Dan Rather: "Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-03/dan-rather-rather-outspoken-my-life-news
Dan Rather reflects on his 60-year career in journalism. He says he can’t remember a time he didn’t want to be a journalist. In 44 years at CBS News, Dan Rather reported from the front lines of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was the first network reporter to confirm President Kennedy’s assassination. He stayed on air for 18 hours straight after the September eleventh attacks. But he was pushed out of the anchor chair at CBS Evening News eight years ago after documents he used in a piece about President George W. Bush’s National Guard Service were discredited. career and defends his reputation. Dan Rather explains why he still stands behind the truth of the story.
Guests
Dan Rather
managing editor and anchor of the television news magazine Dan Rather Reports on the cable channel HDNet and former anchor of the CBS Evening News.
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The Diane Rehm Show (http://wamu.fm/JU0GOq): Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather talks about his last days at the network and his impressions of Viacom and CBS majority owner Sumner Redstone. According to Rather, Redstone publicly stated before the 2004 presidential election that he hoped George W. Bush would be elected to a second term in office because it would be good for Viacom if he were:
Read An Excerpt
Excerpt from Dan Rather's "Rather Outspoken: My Life In The News." Copyright 2012 by Dan Rather. All rights reserved. Reprinted here by permission of Grand Central Publishing:
Comments
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Diane, could you ask Gunga Dan why he cancelled his Tuesday appearance on FOX News Bill O'Reilly? It's not as if you are not going to ask Dan why he relied on obvious forgeries for his entire Bush 43 National Guard story. I'm sure you will be sympathetic to O'Reilly since you criticized a conservative for promising to be your guest for the full hour but left half way through.
Diane left her own show halfway through?? No wonder you are upset!
He spent millions in a court of law and could not prove his point, he lost to CBS news. What are we to make of a guy who writes a book and then goes out on a personal denial tour. You are where you should be Dan, on the outside looking in, your a disgrace to you profession. The major news sources CBS NBC really need to clean house and get the liberal bias out. Diane are you listening?
CBS News is still the gold standard regarding the real news. 60 Minutes,FANTASTIC ! I will never forget a 60 Minutes expose on Mark Rich,the infamous Iran Contra arms dealer. The report showed how the CIA put a bounty on Mr. Rich for not turning over the original documents. The corresponding copies were shredded by Ollie North. I keep waiting for justice,given the pardon by President Clinton.
Thank you Diane, for having Dan Rathers on. CBS evening news hasn't been the same since he left. I truely miss coming home from work and watching him in the evening. I can remember as a child my great grandmother would tell me "TURN DAN ON" he is a legend.
Dan you are one of my all time favorite journalist. It is telling that the Bush administration walked away from an illegal invasion of Iraq based on their "pack of lies" and were never canned/impeached
And you were canned for for your story about Bush receiving some kind of special treatment to get in the Guard and allegedly not fulfilling his required duties.
Are you one of the folks that Jimmy Kimmel referred to at the White House Correspondence dinner "“Some people say journalism is in decline. They say you have become too politicized. To focused on sensationalism. They say you no longer honor your duty to inform America but actively try to divide us, so your corporate over lords can rake in the profits”
What do you think about Jimmy Kimmels comment?
My understanding has always been that this was a setup because the documents were exposed as fake during the original broadcast.
Have you ever heard of the H.R.office? (Human Resources) Once upon a time those offices were called the Employment Office.. You walk in,fill out a job app,get an interview,get hired or not....SIMPLE......60 Minutes did a piece on how prevalent racial discrimination really was.It wasn`t long until President Reagan had his Justice Dept. create this rouse to allow the discrimination without fear of prosecution.
$1000 toilet seat? Today the public tolerates that scam,and focuses on the employees and taking too long to GO.
Come on, Dan. You just want folks to buy your book. -- Mike Wallace would say...
Funny, you can forge a document, but you sure can't fake Dubya going missing from the National Guard for a year. That speaks volumes about Mr. Bush's stint in the armed forces. I think Dan Rather should have held his ground. The outrage over the documentation was a total smokescreen to obfuscate the real story-- Bush went missing and received no punishment; any other member of the armed forces would have been declared AWOL.
He lost respect in my family ever since he reported James Brady had died during Reagan's shooting.
Dan Rather continues on his "fake but accurate" angle. He also seems to believe that the only people who attacked the documents were hardwing partisans. Horse-feathers. I hated Bush and supported Kerry, but that still doesn't absolve a news organization of its duty to check basic facts.
