When the Great Depression sunk the American economy, the town of Wharton, Texas was not spared. Daniel “Rags” Rather, one of the lucky men who had a steady job, dug trenches and laid pipeline for the Texas oil industry; his wife, Byrl, was a waitress and taker of odd jobs. Their first son, named after his father, was born Oct. 31, 1931, and eventually grew up in the Heights Annex outside Houston, according to Alan Weisman, author of “Lone Star: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Dan Rather.” Young Rather, now with a brother and sister, sold newspapers on a corner while defending himself from “occasional violence ... largely the result of frustration over joblessness and poverty.” After a gang preyed on him and a friend, he learned how to box.
During his early teenage years, Rather was often bedridden, the longest period totaling eight months . His loneliness was abated by listening to the radio. He began smoking cigars at age 14 to make himself look older, especially to girls, and his interest in journalism was piqued when he first saw a reporter in person:
“Here, obviously, was a professional person of competence with access to all that was transpiring, recording an event of significance, which, thanks to his powers, would become known to a great many people,” Rather wrote years later. To the dismay of his father, Rather announced he would attend Sam Houston State Teachers College to study journalism. Rejected by the football team (the coach told him he was “little” and “yellow”) and unable to earn a scholarship, Rather did odd jobs given to him by journalism professor Hugh Cunningham. One of these jobs, writing for The Huntsville Item, tested Rather's dedication to journalism. According to Weisman, Rather found it difficult to walk up to strangers and ask them questions, and he would often make up excuses for why he could not interview someone.
At school, Rather joined KSAM as a play-by-play sports announcer. This earned him a scholarship, and the owner liked him so much he was appointed to cover almost all regional sports and news in addition to work as a DJ at night. Rather almost lost his job one night when, on his break and away from the station while a religious program aired, he received a call from his boss.
“Have you listened to my radio station lately,” the boss asked.
“No, sir,” Rather replied.
“Well, you better get back there and fix it, and then you're fired.” The turntable's needle had stuck on “Go to hell,” which was playing over and over. Rather kept his job (and was paid 40 cents an hour) and graduated in three years.
Rather enlisted in the Marine Corps, but he failed basic training, and the effects of his teenage illnesses lingered. He wanted to go to war, but he was disqualified, so he went to work at The Houston Chronicle and its sister station, KTRH. It was there he met his future wife, a secretary named Jean Goebel. They were married in April 1957, and they had a daughter, Robin, in 1958 and a son, Danjack, in 1961.
Rather spent substantial time away from home on assignments. One time when Danjack was very young he was watching television with a friend when his father entered the room. The friend asked who the man was, and Danjack replied, “Oh, that's Dan Rather.”
In 1961, Rather became the news director and anchorman of KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. When Hurricane Carla was moving toward Texas, Rather, who had extensive knowledge of hurricanes due to a childhood interest, advised his superiors to send a truck to Galveston because the best radar in the area was located there. When Rather arrived, the U.S. Weather Bureau's chief hurricane expert was there, so he knew it was a big storm.
“It was Rather's boss's idea to show just how huge the storm was by pointing their camera at the radar screen and superimposing the image over a map of the Texas shoreline. For the first time, viewers could actually see the monster, which was now 400 miles wide and 50 miles across at the eye,” Weisman wrote. The station won a Sigma Delta Chi citation for its service in warning the public.
When Rather was first offered a job at CBS News, he declined, but he accepted their second offer and began working in New York on Feb. 28, 1962. He did not fit in on the East Coast; on one of his first radio jobs, he pronounced the name of the town wrong. Executives sent him to the Dallas bureau, where colleagues liked his “coachability, his willingness to take direction and advice from more seasoned pros.” It was out of Dallas that Rather “became an eyewitness and on at least one occasion a participant in some of the most historic civil rights stories of the time. He was there when Alabama governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door while attempting to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama. Rather was once holed up in a hotel in Birmingham surrounded by Bull Connor's police for an interview with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
Rather used his Texas accent and good old boy routine to win press credentials in a South that was skeptical of reporters from the big city. While he is not eager to defend the South, he is also not able to excuse the sins of the North:
“Look at the white institutions outside the South that still keep ethnic and racial minorities locked away in ghettos,” Rather wrote in an essay for The Nation. “The President of the United States gets a written report every morning on how many Bosnians died last night, but no such briefing on how many people were murdered in Washington ... Americans from every corner of the globe are daily subjected to abuses of civil rights, to violence, to hatred and inhumanity. Don't try to tell me or any other New Southerner that civil rights was and is a 'Southern problem.' The Old South shares the worst of its legacy with all Americans.”
