Sometimes you investigate, you
get to the end of the alley,
and what you thought
was there is not there.
To get to the truth,
or as close to the truth as
is humanly possible to get,
requires a lot of persistence.
And also you have to be prepared
to pay the consequences,
that any very controversial story
one does involving powerful people,
eventually you're going to have to
face the furnace and take the heat,
and unless you're
prepared to do that,
then you need to get
another line of work.
Testing, testing, testing,
testing, testing testing.
Dan Rather has become the
symbol of television journalism.
From uptight, short-sighted
Narrow-minded hypocrites
- All I want is the truth
- Truth
- Just gimme some truth
- Truth
Live from Tiananmen Square
from Baghdad, Iraq.
near the Cambodian
border, South Vietnam.
It's in the nature of reporters
and politicians not to get along.
That goes with the territory.
- Are you running for something?
- No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?
Rather is just a son of
a b*tch, don't you think?
How I see myself
is as a watch dog.
I'm not an attack dog, I'm
not out to get anybody,
but I'm not a lap dog either.
Don't push me take your hands off
of me unless you plan to arrest me.
The fact that Dan Rather
is located by some people
as a uniquely malevolent figure
is merely evidence that
he has done his job.
When people talk
about liberal media,
a lot of times they're really talking
literally about Dan Rather, the man.
This lady thinks Dan Rather's
ears should be pinned back.
I've always found Dan
Rather to be a little odd.
She ran away with it like a
hobo with a sweet potato pie.
Yeah!
Truth, truth,
truth, truth, truth
It was a big mistake, but does
it mean the end of Dan Rather?
Rather now became the story.
It was a damaging moment
for media culture.
Rather, the godfather of
modern media fake news
talking about how this is the
greatest crisis we've ever seen
- in modern political history.
- From that point on
it really is the start of a
different kind of journalistic world.
My teenagers don't even
watch evening news,
but they know Dan Rather.
The level of shade
on this man Whew!
Do you not give a
sh*t anymore, Dan?
Short answer: No.
All I want is the truth
All I want is the truth
Just give me some truth
I've never known why it is that
I aspired to be a reporter.
The best guess that I can come up with
is that because my mother and father
were so riveted to newspapers.
Newspapers were around the house,
they were discussing newspapers.
At an early age, I came to believe
newspapers must be important.
So the dream for me was
always to be "a reporter."
Keep in mind at that time,
being a reporter basically
meant being a newspaper person.
The television news revolution
was only just beginning.
There were the three TV
networks: CBS, ABC and NBC.
CBS was known as
the Tiffany Network.
They were the gold standard, and
there wasn't a lot of choice.
The benefit of that was that everybody
had the same grounding in reality.
CBS News built an amazing
organization and reputation.
Literally were like The New
York Times of television.
This is the CBS Evening
News with Walter Cronkite.
There may be something
brewing in Cuba,
besides coffee, that
is. For the first time
Walter Cronkite was the
most admired man in America,
and he developed a
bipartisan following.
There was a widespread belief among
the people who owned the networks
that a network news
division was a public trust.
There's an enormous responsibility
that goes with being a broadcaster,
that you're talking to
literally 20 million people.
Here is Dan Rather speaking
directly from Galveston.
As of the moment, Hurricane Carla
is spotted near latitude 26.0 north
and 92.9 west, that's
255 miles southeast of
I was the news director
broadcasting live from Galveston.
The story became
a national story,
and first CBS News began
monitoring what we were doing.
These are by far the calmest
people in a flood I've ever seen.
We superimposed a scale
map of the Texas coast
onto the Galveston radar
image of this gigantic storm
which put the storm
in perspective.
Nobody had ever done it before.
About half a million
people took one look at it
and basically fled
to higher ground.
That job at the television
station as anchor
had resulted in our
coverage of the hurricane,
which CBS had seen and as
result of that hired me,
and so by 1962 I'm
working at CBS News.
But very quickly having
gone to New York,
moved back to Dallas to
open the Dallas Bureau,
and the biggest, most important
running domestic story
was Dr. Martin Luther King
and the early stages of
the civil rights movement.
The Negroes who live in this rural
area have been told for years
that that moss-covered
oak back there,
was a hanging tree during
the time of the Civil w*r.
I think my dad had a certain
destiny that he listened to.
He had a calling
to do what he does.
My dad is a deeply,
deeply religious person.
- Start walking.
- Right.
My dad reads the Bible often.
It's a source of comfort to him.
His faith, that you
love your fellow man,
and his particular way of
showing love is reporting.
The Albany Movement
depends on these people,
they are the heart of it.
This is Dan Rather
in Albany, Georgia.
Oh, sinnerman, where
you gonna run to?
Sinnerman, where
you gonna run to?
The violence against us,
the destruction of any little sense of
progress and prosperity that we had,
just to keep people down,
that was not known
until television came.
There was a lot of violence,
women, children, older
men, threatened, beaten,
dogs turned loose on them, fire
hoses turned loose on them.
Klan rallies at night.
Terrible Klan rallies.
You got a bunch of people
standing right over here
with their cameras
and their news things.
Half of them ain't got enough backbone
to get them a job and go to work.
They'll print half of the story.
They ain't got enough
backbone to tell the truth.
Anybody that lies with the devil
will die and go to hell without God.
The sights, sounds, smells
I do remember even the smell
of the wooden cross burning.
And I defy anyone to
go to a Klan rally
and not be deeply affected by
what it really represented.
Deep hate.
Oh, yeah
For the first time I
began to understand
what this emerging civil
rights movement was about,
and I began to see
up-close, personal,
bear witness to the violence
of institutionalized racism.
If the bombings do not stop,
someone is going to be confronted
with a full-scale race riot here,
because I know of people personally
that's not going to be tolerated with,
bombing in their sleep and
sh**ting them on the streets.
CBS was called the Colored
Broadcasting System,
the Communist
Broadcasting System.
Station after station
wouldn't feed our material,
some stations wouldn't
carry the CBS Evening News.
We were often accused of being
liberal in the news media.
That's what a journalist
is, a seeker of causes,
but we, I believe,
presented the truth.
Mr. Singleman, you must be aware
that at least one Northern newspaper
has termed you a bigot and a r*cist.
What's your reaction to that?
They can call me
anything they want
as long as they don't call
me too late for dinner.
We always had our
demonstrations in the morning.
We had to be through
by twelve o'clock
because they'd have to take-off
and fly the news back
to New York every day.
I was very impressed with Dr. King
from the moment I met him.
I had never seen anyone up
close and personal that heroic.
Now let's move out or you're
under arrest. Either one now.
Moment to moment, on the
razor's edge of lethal danger.
The fear that I felt seeing this
deep hate changed me as a person,
and changed me as
a professional.
The press was hated
almost as much as we were
so it required a lot of
courage just to tell the story,
because the same people
that were beating us up,
started beating them up.
Then there was guilt,
something nobody really
likes to talk about.
I have the job I
dreamed of doing,
but I did have those moments,
and I said, "Easy for you, Dan."
"Should you just quit this work"
"and become part of the
active effort to change this?"
As a journalist you're not saying,
"Damn it, I want this to be fixed"
or "Damn it, I'm going
to cause the change."
You're showing
people what happens,
they decide what to do
with that information.
Savannah, Georgia which has
had more racial violence
the past few weeks than any other
city in the Deep South is not
The role I'm in as being
a chronicler of this,
being an eyewitness to it
and bringing it to people's
screens, is important work.
This is Dan Rather
in Savannah, Georgia.
It was very difficult
as reporters
during this period covering
Dr. King and the movement.
On the one hand, you wanna be
an honest broker of information.
On the other hand, some of the things
were so outrageous, so disturbing,
there was a constant struggle
within yourself to say,
"Remember what
your role is here."
You wanna be the
witness, that's your job,
and you're trained as
a journalist to do it,
and for me that all
started in Houston.
Stand by, please.
I began working at the radio
station KTRH, 50,000-watt,
Voice of the Golden
Gulf Coast in Houston.