Compare the way Ira Glass acted on "This American Life" when he found out that a source had misled him. He totally spiked the story. Even though much of it was true, it was just too poisoned for them to defend.
The day after questions came up, Rather got on the air and said that there was absolutely no question about the documents. He later said, on air, the documents came from a source that was "unimpeachable," which it definitely wasn't.
At that point, Dan put his reputation on the line to defend the documents. They were fake. End of reputation right there.
Lizbert wrote:
"Diane left her own show halfway through?? No wonder you are upset!"
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How did you manage to confuse the conservative, who left the show, with Diane? You think Diane is a conservative? No wonder you are so easily confused.
Thank goodness for the internet and other means to communicate. Before the invasion of Iraq many of us listened to Democracy Now, read stories at Firedoglake, David Corns blog and other sites to get accurate information about the questionable intelligence. Thank goodness in regard to what was going on at Abu Gharib many of us had access to the work of Christian Peace Maker Team members Peggy Gish and others who were in Iraq before and long after the invasion. They started documenting reports and stories about what was going on in Abu Gharib in the early summer of 2003. Seymour Hersh's story about Abu Gharib came long after Christian Peace Maker teams documentation that they tried to hand over to Paul Bremer and were turned away Thank goodness Seymour Hersh finally tapped into the work that CPT was all ready doing for his article I tried like hell to get Peggy Gish on Diane's program. Christian Peace Maker Team was way out in front of Seymour Hersh and the rest of the U.S.MSM. Thank goodness for the internet...and the work of others so that the public can skip or trump the MSM. Which we can not rely uponhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4066835.stm
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Eyewitness: Taking detainee
testimony in Iraq
news.bbc.co.uk
Peggy Gish has been logging the cases of Iraqis held by US-led forces in Iraq and told the BBC news website what she found.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4066835.stm
I thought that was a joke about Dan Rather walking off the newsroom floor minutes before his broadcast was about to start causing CBS News to go black for 7 minutes.
I once had the opportunity to hear Walter Cronkite speak after he retired. He said that we would be amazed at the amount of censorship that happened in the news industry for the sake of government protection and for the protection of the networks political relationships. I would be interested in knowing how much this still goes on today.
Christian Peace Maker Team was way out in front of Seymour Hersh, CBS etc on the Abu Gharib torture. They were documenting the torture in the summer of 2003. Many of us were able to access their reports. They were trying to hand over the reports to Paul Bremer in Iraq and her was turning them away. Thank goodness for other means of communication. We can not and are not relying on the MSM.
Hell the Diane Rehm Team will not even have the Leveretts on to discuss Iran. The Leveretts who were both in the Bush administration...43's.
Dan please discuss how the lack of investigation into the false pre war intelligence is similar to what is going on with Iran.
And you do not sound like "it is stuck in your crawl" at all as Diane Rehm just suggested. But could understand if it was
Patsy Nomore wrote:
"CBS News is still the gold standard regarding the real news."
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"Katie Couric perpetuated the bias problem that eroded CBS's credibility under Dan Rather. This profile includes more than 40 examples of the liberal slant that typified her reign as the Queen of the CBS Evening."
Examples of the "gold standard regarding real news" in action:
"You campaigned to change the culture in Washington, to change the politics-as-usual culture here. Are you frustrated? Do you think it is much, much harder to do that than you ever anticipated?"
— Couric to Obama in an interview shown on the February 3, 2009 Evening News.
"You're so confident, Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say, 'Damn, this is hard. Damn, I'm not going to get the things done I want to get done, and it's just too politicized to really get accomplished the big things I want to accomplish'?"
— Couric in an exchange with Obama shown on CBS's The Early Show, July 22, 2009
All right Dan Rather tells the truth in regard to the run up to the invasion of Iraq "we did not do our jobs" And that is still the case in regard to Iran. Please address the lack of deep questioning in our MSM about the claims being made about Iran. How much has changed since then. Not much from my vantage
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I have heard Rachel Maddow not only allow quest repeat unsubstantiated claims about Iran but repeat these questionable claims herself. I have heard Diane Rehm allow Reuel Marc Gerecht and others to repeat unsubstantiated claims about Iran and not ask any challenging questions in fact no questions at all when these claims are repeated
angela73 wrote:
"I once had the opportunity to hear Walter Cronkite speak after he retired. He said that we would be amazed at the amount of censorship that happened in the news industry for the sake of government protection and for the protection of the networks political relationships. I would be interested in knowing how much this still goes on today."