Rather ran into trouble when, on the scene of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, CBS Radio issued a bulletin based on his tentative report that Kennedy was dead. Rather, who many believe was the first reporter to know of the death, called the hospital and spoke to a Catholic priest, who said he was certain Kennedy was dead.
“Rather said that he began shouting into the phone that he had not authorized any bulletin,” Weisman wrote.
When Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan, became president, Rather was recalled to Washington to cover the White House, where he began a rocky relationship with the commander-in-chief. LBJ thought Rather should have written more positive stories, but Rather refused to bend.
“More often what I got was a phone call from the president himself demanding, as only he could, 'Rather, are you trying to fuck me?' And this was even before the war in Vietnam blew out of control and before students were being teargassed in the streets for saying the war was wrong,” Rather wrote. CBS subsequently sent him to London, but he warned them that if the situation in Vietnam blew up he would be going there. CBS News policy would not send anyone who had a family to Vietnam, but Rather insisted on going. His original intention was to stay three months, but he ended up staying about a year.
Rather saw chaos in Vietnam:
“I hit the ground, but I landed on my back and was pinned down for more than an hour. There was heavy fire from mortars, automatic weapons, and small arms. I had the strange sensation of lying on a river bank in Texas and daydreaming, except for the noise.” He ran when he heard American helicopters, but he was stopped by a Vietnamese women pointing a gun at him, so he backed away before jumping aboard a crowded chopper.
Back in Washington, Rather's skepticism of the higher-ups in government led him to report tips and rumors from purported administration insiders, including Donald Rumsfeld. Nixon hated Rather, and according to John Mosedale, “He stood up to the Nixon White House. He made their enemies list. He incurred their wrath at the time when political Washington was talking about the genius of Richard Nixon. He was the one who stood up and asked the hard questions. Nobody asks hard questions now.”
After the Nixon era, Rather was asked to return to New York to be chief correspondent for “CBS Reports,” where he interviewed Cuba's Fidel Castro. On Dec. 7, 1975, Rather made his “60 Minutes” debut.
When covering Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in 1980, Rather and his entourage were intimidated upon attempting to enter the country. The mujahideen suspected they were Russian spies, but Rather and his crew swore to God and Allah that they were only observers. They were given blankets to wear as shawls and camouflage.
“This is why you paid the price all those years, standing in the rain with a microphone in your hand, covering dull city hall meetings,” Rather wrote. “It was all to get to a place like this, at a moment such as this.” In “The Camera Never Blinks Twice,” he wrote that his family thought he would not return alive.
When Rather was chosen to replace Walter Cronkite as anchor of “CBS Evening News” in 1981, he was offered $22 million over 10 years in addition to the title of managing editor. President Van Gordon Sauter wanted to transform the broadcast into “something that evokes an emotional response.” Cronkite complained and suggested, “Perhaps they feel they can't cover everything and therefore don't even try.” During the mid 1980s the program had more than 200 consecutive number one weeks, but it dropped to third in 1987.
On Aug. 29, 1990, Rather interviewed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. CBS was having difficulties with declining budgets and viewership during the Gulf War, and CBS announced that Connie Chung would begin as Rather's co-anchor starting June 1, 1992. The two were amicable on camera, but off-screen, Rather tried to push Chung out. The breaking point in their relationship occurred in April 1995 when the Oklahoma City bombings happened while Rather was in Texas and Chung was in Sacramento. Executive Producer Andrew Heyward decided to send Chung, who was not skilled at ad-libbing reports. Rather replaced her after the first day, and a month later Chung was dropped as co-anchor.
Rather said he learned about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks while he was in the shower, where he debated whether to act as a reporter or an anchor. He decided to anchor, and he was on the air for 45 hours between Sept. 11 and 14. When he went on David Letterman's “Late Show” a week later, he began to cry, and after apologizing was consoled by Letterman, who told him it was OK because he was human. The show received more than 3,500 positive e-mails and praise from Cronkite. Tom Shales wrote,
“In such a time of horror, I wanted the most human anchor, the anchor with the most warmth. Rather's that man; there's no competition. If it looks like the world is coming to an end, I want Dan Rather to be the one to break it to me.”