I've gotten a job there
beginning in late 1954.
I was on the air, I was
doing play-by-play work.
- Again, Dan Rather.
- Houston leads
All that experience at
the tiny radio station
paid enormous
dividends later on,
because I was in the process of
making myself a strong ad-libber,
frequently with no script,
and that gave me the confidence
that I could talk and describe
and create word pictures,
and I don't think I would've made it
in television without that ability.
It was fast becoming a
kind of dream job for me,
but from time to time, you know,
I certainly wanted a family,
and there came to work at the
radio station Jean Grace Goebel.
First time I saw her, I know
it's cliche but it's true,
it was "Wow."
She has such a winning smile.
Just everything about her
got my immediate attention.
One thing developed into another,
and I finally asked her out.
I was working parts
of seven days a week.
She would come and sit
with me in the newsroom
as I did my work
on Saturday nights.
I asked her to marry me.
Jean surprised me
by saying "Yes."
My grandparents have the best
relationship that I know of,
because of the level of
trust and communication
that the two of them
have with one another.
And I guess that's no surprise since
they've been married for over 60 years.
She was so supportive, and
so kind, and really smart,
and besides that
she was smoking-hot.
And now, As The World Turns.
Your great-grandson
and his mother
are going to have
Thanksgiving dinner with us.
I must say I'm surprised.
This is Walter Cronkite
in our newsroom.
There has been an attempt,
as perhaps you know now,
on the life of
President Kennedy.
Something has happened
in the motorcade.
The presidential car coming up now.
You can see Mrs. Kennedy's pink suit.
There's a Secret Service man
spread-eagled over the top of the car
We can't see who has been
hit, if anybody's been hit,
but something is wrong here.
Something is terribly wrong.
President Kennedy's been
given a blood transfusion
at Parkland Hospital here in Dallas
in an effort to save his life.
We just have a report from our
correspondent Dan Rather in Dallas
that he has confirmed that
President Kennedy is dead.
There is still no official
confirmation of this
I remember in the first
seconds and minutes
my own emotions of
anger, fear, heartbreak.
"Get that out."
"You can't afford to do that."
"Just concentrate on the story."
But that's just an announcement:
the President's dead.
What happened? Who
k*lled Kennedy?
Nobody had answers, the only
people who had answers was CBS.
Dan Rather in Dallas.
And Dan Rather was at the
right place at the right time.
A definite air of anticipation
has built up here in downtown
Dallas in front of the county jail.
The county jail is where
24-year-old Lee Oswald
is expected to be
brought anytime now.
The assassination of
President Kennedy,
it's one of the signal events
in modern American history.
It comes along at a time
when TV is in its infancy
and Dan Rather makes a name for
himself by covering this huge event.
Dallas Police this morning
resumed questioning
the man they have formally charged with
the assassination of President Kennedy.
This is the kind of headline
That weekend, CBS played the role of
rabbi, preacher, hand holder, therapist,
news source, investigators.
They were everything.
This is a terrible
thing for our country.
Not only for our country
but for the entire world.
And now, let's go back to
Dallas and to Dan Rather.
There was no time to draft
a script, not at all.
When it was airtime, it
was just stand and deliver.
This is the basement floor
of the Dallas City Hall,
and that's a scuffle
on the basement floor.
It seems to concern the target
Oswald had been shot.
What kind of man
shot Lee Oswald?
Dan was just young,
aggressive, serious.
He was about business.
Lee Oswald, like President Kennedy, had
no chance to live after he was shot.
Television's coverage
of this national tragedy
changed the country.
It also changed the basic relationship
people at home had with their television.
As night fell in Dallas, the
man accused of assassinating,
the accused assassin
of President Kennedy,
was still at police
headquarters.
Following the Kennedy
assassination,
Dan Rather's stature
was elevated.
He became the voice from Dallas.
He became a household name.
There was no mistaking him
with any other correspondent.
And it happened to be that
Kennedy was k*lled in Texas,
and Dan Rather grew up in Texas.
This was where he
was born and raised,
and now he was back covering
the story of a lifetime.
So there was something
organic about the coverage.
Well, why don't you love
me Like you used to do?
How come you treat me
Like a worn out shoe?
My hair's still curly And
my eyes are still blue
Why don't you love me
Like you used to do?
Being a Texan is
everything to my dad.
It is in him. It's in his DNA.
He's fourth-generation Texan.
There's a real deep pride. The
eyes of Texas are upon you.
This is a picture of my father,
but obviously this is not a workday
because my father is dressed in
what I think were
his best clothes.
My father's father laid
pipeline in the ground,
in the hot 100-degree Texas sun.
My father preached
the gospel of
"You're never gonna be the
smartest person around."
"There's no excuse for you not
working as hard as you possibly can."
When I was growing up in Houston,
roughly between ages 10 and 14,
I was diagnosed with
rheumatic fever,
and the doctor told my mother
there's no cure for it.
I know my father was very disappointed
in that, to say the least.
He used to come in sometimes
at night after he'd work.
He would say, "Steady,
steady, steady."
So that word stuck in my head, of just,
"Well, don't lose your composure."
My companion was a radio
and that turned out to
be a big break for me.
Hello, America. This is Edward
Murrow speaking from London.
You can have little understanding
of the life in London these days.
To him, Edward R. Murrow
was a heroic figure.
Someone that put it
all on the line in w*r,
to really bring
perspective and truth back.
The rheumatic fever
began to fade.
I was thin as a riding whip.
My father said, "What Dan
needs is to go to work."
"It needs to be physical
work. He needs to be outside."
I cut brush for a survey crew.
Very quickly began to
regain my strength.
I graduated from Sam Houston
State Teachers College.
The Korean w*r was on.
I volunteered for the Marines.
Rheumatic fever was a
disqualifying disease.
There's no pride in
it, matter of fact,
in many ways I'm ashamed
of it, but I lied about it,
because I wanted to get
in and I wanted to serve.
When I got in the
Marines, they found out.
I asked them to stay
in, but they said, "No."
In his fashion, he
served the country.
His way of expressing that
is to chase the good stories,
to find what they're trying to
hide and bring it into the light
because he thinks that's
what's best for the country.
We've been in one
company strength,
but now the other company
is moving in by helicopter.
We're now getting
the second company.
The Vietnam w*r was
becoming a big story.
I wanted to go, I asked to go,
and was eventually sent to Vietnam
and spent almost a year there.
What about these rocket
launchers, Colonel?
I don't believe I've
seen these before.
We've captured these
rocket launchers
on several occasions when operating
against the North Vietnamese.
It's a Chinese
rocket launcher, and
The key to this victory was this
particular company of the 101st Airborne
under the command of Captain Hank
Lunde of Clarksville, Tennessee.
When I first went to Vietnam,
combat units were disproportionately
made up of young Black men
out of places like
Watts and Harlem,
and white country-boy men out
of places like East Texas.
When you ask them, "What
about race in the ranks?"
The infantryman saying was,
"Same mud, same blood."
For more than two days elements
of the 101st Airborne brigade
were engaged against
North Vietnamese troops
in this extremely thick jungle
near the Cambodian border.
You can see how
thick this bamboo is.
Reporters couldn't get in here,
neither could helicopters of any kind,
and only today is the full
extent of the battle being known.
A number of bodies, the wounded,
already have been taken out.
Emergency medevac ASAP!
People don't understand how
deeply patriotic my dad is.
My dad is old-school,
to the bone patriotic.
I didn't go in with any agenda. I
had no agenda while I was there,
except to put on American television
screens the w*r as it was.
Manny? Is the pain a lot, Manny?
- You want any water or anything?
- Take it easy, Manny. You're laid down.
When my dad was away for months at
a time, he sent a lot of postcards
and he wrote the exact same
thing on every postcard.
He wrote, "w*r is
hell. Love, Dad."
The rebels during the night
extended their perimeter at least
four blocks in one direction,
and now the Marines are trying
to recapture those four blocks.
You know, as a young girl, you
understand that's dangerous,
but at the same time,
he always did that.