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Coming from "Uncle Walter," that's really amusing. When the three networks had a monopoly on broadcast news, the viewers were told what to think. When he was reporting the Moon landing, "Uncle Walter" was in his element. When it came to the Vietnam War, "Uncle Walter's" status didn't leave much room for the viewer to make up their own minds. The blurring of the line between news and commentary is in no way a new phenomenon. "Uncle Walter" lived long enough to participate in the blurring.
"Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I'm not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we." W.C.
The Tet offensive was a total failure, yet Walter figured it was time to declare the war a "stalemate?" In 66, he was gung-ho, by 68, he did a 180. During WWII, his reports from London were not so mercurial.
Diane you are controlled by some of your owners. You and your ream will not have Flynt and Hilary Mann Leverett on to discuss Iran. What are you folks afraid of?
Dan how much do you think the MSM has changed since the run up to the invasion of IRaq. I am not hearing challenging questions coming out of Diane or any other mainstreamer about many of the inflammatory claims that have been repeated about Iran for almost 10 years. What has changed in regard to the media over the last 10 years? Except that we now have blogs, access to more international outlets. Thank goodness
I want to thank Dan Rather for his dedication and service to the news. I sincerely believe that corporate interests are playing a strong part in actually running this country. Not to point any fingers, but the conservatives that run the businesses are the same interests that control the country and lead to corporate profits.
Diane, I remember GW Bush Press secretary Ari Fleischer say on TV that the American people needed to be careful what they say and be careful what they do, following the invasion of Iraq. That's the kind of chill there was in the political air at that time.
Thanks, Chris
danweber wrote:
"I thought that was a joke about Dan Rather walking off the newsroom floor minutes before his broadcast was about to start causing CBS News to go black for 7 minutes."
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CBS News viewers never complained as they never noticed the difference.
Dan Rather is and was one of the most prolific partisan left wing journalist ever. Obviously, he was out for the Bush clan for whatever reason. He reported Vietnam (the war that was as senseless or more so than Iraq) and used this as he showcase moving up the CBS ladder... his hindsight now is Rather ridiculous and clear he's only on a book selling mission promoting his propaganda.
Diane --
I missed most of your interview with Dan Rather but will listen via your website later today.
In my view, Dan Rather has been a straight shoot during his broadcast career, a sentiment not always shared by others -- inlaws, viewers of the TV stations where I worked, and even some in newsrooms I shared.
Another side of Mr. Rather: in the 70s, network correspondents in the field frequently had to feed their film, tape, audio and scripts to bureaus in Chicago, New York and LA from local affiliates. This was well before satellites allowed feeds to be made from nearly anywhere. Mr. Rather and his photographers and producers were occasional guests in our newsroom at WISH-TV (CBS) in Indianapolis. Let me say that most of the CBS personnel were professional and polite -- after all they and we were working toward similar deadlines of about 5 PM -- but Mr. Rather was the only person who walked around when he and we were finished to personally thank each one of us in our newsroom for our hospitality.
That type of courtesy in the business world is not something we experience every day.
Thanks Diane. Keep up your great work.
Guy Johnson, Indianapolis
When will the audio be available from the web site?
Dan Rather is a hero; he stood in the face of power for the sake of his country. That power forced him down. Yet those who knew Geo. W. Bush during that National Guard/Vietnam War period know Rather's words to be truth. The Swift Boating of Dan Rather continues today as is shown by many of the comments on this page.
Meanwhile Bush II was reelected, continued the destruction of the US as we have known it and will never know it again. It's a tragedy that CBS forced Mr. Rather out. With his story recognized as truth, the country would not have been further bamboozled by the regime clamoring for oil wars, defense contracts and oil contracts.
I am grateful for the chance to hear more of/read more of his story. Thank you for having him on, Diane.
Yes. People whispered, measured their words. Workers--even high-level workers--whose jobs were government funded were afraid to speak their minds--think NASA, NIH, and such.
It's hard to be a scientist working at NASA, studying weather patterns, and still deny Global Warming, but it was expected. And enforced.
What does it say when a very popular news agency cannot go out into the public without hearing, FOX NEWS LIES,FOX NEWS LIES,FOX NEWS LIES..........
The only news agency I`ve ever heard of who got a court verdict in their favor,that says that Fox News has the Constitutionally guaranteed right to LIE.....
"liberal bias"? Where? Yes, even on ostensibly public radio where do you see "liberal bias"? When was the last time,an NPR program talked to a socialist? Or an opponent of US wars? or a Union activist? NO, NPR's too busy reporting on Wall St. ,promoting commercial television,and hero mythologizing, to conduct critical inquiry into current issues.