote a note, and Dan and I have it all straightened out now," Wallace said yesterday from his home in New York. "It has to be remembered, too: He's just the best damn reporter there is."
There may not be lots of other CBS News veterans coming forth to cheer Rather, because one says he was threatened with the loss of his own job if he did. Rather is obsessive in his loyalty to CBS News, but it begins to seem like unrequited love.
"My attitude is, I want to move forward now," says Rather. "I want to get through Wednesday as gracefully and as classily as I know how and then take a little time to myself and then move right into the next phase of my work. Thank God my health is good, I feel vigorous, feel strong, and I want to get into both '60 Minutes Wednesday' and '60 Minutes' and try to do some great journalism."
There are possible problems even with that plan, however. Leslie Moonves, the CBS president who charged into the scandal and has not been even slightly supportive of Rather or of CBS News, has implied "60 Minutes Wednesday" may be canceled if its ratings don't improve. And there is some question how welcome Rather will be at "60 Minutes" in the wake of the scandal, even though he's an alumnus (1975-81). Some insiders think Rather should have done more to protect the discharged employees and should have threatened to leave if they were let go.
The major flaw of the original story was that documents used to support its allegations were not thoroughly verified. Rather likes to think of himself as a "reporter-anchor," but he hardly has the time to go rummaging through files and halls of records to check on the authenticity of documents that are decades old.
Dogged by bias allegations
All this has been argued to death and could be argued until doomsday. One of the sad things about it is that it gave the right wing, which has had its sights on Rather for years now, something to cheer and dance in the streets about. Over the years, ultra-conservatives have made Rather their public enemy No. 1. They deluged him with hate mail, founded a Web site called Ratherbiased.com and were the prime suspects when a computer was used to jam his phone lines. He says he doesn't know how he became such a lightning rod for controversy.
"What I do know is that it's not something I worry about," he says. "I've never worried about it. I am independent as a reporter -- determinedly independent and, when I think it's necessary and advisable, I'm fiercely independent. And I think the determination to stay independent is part of what's made me what you call a 'lightning rod.'
"There's always somebody of some political persuasion or some ideological belief and/or partisan political agenda who takes the attitude, 'If you don't report the way I want you to report, if you're not going to reflect my biases, then I'm going to try to hurt you, ruin you if I can, by hanging some negative label on you and calling you names like 'biased.' And at that point, you're in the classic fight-or-flight situation. Now I'm guilty of a lot of things, and I've made a lot of mistakes -- but I haven't made that mistake -- of running, backing away. I haven't done that, I'm not doing it and I'm not going to do it."
Former CBS and CBS News president Sir Howard Stringer, just named chairman of the entire Sony empire, was once the executive producer of "The CBS Evening News" and remains a Rather admirer. He used to talk about the unique experience of walking down the street with Rather and feeling all eyes upon them, of Rather's magnetism and "larger than life" persona.
Near the end of "A Reporter Remembers," Stringer says that whatever mistakes were made with the National Guard story, Dan Rather has compiled "an extraordinary body of work." The question is whether he will be able to keep compiling it. Obviously if the decision is entirely his, he will.
News — and a news giver
Rather has always been the news as well as being a news giver. Over the years, he appeared in headlines more often than any of his competitors -- whether for his on-air shouting match over Iran-Contra with George H.W. Bush, his tiff with a Chicago cabdriver or his mugging by a mysterious psychotic who reportedly uttered the seemingly meaningless "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" while clobbering Rather on a New York street.
Some doubted the story's veracity, but years later the same man murdered an NBC stagehand and inadvertently revealed he had attacked Rather, an expression of his clinically paranoid-schizophrenic delusions that people on TV were sending out invisible signals that controlled his life.
On the documentary tonight, Rather points out the man never actually said "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" though that later became the title of an R.E.M. song. The mugger did ask "What's the frequency?," though, and at one point "addressed me as 'Kenneth,' " Rather says. It's sort of like "Play it again, Sam," one of those famous quotes that was never said.
Some of Rather's fans breathed a sigh of relief when the man was finally found and the story thus verified, because Rather does seem to run on an electrical current that is his alone. There is, inescapably, a tension in his appearances on the air -- thus shock-jock Don Imus's irreverent observation at the 1996 Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner that Rather delivers the news "like he's making a hostage tape." But is it tension, or urgency? Rather believes the news is serious business. He's not going to lean back in his chair and deliver it to viewers conversationally. He's not trying to be your friend.
For that reason and others, his departure from the evening-news wars tonight may mark the end of more than one era. The networks love the revenue that news programs like "60 Minutes" bring in, but they hate the messiness of news, the trouble news causes, the awful unpredictability of it all ("reality" prime-time shows, entirely different, are carefully packaged and controlled).
CBS News, having weathered many a crisis, has hit a larger than usual iceberg this time. Andrew Heyward, president of the news division, is considered by many to be much more loyal to the corporate side than to news. For years, the great CBS News presidents -- Richard Salant, William Leonard, Fred W. Friendly -- saw part of their job as standing up to incursions by bottom-liners from the corporate side. Heyward has been all but invisible since the scandal broke and never publicly offered to resign.
Instead, he and Moonves have been consorting on a revamped "Evening News" that could move the broadcast in the direction of "The Today Show" and other morning magazines -- something lighter and more fun and tailored to attract the 18-to-34-year-olds who rarely watch now. The great days of network news, days Rather lived through first as a devout radio listener and then as one of the troops -- may be long over. "Look for it only in books," as is said of the South in the prologue to "Gone with the Wind."
Asked if the old-style news president is an extinct species, Rather declines to answer, the only question he wouldn't even entertain. But on the matter of network news being in terminal decline, he says he sees the dangers but doesn't think the situation is irreversible.
"Some people conclude the sun is rapidly setting on what was once considered solid broadcast journalism," he says. "And what makes some people concerned about it is bloggers, paid political operatives posing as White House journalists, paid hucksters hustling political programs all lumped together in a soup that's served up as professional punditry.
"The concern is that we'll reach the day, if we aren't careful, that the premium is no longer put on journalists getting to the truth behind official policy statements but rather making sure that reporters, and the press in general, trample on no toes that would result in the denial of access to those wearing the shoes."
Without mentioning the current Bush administration and the attitudes toward the press it encourages, Rather says, "I confess that I am concerned that we may be reaching the point where too many members of the press fear being labeled unpatriotic or partisan if they challenge the actions or decisions of political leaders of any persuasion.
"What the country doesn't need, particularly just now, is a press that's docile -- never mind obsequious or intimidated. I don't agree with those who say, 'Dan, it's already happened,' but I do recognize there's some danger."
Rather, 73, still has plenty of fight left in him, more than a lot of us ever have at what we imagine are our best moments. Surely it has occurred even to him that it would be nice to just get up from the anchor desk and walk away -- leave all the aggravation and warfare behind. Rather confesses that he and his brilliant and strong-willed wife Jean -- whom he usually refers to as "Jean Rather" -- did consider this option.
"We did discuss it. Jean Rather presented that case in an eloquent way. I don't want to mislead you; she did not say, 'This is what I think you should do.' She did say, 'In making a list of things to consider, you should consider this, and I know you better than any other living person and if I don't mention it, you might not think of it.' She fixed some of her famous Jean Rather Prison Chili and we had about two spoonfuls' worth of time discussing it. And that was pretty much it."
Dan Rather is not going gentle into that good night. He's not the type to go gentle, for one thing, and as far as he's concerned, night hasn't fallen by a long shot. And that's part of our world, Wednesday, March 9, 2005.
Arise, Dan Rather, to gain thy dreams . . . .