I never knew a time when he wasn't
doing that, as a young girl.
There are a lot of civilians
up and down these streets.
In the distance, someone is screaming
in Vietnamese, "My father is wounded!"
A grenade came through an
open window in the next room,
where a sn*per was
believed hiding.
And for the first time an all-out
attack by Premier Ky's Skyraider.
My mother didn't shield
us from what he was doing.
I have a lot of
memories of my dad
with him crouched down
and b*ll*ts everywhere.
This is the 25th
Infantry Division.
The newest troops in South
Vietnam for the United States.
This is part of their
first heaviest action.
I really, really missed him.
I didn't really have a
perspective on his work.
We tried our best to
tell it as it was.
"Here's your w*r."
"For better or for
worse, know what it is."
Five hours after the Buddhist
nun burned herself in Hue,
Saigon Buddhists marched downtown
in what they hope will be
their biggest demonstration
in more than two years.
I saw a good deal of Vietnam.
And increasingly, the
more of the w*r I saw,
what was being said in Washington
about what was happening in the w*r
did not match the
facts on the ground.
So it became a clash between
those who knew what the w*r was,
what it really was,
and those who were trying to
convince the American people,
"Look, don't listen
to those guys."
We will see this through.
We shall persist.
We shall succeed.
When officials began to make
representations about the w*r
that were demonstrated
to be false and untrue,
for example, that we
are winning the w*r,
and journalists began
pointing that out,
they used the phrase
"credibility gap."
It was a euphemism.
They were talking about
the government lying.
Lyndon Johnson would actually pick
up the phone when he was president
and call you. Is that right?
Yes. As well as other reporters.
It was fairly common for him
to call reporters and say,
- "What the hell are you doing to me, boy?"
- Yeah.
- I mean, you're a Texan.
- Yeah.
We have to stick together.
What folks saw on television
was increasingly at variance
with what they were being told.
That dichotomy would eventually call
the whole US commitment into question.
If you love your Uncle Sam
Bring them home,
bring them home
Support our boys in Vietnam
That ancient nemesis
of armies, rain,
has washed out the hopes
of 15,000 American troops.
I may be right,
I may be wrong
Bring them home
If you want us to
stop our bombing,
you have to ask them
to stop their bombings.
These marines are trying
to move in on the pagoda
which is the rebel headquarters.
The bombs in Vietnam
explode at home.
They destroy the dream and
possibility for a decent America.
Bring them home, home!
Lyndon Johnson, he had no
idea what was going on.
Why is CBS showing American
troops at w*r in a grim fashion?
Because we did not do
that in World w*r II.
We were all in it together.
The press worked as a propaganda
arm of the US Military.
This was something new.
Dan Rather was part of all that.
Dan Rather, CBS News, Da Nang.
Many in the upper echelons of
government and in the military
absolutely felt and they stated
that television incited much
of the anti-w*r movement.
As a matter of fact, it's
not a Vietnamese w*r now.
It's now a land w*r in Asia that
everybody's worried about for 20 years,
and we're in, and
we want it out now.
If we may to continue to wrap here
for moment, another point that
To them, the press
was the real enemy.
We don't let people influence
us and pressure and force us
to divide our nation in
a time of national peril.
The hour is here.
There's an old saying that "The
first casualty of w*r is truth."
And the stakes are so high.
When you're asking people to surrender
their very lives for their country,
you have to ennoble
the enterprise,
and often the way that
enterprise is ennobled by lies
and the greatest threat
to that is journalism.
For it seems now more
certain than ever
that the bloody experience of
Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.
When Walter Cronkite said the
w*r in Vietnam couldn't be won,
it was over.
When should an anchor person, an
anchorman, become a commentator?
Maybe once in a lifetime.
When the most trusted
man in America
tells you something pretty
stunning about your government
and its role in a foreign w*r,
people listened, and it
was very consequential.
This is a CBS News campaign
'68 Convention special.
What's going to
happen in Chicago?
Here is CBS News
correspondent Walter Cronkite.
Good evening from Chicago
where the 35th National Democratic
Convention opens tomorrow
with the promise of
turmoil inside this hall
and a threat of
violence without.
By the end of the week,
Hubert Humphrey probably will
emerge as the party's nominee.
Inside the hall we can expect floor
fights over the rules, over credentials,
a bitter one over the Vietnam
plank and the platform,
but throughout, the
political process continues.
The counterculture
was there in Chicago
and it was basically a w*r in the city
between Mayor Daley and protesters.
Tear gas flew every which way,
and it was almost impossible to
hold a sane Democratic Convention.
Mr. Chairman, most
delegates to this convention
do not know that thousands of
young people are being beaten
in the streets of Chicago.
And for that reason, I request
a suspension of the rules
for the purpose of
adjournment for two weeks.
Wisconsin is not recognized
for that purpose!
Looks like a couple of the
sergeants-at-arms security people
have one of the members under
both armpits and forcing him out.
Dan Rather?
What is your name, sir?
Take your hands off of me
unless you intend to arrest me.
Don't push me, please.
- Sir, I'm trying to...
- I know, but don't push me.
Take your hands off of me
unless you plan to arrest me.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Walter, as you can see...
I don't know what's going on,
but these are security
people apparently around Dan,
obviously getting roughed up.
We tried to talk to the man and
we got bodily pushed out the way.
This is the kind of thing that's
been going on outside the hall.
This is the first time we've
had it happen inside the hall.
I'm sorry to be out of breath but
somebody belted me in the stomach.
I think we've got a
bunch of th*gs here, Dan,
if I may be permitted to say so.
Well, mind you, Walter, I'm all
right. It's It's all in a day's work.
Thank you, Dan, for
staying in there
pitching despite every handicap that
they can possibly put in our way
from free flow of information at
this Democratic National Convention.
Nowadays there's a tremendous amount
of antipathy towards the press,
but it was pretty startling
to see that happen in 1968.
Rather, at that moment,
became a heroic figure
for standing up for
reporters to do their work
without fear of
violence or death,
and at that point, Rather really
becomes part of the history of 1968.
As I stood and watched
Hubert Humphrey tonight
stand where he has
wanted to for so long
at the very top of the
Democratic Party heap,
my first thought
was, "Some heap."
Richard Milhous Nixon in a
stunning political comeback
almost denied him
in the closing days,
perhaps even the closing
hours of the campaign,
has been elected the 37th
President of the United States
with an electoral majority over
Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Richard Nixon
despised the press
as this sort of unelected
cast of aristocrats
who didn't report the
news, but created the news
and decided what
Americans should think.
Nixon got screwed in the
1960 presidential election
because the media
was all JFK crazy.
In 1967, you know, preparing
this run for president,
this young producer whose
name was Roger Ailes,
responded, "If you had taken
TV more seriously in 1960",
"maybe you would be president right
now." And Richard Nixon hired him.
The president is said by aides
to be especially anxious
now to improve his image.
There's always somebody in the press
corps that's gonna stand up and ask
this sort of in-your-face question,
and Rather assumed that role.
Mr. President, I wanna
state this question
with due respect to your
office, but also as directly...
That would be unusual.
I'd like to think not.
There became a
counter offensive
to start trying to
even the playing field.
Mr. President...
Thank you.
The background of this...
Thank you, Mr. President.
I remember yours too.
It is important to
reflect on history
and all the moments in which
the downfall of democracy
has been preceded and accompanied
and hastened by rhetoric
trying to turn the press
into the enemy of the people.
At first it was called
the Watergate caper.
Five men apparently caught in the
act of burglarizing and bugging
Democratic headquarters
in Washington.
Nixon didn't like it when there
were leaks given to the press.
You hire a plumber
to stop a leak.
The so-called plumbers
were a highly skilled group
in the political dark arts,
wiretapping, home break-ins,
against personal
enemies and beyond.
The President's men also
claim that CBS News,
in passing along the
allegations of others,
is being politically unfair to
Mr. Nixon by spreading the smear.
Nixon hated the press and he
thought the press hated him,
but in the end, Watergate
was not the press at fault.