The downfall of Rather's CBS career began in 2004 when “60 Minutes” aired a story that featured documents doubting George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard experience. Producer Mary Mapes was determined to get the story on the air, and her evidence rested on a series of photocopied documents given to her by Bill Burkett, a former guardsman who did not like Bush and later changed his story as to the origin of the documents. According to Weisman, the other networks had the same documents, and Mapes said the content of the documents was more important than whether they were fake. Rather occasionally questioned her confidence in the credibility of the documents.”
On Sept. 8, Rather walked in on Mapes and others when they were editing the piece, and they acted like he was just a visitor. CBS News President Andrew Heyward approved it to air that night, and bloggers immediately criticized the authenticity of the documents. After a week and a half of standing by the story, Heyward ordered Rather to apologize on air. A CBS investigation concluded that Rather should have been more involved in the production of the piece. “60 Minutes” colleague Mike Wallace said,
“Dan acknowledged to me that he had not seen the finished piece before it went on the air.” After the controversy, Rather left his anchor position and took a correspondent job on “60 Minutes” for the last year on his contract. On his final night as “CBS Evening News” anchor, CBS aired a one-hour retrospective of his career.”
On Sept. 19, 2007, "Rather sued CBS for $70 million on the grounds that the network “damaged his reputation and broke the terms of his contract by sidelining him during his final months at CBS News and then forcing him out,” according to Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times.
While Rather may be more well-known for his anchor position, he considers himself a reporter first and foremost. In “Deadlines and Datelines,” he wrote,”
“Reporting may be my great passion in life, and writing helps me enjoy it more fully. I don't feel I've captured a story, really understood it, until I've sat down and written it.” His philosophy was perhaps best outlined in “The Camera Never Blinks Twice”:
“What I have sought, over a lifetime in news, is to earn a reputation as a 'pull no punches, play no favorites' experienced reporter of integrity. My intent has been to try to uphold the highest standards of American journalism, even when there is reason to believe this will cost me something.”
During his early teenage years, Rather was often bedridden, the longest period totaling eight months . His loneliness was abated by listening to the radio. He began smoking cigars at age 14 to make himself look older, especially to girls, and his interest in journalism was piqued when he first saw a reporter in person:
“Here, obviously, was a professional person of competence with access to all that was transpiring, recording an event of significance, which, thanks to his powers, would become known to a great many people,” Rather wrote years later. To the dismay of his father, Rather announced he would attend Sam Houston State Teachers College to study journalism. Rejected by the football team (the coach told him he was “little” and “yellow”) and unable to earn a scholarship, Rather did odd jobs given to him by journalism professor Hugh Cunningham. One of these jobs, writing for The Huntsville Item, tested Rather's dedication to journalism. According to Weisman, Rather found it difficult to walk up to strangers and ask them questions, and he would often make up excuses for why he could not interview someone.
At school, Rather joined KSAM as a play-by-play sports announcer. This earned him a scholarship, and the owner liked him so much he was appointed to cover almost all regional sports and news in addition to work as a DJ at night. Rather almost lost his job one night when, on his break and away from the station while a religious program aired, he received a call from his boss.
“Have you listened to my radio station lately,” the boss asked.
“No, sir,” Rather replied.
“Well, you better get back there and fix it, and then you're fired.” The turntable's needle had stuck on “Go to hell,” which was playing over and over. Rather kept his job (and was paid 40 cents an hour) and graduated in three years.
Rather enlisted in the Marine Corps, but he failed basic training, and the effects of his teenage illnesses lingered. He wanted to go to war, but he was disqualified, so he went to work at The Houston Chronicle and its sister station, KTRH. It was there he met his future wife, a secretary named Jean Goebel. They were married in April 1957, and they had a daughter, Robin, in 1958 and a son, Danjack, in 1961.
Rather spent substantial time away from home on assignments. One time when Danjack was very young he was watching television with a friend when his father entered the room. The friend asked who the man was, and Danjack replied, “Oh, that's Dan Rather.”
