October 2005

Rather Candid

CBS News Anchor and Correspondent Dan Rather on The Kalb Report

BY THOMAS KOHOUT

Courage. More than just a favorite word of a working class kid from rural south Texas, who would go on to report on some of the most significant news of our time as anchor and managing editor for the CBS Evening News and correspondent for 60 Minutes, the word represents an underlying theme for the opening edition of the12th season of The Kalb Report with special guest Dan Rather.

Before a capacity crowd of GW students and working reporters in the National Press Club Ballroom, Sept. 26, Rather addressed topics such as the changing definition of journalism, the climate of fear in the nation’s newsrooms, and his experiences facing the wrath of bloggers.

The veteran reporter who led the coverage of such monumental stories as John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Vietnam War, President Nixon’s trip to China, and Watergate, confided that although he stands by the accuracy of his National Guard story, he does harbor regrets about its aftermath.

“There is a part of me that says, ‘Damn, I wish I hadn’t caved. I wish I’d stayed with it,’ ” admitted Rather.

When host Marvin Kalb pressed Rather, however, about the role of bloggers in the story, particularly a blog site called FreeRepublic.com that began attacking Rather and the story before his broadcast ended, Rather did his best to take the high road.
“Yes, there were some strange and mysterious things,” Rather said about how the story got attacked even before the program was over. “There are bloggers who have as much integrity as I [do], and feel it is their mission in life to ask questions and keep on asking questions. But there were some in the mainstream press who seemed to take delight in our dilemma and picked up pretty quickly on those bloggers who are partisan or politically affiliated or had some ideological axe to grind with us. Instead of asking questions about these documents, they picked up on these blogs and the next thing I knew they were in mainstream newspapers and away it went.”
In front of an audience overflowing with journalism students, Rather closed with some sage advice about pursuing the profession. “To be a journalist you’ve got to burn with a hot, hard flame to do it. You have to love the news, and you’ve got to learn to write and make a lifetime of becoming a better writer.”

The Kalb Report is produced by GW, The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University, and The National Press Club, and currently is underwritten by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

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