They didn't invade
Watergate. He did.
the strong America
that I wanna build,
people who do not want these things
naturally would exploit any issue,
if it weren't Watergate,
anything else,
in order to keep the
president from doing his job.
Politicians are there
to deliver their message
and the media is there to tell people if
this message should be believed or not.
What we're talking about here
is possible criminal acts
by the highest ranking
White House officials.
Well, there was tension
in the news room
because we knew we
were under attack.
But you know, all that did was
force us to hone our product.
The President's popularity
rating continued to drop.
The House Judiciary Committee
began to consider impeachment.
And Dan, more
than anyone else,
was the brunt of the pressure
that was being brought.
The possibility of
resigning or being impeached
and being tagged historically
as the man who led
perhaps the most corrupt
administration in our history.
I'm quite confident that Nixon's
plumbers group went after Dan.
Our house got burgled.
My main memory of it
is my dad standing with a shotgun
on the landing of the stairs,
c*ck the r*fle to try to
scare these burglars away,
which he did.
They weren't stealing.
They were opening safes,
they were looking for papers.
They were looking for
stuff to burn my dad with
and they didn't get it,
but to me it was just
a really scary thing.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Dan Rather with CBS News.
Mr. President
Are you running for something?
No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?
It was kind of just a moment,
it was a funny repartee,
but people really held onto that
as Dan taking on the president.
How can the House meet its
constitutional responsibilities
while you, the person
under investigation,
are allowed to limit their
access to potential evidence?
I am suggesting that the
House follow the Constitution.
If they do, I will.
What people don't understand about that
exchange is actually the aftermath,
because CBS got a ton of
heat from their affiliates.
And so, my main
memory from that time
is actually hoping he
didn't get fired for it.
But Dan relished the
role. You could feel it.
He did gain respect, notoriety,
and quite frankly, the ire
of the Nixon White House.
The President's remark
that payment would be wrong
seems to be not during the
discussion of hush money,
but during one about
clemency instead.
He simply is never going
to look the same again
to anyone who reads these
pages of private conversation.
In the Founding
Fathers' minds,
the reason they thought the
fourth estate, the press,
was such an important institution to be
part of the building blocks of democracy,
is that they knew that there needed to
be an independent watchdog of government.
In the past few days, it
has become evident to me
that I no longer have a strong-enough
political base in the Congress.
Therefore, I shall resign the
presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
Dan, this must be something of
an emotional moment for you.
You have covered the
entire Nixon presidency
and have been in the forefront
of some of the conflict
between the press
and the President.
My own feelings are those
of sadness, no bitterness,
and some exuberance about
the great American experiment
showing that it's still strong
and healthy and viable, Walter.
Many people in the Republican Party
held The Washington Post and CBS News
as primarily responsible for what
happened to the Nixon presidency.
When you cover a story like this
and when you have emotional
feelings on all sides of the story,
particularly those who
felt they have lost,
they're gonna blame somebody.
CBS News and myself as the
Chief White House Correspondent,
had been under
tremendous pressure.
In that moment, what
I was feeling was,
"We've been through a
lot. It's finally over."
"Now what?"
Things happened pretty quickly
after President Nixon resigned.
CBS said they wanted me to
move from the White House.
Mike Wallace asked me
to come to 60 Minutes.
I'm Mike Wallace.
I'm Morely Safer.
I'm Dan Rather.
In a moment, those stories and
more tonight on 60 Minutes.
Moving to 60 Minutes
was a watershed moment.
The pace at 60 Minutes
was immediately really
rapid and I loved that.
It took off and became
a talk-about program.
- Take one.
- Whatever happened to the hippies?
There's nothing new about
prostitution in Rock Springs.
Indeed it's an old
tradition here.
If I asked you to grade yourself,
A through F, foreign policy.
Dan, this is a little
bit embarrassing.
Will there be other
elections soon?
Actually, the elections
went perfectly well.
This is the scene outside a New
York disco called Studio 54.
Oftentimes Dan was
the one calling with,
"Should we be doing this?"
Little or nothing in the way of
news comes out of Afghanistan.
So the only way to find
out what goes on there
is to go in and
see for yourself.
I'm standing on the border
between Pakistan and Afghanistan,
a border that is now
closed to most everyone
except refugees fleeing
the Soviet invasion.
He was told not to
go into Afghanistan
because it was dangerous,
but he wanted to do it,
with the possibility
of never coming back.
I mean, they knew he was coming.
I was in college then,
and I literally thought he
wasn't gonna make it back.
I went home to
basically say good-bye.
These Afghan clothes I'm wearing
were part of an operation to sneak me
and a CBS News film
crew into Afghanistan.
If there's a story to be
gotten, Dan's gonna get it.
And if somebody thinks that
he's dressed up in a way
that looks ridiculous,
not gonna stop him.
People made fun of Gunga
Dan and the clothing.
But you know what? He
went and he reported.
This is a training
session for new recruits.
Afghans who have settled
their families in Pakistan
and are now ready to
go back home and fight.
Television is about
ratings and money.
It's an industry, and
60 Minutes was dominant.
There is a theory at CBS
that the worst thing to happen
to CBS News was 60 Minutes,
because it proved you
can make money from news.
Bullshit.
I think 60 Minutes is the best thing that
happened to enhance the value of CBS.
Television journalism,
as you well know,
has become show business
to a certain extent.
The most important thing in
news, I think, for the long run,
is the believability of the
person who's giving you the news.
That's what Walter Cronkite has going
for him, tremendous believability.
And Cronkite got ratings.
Cronkite could read the phone
book and have an audience.
CBS presents this
program in color.
This is my last broadcast as the
anchorman of the CBS Evening News.
For me, it's a moment for which
I long have planned, but which
He was by far the number-one
news anchor on television,
but he was also getting up in years,
so he accepted the retirement.
Walter Cronkite was probably the
biggest shoes that you could ever fill
in TV news.
Cronkite knew what a
great reporter Rather was,
and was very comfortable
having him be his successor.
When I came to the anchor chair,
I wouldn't try to mislead anybody
and I wouldn't be believable
if I did try to mislead them.
It felt terrific.
I felt in some ways I'd been preparing
for this moment most of my adult life.
You're gonna ask Leslie
two questions, probably?
Three. I got an
opening question,
one interior question,
and a closed question.
- The total thing is 1:30.
- Okay.
If it runs any more than
that, it's Harry Caray time.
- Okay.
- Okay?
Cronkite's sign-off was,
"And that's the way it is."
And that's the way it is.
Friday, March 6th, 1981.
So Dan had to do a different kind of
show that played to his strengths.
And he wanted to sign
off by saying, "Courage."
Courage to everybody
who's laying pipeline,
working on a railroad.
48 Hours on Crack Street.
Until then, Dan Rather. Courage.
And the network execs were
just absolutely not having it.
A guy walks into
Dan's office and says,
"Dan, why are you signing
off with 'Courage'?"
And Dan said to him,
"Because it's my favorite word
and it means something to me."
And the guy said to Dan, "Dan,
my favorite word is bullshit,"
"and you can't say
it on TV, okay?"
Sound up. Mic. Cue.
Good evening, this is
the CBS Evening News.
We had to get
through a transition.
Dan was so attractive and
sharp in the suit and so forth,
and following Walter, who was much
more a crumpled star, in a way,
there was an idea that we
should put him in a sweater.
- Have you seen the ratings lately?
- No, I haven't.
You're doing okay.
They like the sweater,
but it still doesn't quite say
"CBS News" to me, I don't know
He had skirmishes like that
between what upper management
thought he should be as an anchor
and what he really was as an
anchor, which was really a reporter.
Petroleum refining?
I'm sorry, I do have it.
Please.
I was a 22-year-old
desk assistant.
He would always say
hello to everyone.
"Hello. Hello. How are you?"
"Hello. How are you?"
You know, very intense
in his broadcaster voice.
He's a big man, he's
larger than life.
He's got a huge head, big face.