In 1961, Rather became the news director and anchorman of KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. When Hurricane Carla was moving toward Texas, Rather, who had extensive knowledge of hurricanes due to a childhood interest, advised his superiors to send a truck to Galveston because the best radar in the area was located there. When Rather arrived, the U.S. Weather Bureau's chief hurricane expert was there, so he knew it was a big storm.
“It was Rather's boss's idea to show just how huge the storm was by pointing their camera at the radar screen and superimposing the image over a map of the Texas shoreline. For the first time, viewers could actually see the monster, which was now 400 miles wide and 50 miles across at the eye,” Weisman wrote. The station won a Sigma Delta Chi citation for its service in warning the public.
When Rather was first offered a job at CBS News, he declined, but he accepted their second offer and began working in New York on Feb. 28, 1962. He did not fit in on the East Coast; on one of his first radio jobs, he pronounced the name of the town wrong. Executives sent him to the Dallas bureau, where colleagues liked his “coachability, his willingness to take direction and advice from more seasoned pros.” It was out of Dallas that Rather “became an eyewitness and on at least one occasion a participant in some of the most historic civil rights stories of the time. He was there when Alabama governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door while attempting to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama. Rather was once holed up in a hotel in Birmingham surrounded by Bull Connor's police for an interview with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
Rather used his Texas accent and good old boy routine to win press credentials in a South that was skeptical of reporters from the big city. While he is not eager to defend the South, he is also not able to excuse the sins of the North:
“Look at the white institutions outside the South that still keep ethnic and racial minorities locked away in ghettos,” Rather wrote in an essay for The Nation. “The President of the United States gets a written report every morning on how many Bosnians died last night, but no such briefing on how many people were murdered in Washington ... Americans from every corner of the globe are daily subjected to abuses of civil rights, to violence, to hatred and inhumanity. Don't try to tell me or any other New Southerner that civil rights was and is a 'Southern problem.' The Old South shares the worst of its legacy with all Americans.”
Rather ran into trouble when, on the scene of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, CBS Radio issued a bulletin based on his tentative report that Kennedy was dead. Rather, who many believe was the first reporter to know of the death, called the hospital and spoke to a Catholic priest, who said he was certain Kennedy was dead.
“Rather said that he began shouting into the phone that he had not authorized any bulletin,” Weisman wrote.
When Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan, became president, Rather was recalled to Washington to cover the White House, where he began a rocky relationship with the commander-in-chief. LBJ thought Rather should have written more positive stories, but Rather refused to bend.
“More often what I got was a phone call from the president himself demanding, as only he could, 'Rather, are you trying to fuck me?' And this was even before the war in Vietnam blew out of control and before students were being teargassed in the streets for saying the war was wrong,” Rather wrote. CBS subsequently sent him to London, but he warned them that if the situation in Vietnam blew up he would be going there. CBS News policy would not send anyone who had a family to Vietnam, but Rather insisted on going. His original intention was to stay three months, but he ended up staying about a year.
Rather saw chaos in Vietnam:
“I hit the ground, but I landed on my back and was pinned down for more than an hour. There was heavy fire from mortars, automatic weapons, and small arms. I had the strange sensation of lying on a river bank in Texas and daydreaming, except for the noise.” He ran when he heard American helicopters, but he was stopped by a Vietnamese women pointing a gun at him, so he backed away before jumping aboard a crowded chopper.
Back in Washington, Rather's skepticism of the higher-ups in government led him to report tips and rumors from purported administration insiders, including Donald Rumsfeld. Nixon hated Rather, and according to John Mosedale, “He stood up to the Nixon White House. He made their enemies list. He incurred their wrath at the time when political Washington was talking about the genius of Richard Nixon. He was the one who stood up and asked the hard questions. Nobody asks hard questions now.”
After the Nixon era, Rather was asked to return to New York to be chief correspondent for “CBS Reports,” where he interviewed Cuba's Fidel Castro. On Dec. 7, 1975, Rather made his “60 Minutes” debut.
When covering Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in 1980, Rather and his entourage were intimidated upon attempting to enter the country. The mujahideen suspected they were Russian spies, but Rather and his crew swore to God and Allah that they were only observers. They were given blankets to wear as shawls and camouflage.
“This is why you paid the price all those years, standing in the rain with a microphone in your hand, covering dull city hall meetings,” Rather wrote. “It was all to get to a place like this, at a moment such as this.” In “The Camera Never Blinks Twice,” he wrote that his family thought he would not return alive.