Quadruple checking. It's
not that I doubt McManus,
but you know, trust your
mother, but check it out.
Five minutes.
My grandmother thought
Dan Rather was just
perfection.
Keep it warm and friendly.
Think warm and friendly.
I believe I can manage that
without any problem at all.
All right. Quiet!
- Can you do it?
- Do it!
And that's the way it is.
Nobody can be another
Walter Cronkite.
It would be a mistake to
try to be Walter Cronkite.
I better be the best
Dan Rather I could be.
Good evening. This is
the CBS Evening News.
Dan Rather reporting.
Good evening. The fate of
Korean Airlines flight 007
Good evening. I'm Tom Brokaw
with NBC Nightly News.
That was the age
of the anchorman.
It was like Mount Rushmore,
and Dan Rather was in front and
then there was Brokaw and Jennings.
Peter Jennings, Tom
Brokaw and Dan Rather
existed at a time when three
broadcasts dominated the airwaves,
at a time when the nation
could agree on the facts.
It was 45 million people a
night for ABC, CBS, and NBC.
It's not Super Bowl,
but it's damn close.
You're constantly inhaling
NASA-grade rocket fuel for the ego.
How do we make ours better than
either one of the other two?
He really respected them. They
really respected him back.
But it was a game of
who's scooping who.
Okay. Okay. All
right. Well let's go.
- Okay, I'll meet you right down there.
- Bill is coming with my bag.
It may be delayed a second or so.
Shall I meet you back down here?
Dan's instinct every
time there's a story,
it's, "Let's get on
a plane and go there"
"and let's do the broadcast
from the place of the story."
And Jennings and Brokaw always felt
that we were too quick to move out,
that we went to stories
that weren't that important.
George Bush at that time
was gonna make a quick trip
to Beijing on the weekend.
Brokaw and Jennings
said, "No way."
And we walked away with
a big smile on our face
and said, "This is
just going to be big."
Okay.
You ready, Jorgen?
Day four of the student strike.
Day four for the 3,000
or so hunger strikers
And while we were there,
it became patently clear
that the Chinese students
were going to try an uprising.
In the middle of all of
this is the hospital tent
which handles the worst cases.
This is day four of
the student sit-in.
Day four of the hunger strike.
The sound of ambulances is almost
everywhere because they do lose
As soon as the uprising began,
the Chinese shut the doors.
Brokaw and Jennings at that
point could not get in,
and we had the story
completely to ourselves.
There was this new fantastic
device called a video camera.
It's just past midnight Beijing
time now, under a full moon
A television network,
if they were willing to spend
the money could cover the world.
Hunger strikers had
what may be their last meeting
before the army moves in.
There's instantaneous news.
Eventually our live
broadcasts from Beijing
were getting so much attention,
the Chinese government
made the decision,
"We will not allow you to use
our satellites to broadcast."
Shortly before
midnight, Eastern Time,
Rather made one last effort
to keep broadcasting.
I do protest in the
most respectful manner.
But the Chinese had
finally had enough.
There would be no more live coverage.
The satellite was being shut off.
It was a huge
moment both for us,
and a black eye for
the Chinese government.
It was amazing to be with Dan at
moments of historic significance.
The Berlin Wall. Once, it
divided East from West.
Because he understood
the value of it,
and he also understood
the responsibility of it.
If you were here, the
feeling that you would feel
is a kind of combination of 4th
of July and Thanksgiving Day.
He was so open to doing
what was required.
He was as much a producer as
the producer traveling with him.
He'd say, "What do we
do? Where do we go?"
How far we could push it.
And he'd be the
first out the door.
You know how he'd travel with
some gold sewn into his clothes
so he had emergency funds.
He looked at his work
like you were in a battle.
Scattered g*nshots were heard
as the Marines moved
and secured the seaport.
Airport terminal
building, Mogadishu.
Out there in the
darkness, US Navy SEALs
There is a bond that comes on
people working on a broadcast,
not unlike soldiers fighting
in the field together.
You depend upon one another.
He truly believed that
he could tell the story
better than anyone else.
He knew the politics.
His preparation gave us,
the grunts who worked with
him, a lot of confidence.
You know, reporters get
paid to be skeptical.
Here we go. Quiet down.
It didn't matter what
Dan Rather reported on,
he was going to be
labeled a liberal,
and oftentimes it came from people who
just didn't want to hear the truth.
The real threat to freedom,
the real threat to
freedom of speech,
and the real threat to
our constitutional system
is on our TV screens
every evening
and on the front pages of
our newspapers every day.
The press has always had
an adversarial relationship
with the government because
that's part of their job,
and what the Founding
Fathers wanted.
Is it as strong as we thought it was
gonna be in terms of its content?
Yes, yes. It is.
It's very strong.
Everything started
coming unglued
with the rise of Ronald Reagan.
Reagan is all
about deregulating,
and cable turns out to be
the friend of the right
because they're able to create
constituency television.
The only way to really stop what we see as
a slide towards liberalism in this country
is to bring an end to the bias,
the liberal bias that
exists in the major media.
Today, Helms spoke of
journalists who he said have
"forgotten the God that the
rest of us believed blessed us."
And "if they do not hate America, have
smug contempt for American ideals."
End of quote.
This one is Dan Rather.
If it looked like the right
wing was out to get Dan Rather,
you were right, they were.
And they still are.
Republican Senator Jesse
Helms wants to take over CBS.
He says if one
million Conservatives
each buys 20 shares in
the broadcast network,
they can take it over and
"become Dan Rather's boss."
It seems Jesse Helms feels CBS
is the most anti-Reagan network,
and by taking it over
Conservatives can end what
they feel is biased reporting.
The fact that Dan Rather
is located by some people
as a uniquely malevolent figure
is merely evidence that
he has done his job.
0%.
0% said they thought that
you cared a great deal
about the needs and
problems of the poor.
Now, let's set aside what
you've done or have not done.
Do you think that you
need to do something
that Blacks will perceive
as being positive for them?
I don't know whether
they would hear about it.
I think we have been doing things
that are positive for them.
A good journalist to me
is willing to be very unliked
and unpopular in the moment
and willing to be hated.
If you're gonna be in journalism
and you wanna be loved,
you better get a dog.
"Kenneth, what's the frequency?"
Those strange, unexplained
words may hold the clue
to the identities of two well-dressed men
who attacked CBS newscaster Dan Rather.
As Rather began walking
south down Park Avenue,
he said two well-dressed men in dark
suits and white shirts approached him.
According to police, one of the men
said, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
When Rather replied,
"You have the wrong guy,"
Rather said one of the men
punched him in the head,
knocked him to the ground
and kicked him repeatedly.
Everybody who disliked
Dan for whatever reason,
particularly politicians,
didn't believe the story.
The motive remains a mystery.
It doesn't appear to have
been a robbery attempt,
and police say it may have been
just a case of mistaken identity.
Meanwhile, they're still searching
for Dan Rather's attackers.
People thought that he
faked his own as*ault?
Dan Rather?
Straight-arrow Dan Rather?
The What's-the-Frequency
guy got caught.
He was a real person, and he
was a real dangerous person.
He k*lled someone
at the Today show.
Tager is charged with pumping
the b*ll*ts into Theron's body
outside of the Today
show studios Wednesday
People thought it was funny.
It wasn't funny.
He he nearly died.
He has injuries to this
day from that as*ault.
My dad could have easily lost his life
and got beaten within an inch of it.
But a couple years later, R.E.M.
made a really great song out of it.
One, two, three, four.
What's the
frequency, Kenneth?
And my dad can't dance
or sing worth a flip
but somehow he went
and sang with R.E.M.
And it's one of the geekiest,
most embarrassing clips
my dad has ever done,
but he's hilarious.
He's a really fun dad.
A leading psychologist says
that Dan Rather is troubled,
but David Turkat of the
media psychology newsletter
says that exactly what is
troubling him, only he knows.
There was a school of people who
thought Dan was a little nuts,
that he was gonna
crack on the air.
He was considered to be intense,
maybe divisive,
and maybe frankly a little off.
- Uh-huh
- [Dan mouthing along]
Whoo!
When you're anchorman,
you have to be thoughtful
and careful about what you say
because you represent the
institution, CBS News,
and you're talking
to the nation.
So, in some ways he
was a chained tiger
and occasionally he'd
get into trouble for it.
There was a sports overrun in Miami
that would push the Evening News
maybe even off the
air in the East Coast.
Rather was told the Steffi
Graf-Lori McNeil tennis match
would run late, delaying
the start of his newscast.
Rather reported to be angry about
the late start, called New York,
and when the tennis
match finally ended,
instead of Rather news,
affiliates received nothing.
Black.
Dan was not in the chair.
And that was the
wrong thing to do.
Some network affiliate
executives say
that Rather was trying to make a point
that the news should have gone on on time,
and that he was acting
like a prima donna.
I think he was angry.
Do you see this
as a general drift
of entertainment
versus the news?
Of course I do, because
that's where the money is.
You can have a stellar career,
but there can be mistakes.
Okay. I do.
We need to raise the
audio, just a little low.
10 seconds. Open
up, Dan, full 9.
Eight, seven, six, five
The cl*max of this convention
comes tomorrow night.
George Bush will deliver
his acceptance speech
to delegates here and to
a national TV audience.
His political
career on the line.
Early on, one of
the senior producers
had written a letter asking
for a general interview
that we asked all of
the candidates to do.
Many felt, rightly or wrongly,
that Vice President Bush
is hiding information that
the public ought to know.
The Iran-Contra scandal
was very much in the air.
We really like what we've got.
Saying arms have been
traded for hostages.
- To the mad Iranians.
- To the Iranians.
And the White House saying,
"Absolutely no way."
The question was, what
was Bush's role in this?
Which at that point he was saying, "I
didn't have anything to do with it."
The question about arms for hostages
has been answered over and over again.
Roger Ailes, who was
an advisor to Bush,
agreed to a live interview.
And the problem in a live interview is
that the clock is running out on you.
Mr. Vice President, thank
you for being with us.
Donald Gregg still serves
as your trusted advisor.
He was deeply involved in
running arms for the Contras
and he didn't inform you.
Why is Mr. Gregg still in the White
House and still a trusted advisor?
Because I have
confidence in him,
and because this matter, Dan, as you
well know, and your editors know,
has been looked at by
the $10-million study
by the Senate and the House.
And Roger Ailes,
then advising Bush,
saw an opening in which Bush
could be the tough guy by saying,
"You asked me for a
general interview."
Now if this is a political
profile for an election,
I have a very different opinion
as to what one should be.
You said that if you had known
this was an arms-for-hostages swap,
that you would've opposed it.
- Exactly.
- You also said that you did not know...
- May I answer that?
- It wasn't a question. It was a statement.
A statement, and I'll answer it.
What nobody saw
at home was that
Roger Ailes was holding up
cue cards for George Bush
and giving him the answers.
Roger Ailes was a master at
manipulation and creating scenes.
Did Dan fall into
the trap? Yeah.
You set the rules
for this talk here.
I didn't mean to step on your line,
but you insisted that this be live,
and you know we have a
limited amount of time.
I am in the control room.
When it gets that intense,
Dan can't listen to me.
So all I'm doing is
saying, "Three minutes."
May I explain out of the loop?
No operational role. Go ahead.
You said if you knew it was
an arms-for-hostages swap,
you'd oppose it. You
said the first you knew
Four minutes within a broadcast that
has only 22 minutes of air time.
We can't go any further
than six minutes.
what they were doing.
How can you reconcile you were
there on three separate occasions
I wasn't in the
studio that day
and I came back and I knew
the impact it was gonna have.
- I expressed my concerns and reservations.
- That you can't remember it.
- Others say he was apoplectic.
- Maybe I wasn't there at that point.
Lesley Stahl and I are
in Iowa for the primary.
We're in the back room and
we're sitting there watching it,
and we're holding onto each other
like we were watching a horror film
'cause we thought
it was really bad.
It's not fair to judge my whole
career by a rehash on Iran.
How would you like it
if I judged your career
by those seven minutes when you
walked off the set in New York?
Mr. Vice President...
I respect you but not for
what you're doing tonight.
Six minutes, I'm saying, "Cut."
Iran was officially
a t*rror1st state.
"You've gotta stop.
You've gotta stop."
Are you willing to go to a news
conference before Iowa caucuses,
- answer questions from all...
- Been to 86 news conferences since March.
- 86 since March.
- I gather that the answer is "no."
Thank you very much for being
with us, Mr. Vice President.
We'll be back with
more news in a moment.
Good morning. Good morning.
We don't misrepresent. We
come straight at people.
That's my record and my history,
and that's CBS News's
record and its history.
Clearly understand
That's Dan unchained,
and I knew Dan was going
to get in trouble for it.
As a flaming executive,
I knew I was gonna have to
deal with the consequences.
It was an important
very important issue
which Dan Rather pursued
characteristically with energy.
That's what Dan
does for a living,
that's what a great
reporter does for a living.
I called a couple
people in New York
and they were thrilled with
it, and I was horrified.
We promoted all weekend
long on our air,
an interview with the Vice
President on the Iran-Contra Affair.
It was in the morning papers
and why the Vice President didn't
understand that, we don't know.
The headlines the next day were exactly
what Roger Ailes and Bush wanted,
that "Rather bushwhacks
the Vice President."
The Bush people say
he was bushwhacked.
Well, maybe they were interested in
the alliteration more than the reality.
It made Dan Rather a central
character in that election.
Good evening. A heated exchange
between Vice President George Bush
and CBS anchor Dan Rather
about the Vice President's
Morning. Rather's a jerk.
This lady thinks Rather's
ears should be pinned back,
and if the Vice President can
stand up to him, he can to anybody.
I think George Bush has decided
that press bashing is a blood sport.
He picked out Dan Rather last
night and had a shot at him.
My job is to ask honest questions
and try to get honest answers,
and I'm comfortable with that.
It's not always comfortable
for everybody involved,
but I'm comfortable
being a reporter.
I'm lucky to have this
job. I like it a lot.
I wanna get to it. Thanks.
- Thanks a lot.
- If you'll let us get to work.
People'd say, "Why is
he always in the news?"
That's the dangerous
thing about publicity.
The spotlight burns as
much as it illuminates.
When you're in the spotlight all
the time, you'll get into trouble
because there are people
looking to get you.
Elephants never forget.
Republicans never forget.
They're shrewd tacticians,
but more importantly, they're
long-term strategists.
Fox News Channel.
Fair and balanced.
Where news is going
where news should be.
What I recognized was,
the American people
didn't wanna be
told what to think
about the information
they were receiving.
So we came up with,
"We report, you decide.
Fair and balanced."
There is a master
propagandist at work.
If you look at the three
networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN,
but take the three commercial,
not cable networks,
any difference in
those newscasts?
I think by and large, ABC and
NBC come at it pretty straight.
- Do you really?
- Yeah.
And it's only CBS that
you think is biased...
Well, I think it's Dan
Rather who hates George Bush,
wants to nail him every night.
Dan Rather is upset because George
Bush knocked him on his fanny
in 1988 in that debate.
I don't think that Dan was trying to
make something happen politically.
- You don't think he's out to ding
- Oh, abso What?
Let's not kid ourselves.
Of course he is.
But it was useful for Ailes
to act like this is a
representative of the Democrats,
this is a lefty, and we
need to take him down.
It's useful to have
a demon to vilify.
It's one of the ways
that this effort works.
When Ailes came in, he said,
"I have a vision to serve
part of the country"
"that I don't think has
been served in the news"
"in a more
conservative approach."
How did you do it? I mean,
tell me what the formula is.
- Whatever the ratings comparison is
- Right.
has led Fox News
channel to be considered.
Here to stay.
I think it all comes down to
people and a vision and...
So what's the vision?
Roger Ailes is a man with a
very strongly held set of views
about how he wants the
world to work. Okay?