When Rather was chosen to replace Walter Cronkite as anchor of “CBS Evening News” in 1981, he was offered $22 million over 10 years in addition to the title of managing editor. President Van Gordon Sauter wanted to transform the broadcast into “something that evokes an emotional response.” Cronkite complained and suggested, “Perhaps they feel they can't cover everything and therefore don't even try.” During the mid 1980s the program had more than 200 consecutive number one weeks, but it dropped to third in 1987.
On Aug. 29, 1990, Rather interviewed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. CBS was having difficulties with declining budgets and viewership during the Gulf War, and CBS announced that Connie Chung would begin as Rather's co-anchor starting June 1, 1992. The two were amicable on camera, but off-screen, Rather tried to push Chung out. The breaking point in their relationship occurred in April 1995 when the Oklahoma City bombings happened while Rather was in Texas and Chung was in Sacramento. Executive Producer Andrew Heyward decided to send Chung, who was not skilled at ad-libbing reports. Rather replaced her after the first day, and a month later Chung was dropped as co-anchor.
Rather said he learned about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks while he was in the shower, where he debated whether to act as a reporter or an anchor. He decided to anchor, and he was on the air for 45 hours between Sept. 11 and 14. When he went on David Letterman's “Late Show” a week later, he began to cry, and after apologizing was consoled by Letterman, who told him it was OK because he was human. The show received more than 3,500 positive e-mails and praise from Cronkite. Tom Shales wrote,
“In such a time of horror, I wanted the most human anchor, the anchor with the most warmth. Rather's that man; there's no competition. If it looks like the world is coming to an end, I want Dan Rather to be the one to break it to me.”
The downfall of Rather's CBS career began in 2004 when “60 Minutes” aired a story that featured documents doubting George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard experience. Producer Mary Mapes was determined to get the story on the air, and her evidence rested on a series of photocopied documents given to her by Bill Burkett, a former guardsman who did not like Bush and later changed his story as to the origin of the documents. According to Weisman, the other networks had the same documents, and Mapes said the content of the documents was more important than whether they were fake. Rather occasionally questioned her confidence in the credibility of the documents.”
On Sept. 8, Rather walked in on Mapes and others when they were editing the piece, and they acted like he was just a visitor. CBS News President Andrew Heyward approved it to air that night, and bloggers immediately criticized the authenticity of the documents. After a week and a half of standing by the story, Heyward ordered Rather to apologize on air. A CBS investigation concluded that Rather should have been more involved in the production of the piece. “60 Minutes” colleague Mike Wallace said,
“Dan acknowledged to me that he had not seen the finished piece before it went on the air.” After the controversy, Rather left his anchor position and took a correspondent job on “60 Minutes” for the last year on his contract. On his final night as “CBS Evening News” anchor, CBS aired a one-hour retrospective of his career.”
On Sept. 19, 2007, "Rather sued CBS for $70 million on the grounds that the network “damaged his reputation and broke the terms of his contract by sidelining him during his final months at CBS News and then forcing him out,” according to Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times.
While Rather may be more well-known for his anchor position, he considers himself a reporter first and foremost. In “Deadlines and Datelines,” he wrote,”
“Reporting may be my great passion in life, and writing helps me enjoy it more fully. I don't feel I've captured a story, really understood it, until I've sat down and written it.” His philosophy was perhaps best outlined in “The Camera Never Blinks Twice”:
“What I have sought, over a lifetime in news, is to earn a reputation as a 'pull no punches, play no favorites' experienced reporter of integrity. My intent has been to try to uphold the highest standards of American journalism, even when there is reason to believe this will cost me something.”
References
- Gold, Matea. “Rather's suit singles out CBS executives.” Los Angeles Times. 20 Sept. 2007.
- Rather, Dan. “Deadlines and Datelines.” New York: William Morrow and Company, 1999.
- Rather, Dan with Mickey Herskowitz. “The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist.” New York: William Morrow and Company, 1994.
- Weisman, Alan. “Lone Star: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Dan Rather.” Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.
Comments
Write New Comment ▼
Write New Comment
Sorry! This knol's owner(s) have blocked you from editing, making suggestions, or commenting here.