And what he did was he took all
of his brain power and energy
and Rupert Murdoch's money
to establish a system, an
information processing system,
that delivers to an audience
Roger Ailes's worldview.
The culture of cable news
partisanship is not limited to Fox.
I think that it's a pitfall
on both sides of the aisle.
But Fox has been uniquely
significant in pioneering a model
that entwines showmanship
and partisan rancor.
But the philosophy is that in primetime
you have to create personalities.
- Is that the idea?
- Yeah. You have to create ratings.
In the end, it's about ratings.
Roger Ailes really was a canny and
talented inventor of that model,
certainly a popularizer of it.
Not only do today's
liberals, many of them,
hate our American traditions
Nothing will get better in this
country until the culture changes.
Right now it's really
easy to monetize crap.
As we've learned of late, you
can make up your own truth
and enough people
will believe it.
We have to tell the truth to
our viewers, that's a minimum.
We can all be confused from time
to time based on circumstances.
But the sky is blue,
and the water is wet.
And anybody who begins with something
other than those kinds of truth
doesn't deserve our time.
And you watch Dan Rather for a
while and you know who he is.
He's a truth teller.
He's a truth seeker.
Dan doesn't take sides.
He pulls every lever he can
to get every ounce of truth
out of every person
he interviews.
Could you describe to me what you believe
to be the responsibilities of a husband
of a United States Senator?
I don't know, but I'm
willing to fulfill them.
It didn't matter if he
was at the White House
or at a flood or at a hurricane.
The wind doesn't get much
worse than it is right here.
When you want to know
what it feels like,
Dan Rather brings you there.
Showdown with S*ddam.
The deadline for w*r.
Commando missions
set up inside Iraq
as huge force prepares to
invade on a moment's notice.
At the height of the Iraq w*r, I
was a frequent flyer to Baghdad.
Are you afraid of being
k*lled or captured?
I get a phone call, and it was
the press person, and he said,
"Boy, do I have the mother
of all stories for you."
And I said, "What?" and he goes,
"There are pictures
of American soldiers"
"treating prisoners
disrespectfully,"
"borderline torturing them,"
"and no one's talking about it."
So we started tracking
and hunting that story.
You'll see some of the pictures
that led to the Army investigation.
We want to warn you, the pictures
are difficult to look at.
Americans did this
to an Iraqi prisoner.
According to the US Army,
the man was told to stand on
a box with his head covered,
with wires attached
to his hands.
He was told that if he fell off
the box, he would be electrocuted.
When it comes to people,
American soldiers risking
their lives for our country
versus a few bad eggs,
I guess you could say,
and how much weight
you give that story,
it doesn't feel good to do that,
but it's still an important story.
There are bodies that were
eaten by dogs, tortured,
you know, electrodes coming out
of walls, scratches on the walls
It was an awful place.
We went into Iraq to stop
things like this from happening.
And indeed, here they are
happening under our tutelage.
When we got the story, strange
things began to happen.
"We're not gonna put it
on the air this week."
"We want another week to work on
it. We think you can improve it."
I said, "Wait a minute.
We've got the story."
So one week led to two
weeks, led to three weeks.
They held it off the air until
we came to them and said,
"Some of the sources on this
story who have helped us do it,"
"have become convinced
you're not going to run it,"
"and they're talking
to Sy Hersh."
One of the great investigative
reporters of our time.
That got their attention,
because now they're in a box.
Very big business is in bed
with very big government.
They don't want reporters digging around
on stories that can embarrass them.
Two weeks ago, we received an
appeal to delay this broadcast,
given the danger and tension
on the ground in Iraq.
This week, with the photos
beginning to circulate elsewhere,
and with other journalists about to
publish their versions of the story,
the Defense Department agreed
to cooperate in our report.
60 Minutes II was on a roll.
They had just reported
the Abu Ghraib story.
I mean, they were rocking.
Accepting the Peabody Award, Dan
Rather, correspondent for 60 Minutes.
When it comes striving to meet the
responsibilities of the public trust,
that is the practice of
journalism in this country
Everyone was flying high.
We've done an award-winning story
that everyone's talking about.
US officials are making
changes at Abu Ghraib prison.
Today, the US military set
free more than 300 inmates.
What took place in that prison does
not represent America that I know.
There's a little bit of a
Teflon that goes up, you know,
"Okay, don't mess with them. They
are on a roll. Let them keep going."
The outcome of this election will set
the direction of the w*r against terror.
The prospect of doing a piece
on George W. Bush's highly
irregular military career
was something that producer Mary Mapes
had first mentioned to me in 2000.
385, 386.
If you have a commander-in-chief
who is commanding two overseas wars,
what he did and didn't do
when it was his time to serve,
that's a story.
And if it turns out that he
avoided going to a combat area
through the influence
of his father,
and then disappeared while he was
supposed to be on duty, for a year,
whether he was a Democrat or
Republican, that's a story.
Sometimes you can be
blinded by a story
that you think points out an
inequity and a special treatment.
The bottom line is you
gotta have the goods.
Did then-Lieutenant Bush fulfill
all of his military commitments?
CBS showed what it said are
exclusively obtained memos,
supposedly proving that three decades
ago, Bush did not follow orders.
The memos have come
under withering criticism
with several experts
saying they're fake.
We had a document which I believed
was what it purported to be.
Was the information coming
from a flawed source?
That was really the
crux of the problem.
The story was true.
Because it was true, those who
wanted to discredit the story
had to attack the process by
which we got to the truth.
The Republican party
had become very adept
at going on the offensive
by coming up with schemes.
And Rather was the bane
of the Bush family.
They despised him.
Was it planned?
We'll never know.
Did the phone start ringing off
the hook 30 seconds after it aired?
Yes.
Coincidence?
I don't know. Not likely.
Rather now became the story.
It was that Rather had
bought a bad bill of goods.
A couple quick questions
about these memos?
- We're late here.
- No. Thank you.
Thank you, Jim.
Even my dog knew these
documents were forged.
Dan Rather's still telling the
Chicago Tribune they're not forged.
CBS News said today it
was misled about documents
that questioned the President's
National Guard service
and it was a mistake to
broadcast their contents.
CBS has taken steps to
hold people accountable,
and we appreciate those steps.
We also hope that
CBS will take steps
to prevent something like
this from happening again.
That piece should never
have gone on the air,
and it cost a lot of
people their careers.
He suffered.
So did CBS.
There was a substantial
lawsuit against them.
I never thought
it would happen.
I had convinced myself
that somehow, some way,
I would stay on at CBS.
It was my wife Jean who provided the
perspective that I needed to hear.
She said, "You got into a fight with
the President of the United States"
"during a re-election campaign."
"What did you think
was going to happen?"
It was a mistake. CBS
News deeply regrets it.
Also, I want to say personally
and directly, I'm sorry.
The saddest thing about the
story is that it's true.
George Bush had a checkered record
with some real problems in it,
all of which was
covered in that report.
Dan is a really good human.
He appreciated the
loyalty in people.
He appreciated the work.
I think the mistake was that he
so trusted the people around him
that they had done
the deeper dive,
but that's Dan's
responsibility also.
When CBS said, "Well, we'll
let you keep your job,"
"if you make it very clear that it's
Mary's fault that Memogate happened,"
he wasn't having that.
He said, "Absolutely not."
And some people have said,
"Wow, what a dumb thing to do."
"You had the greatest
job in the world."
"All you had to do was
throw Mary under the bus."
And that's just not him.
When it was announced Dan was
leaving, I was really heartbroken.
He had this long,
esteemed career.
It was a dream job.
To have that rug pulled out from
under you in the way that it was
was hard for him. It
was hard for all of us.
We've shared a lot in the 24 years
we've been meeting here each evening.
And before I say good night this
night, I need to say thank you.
Thank you to the thousands of
wonderful professionals at CBS News,
past and present,
with whom it's been my honor
to work over these years.
The final sign off of my
time at the CBS Evening News
was going to be an emotional
time for me and for my family.
And my daughter, Robin,
who is almost mystically
in tune with my moods,
she knew I was having trouble.
That was a very
emotional time for him.
He was going out not the
way he wanted to go out,
but because he really had to.
And he wanted to go out with strength
and he wanted to go out his way.
Not long after I first
came to the anchor chair,
I briefly signed off
using the word "courage."
I want to return to it
now in a different way.
To my fellow journalists in places where
reporting the truth means risking all,
and to each of you,
courage.
For the CBS Evening News,
Dan Rather reporting.
Good night.
The truth is, if you're
on the air that much
doing cutting-edge journalism,
then you're going to have
moments that don't work.
And Rather fell into a sand trap
with this showdown over
the Texas Air Guard.
And so, from that point on,
when Dan Rather leaves
CBS in a fit of anger
and lawsuits that don't work,
it really is the start of a
different kind of journalistic world.
I think a lot of people
in his position would have
just sort of packed it in at that point
and would've said, "I had a great career."
"I'm gonna rest on my
laurels," in some ways.
I think he could have become
one of the world's great
octogenarian fly fishermen.
I really do.
But I just think that's so
antithetical to who he is.
Anybody who knows me knows
that, you know, I wanna work.
I'd much rather wear
out than rust out.
This little light of mine
I'm gonna let it shine
America loves a second act.
I don't take any credit
because he's Dan Rather,
he would've come back one way or the other
just through the quality of his work.
Haiti is and will remain a
disaster seemingly without end.
Is it like this every day?
Yeah, every day that we have this
food give-out, it's always like this.
The most devastating
impact to my grandfather
surrounding the Bush story
was that people thought
that he was retired.
People thought that he was done.
Bonjour, madame.
Salut.
I looked at it as, "Dan,
what's interesting to you?"
"What do you see is happening in
the world that you want to convey?"
And that's exactly what he did.
How does anybody living like this
have even a shred of dignity?
Dad literally called Wayne
and said, "Let's put together a
crack production team and go get it."
Probably the hardest
time of my life.
It is unbelievable
to put together
an hour of investigative
journalism every week.
And we were doing
40 episodes a year.
The floodwaters have long ago receded,
and so has the nation's attention.
But for the people down
here, time stands still.
For the first time in a long
time, he really enjoyed himself.
I mean, he was really sort of
free to do what he wants to do,
and that was report.
For HDNet, from New York,
Dan Rather reporting.
Good night.
I do sincerely believe that a career
in breaking tough investigative stories
and doing it thoroughly and
meticulously and in an impartial way
is a public service.
I think it constrains powerful interests
who might otherwise abuse that power.
When Dan started,
the level of power that
journalists had was insane.
You were one effectively of three networks
and what you reported had an impact.
The audience was in
the tens of millions.
But as the media landscape
changed, the audience got smaller.
Because there were more options.
But Dan never changed.
Dan took the same
responsibility, to get it right.
Life's filled with surprises.
I was slow to come
to social media.
Frankly, I felt I was too
old to learn the new tricks.
But I finally agreed to try it.
And lo and behold,
I've reached an audience that has no idea
that I once anchored the CBS Evening News,
or care, for that matter.
My dad really, really
believes in democracy.
And so he was watching
Trump, worried sick
that the very fundamental
institutions that form our democracy
were intentionally
being betrayed.
The political press is among the most
dishonest people that I've ever met.
I'll continue to
attack the press.
These people are the worst.
Thank you all very much.
And his response to that
was to go to social media
and very calmly say,
"That's not right."
Dan has been a very important
voice of reason in the Trump era.
And the Trump era has
been a chaotic, crazy time
in which norms were being
busted right and left,
and the idea that someone
has a handle on it.
He's got a lot to say,
and he says it in a way that brings
history and immediate perspective
to each one of these
news developments.
I think that's
part of the appeal.
We're witnessing an incredible
second or third or fourth
or whatever you want to call this act
of Dan's right now on social media.
How could Dan Rather, a
90-year-old gentleman,
be so highly regarded by people
like the millennials in my family?
You know why?
Because everything he does is
based on real knowledge and fact.
I'm thrilled that the young
people are impressed with Dan now
but they're seeing him at the present
and they're seeing what he stands for.
My teenagers know him.
They have no idea
that he anchored the evening
news at CBS News for a long time.
I don't think they even
watch evening news at all.
But they know Dan Rather.
It seems like he's having
fun on social media.
He has really introduced
himself to a whole new audience
of sassy young people who are like,
"Yeah, man, tell it like it is."
If anybody that sees this is on Twitter,
and you do not follow Dan Rather,
you need to right away.
It is comedy.
I just wanted to point out that
Dan Rather is a national treasure.
The level of shade
on this man Whew!
I've had so many
people who are my age
come up to me and say,
"I have no idea who
your grandfather is."
"I've seen him on Twitter,
I've seen him on Facebook."
"I love what he's doing there."
Dan Rather gives no
more f*ck. Okay?
He's given enough.
He's having fun, and I love it.
I think the media landscape
has changed around him,
but his brand of giving important,
essential, truthful information
has been true from the days
that he was a college reporter
to now, you know,
having viral tweets.
And I think that's why
folks have trusted him
and will continue to do so.
You know, it's not uncommon.
It's a function of
age for people to say,
"Well, what have you learned?
What does it all mean?"
What old man do you know
that doesn't want to tell you
what he's learned out of life?
Working in television,
social media
Things like, "Did he
cover Tiananmen Square?"
"Did he cover the Vietnam w*r?"
"Did he cover Watergate?"
"Did he cover the
Kennedy assassination?"
As time goes along, that's
not gonna amount to very much.
In the end, whatever
remains of one's life,
family, friends,
those are gonna be the things
for which you're remembered.
Dad and I have a
sign-off, which is LNF.
LNF is "Love Never Fails."
As a journalist, he's
all about courage.
As a father, he's all about
the love, all the time.
The absolute unconditional love.
I want my grandfather
to be remembered
as someone who did
his absolute best
to represent the
ideals of this country.
There's just something
sweet about this cowboy
who is still at the rodeo.
Horse isn't riding as fast,
he's not at the top,
but he's still there.
He's still exactly who he is.
And there's something
poetic about that.
Journalism is a
higher calling.
It's not a career.
And when you're looking at who
were successful journalists
over the last 50 years,
Dan Rather would be at
the very top of that list.
This is Dan Rather.
- CBS News
- live
From Afghanistan.
- Dan Rather reporting.
- Dan Rather reporting.
We've been through very
difficult times before.
We've been through
times of great division.
It's a time, I think,
to take a deep breath,
whisper to ourselves,
"Steady."
Stop it, stop it.
I can be dumb as a brick
wall about a lot of things.
Okay, let's redo it.
Sorry, my fault.
Start it over.
Part of my job is to separate
bullshine from brass tacks.
I can't carry a tune in a
bucket with a lid on it.
If bullshine were music, he'd
be a full symphony orchestra.
If you ain't got the yolk, you
can't emulsify the hollandaise.
Steve Bannon said the
press needs to shut up.
Well our answer to that has
to be, "With respect sir, no."
My friends come
for Saturday night
Man, it's nice to make
up Some sangria wine
It's organic And it
comes from the vine
It's also legal And
it gets you so high
Yeah, and I love
that sangria wine
Love to drink it With
old friends of mine
Yeah, I love to get drunk
With friends of mine
When we're drinking
That old sangria wine
Whoa, I love sangria wine
Whoa, I love sangria wine
Start with some wine
Add some apples and brandy
And some sugar, some spice
Old friends always
show up on time
That's why you add
Sparkling burgundy wine
And I love old sangria wine
When I drink it With
old friends of mine
Yeah, I love to drink
With old friends of mine
When we get drunk
on that sangria wine
Whoa, I love sangria wine
Whoa, I love sangria wine
Whoa, I love sangria wine
Yeah, whoa, I
love sangria wine
Whoa, I love sangria wine
Whoa, I love sangria wine
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Rather (2023)
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