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[Dan Rather] 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.
["Gimme Some Truth" by John Lennon playing]
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?
[audience laughing]
[Nixon on tape] Rather is just a son of a bitch, don't you think?
[Rather] 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.
[Rick Perlstein] 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.
[Jon Stewart] Yeah!
♪ Truth, truth, truth, truth, truth ♪
[Wayne Nelson] It was a big mistake, but does it mean the end of Dan Rather?
[Douglas Brinkley] 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. -[Brinkley] From that point on
it really is the start of a different kind of journalistic world.
[screaming]
[Soledad O'Brien] My teenagers don't even watch evening news,
but they know Dan Rather.
The level of shade on this man… Whew!
[Andy Cohen] Do you not give a shit anymore, Dan?
-[audience laughing] -Short answer: No.
[laughter and applause]
♪ All I want is the truth ♪
♪ Just give me some truth ♪
[song fades out]
[keyboard clacking]
[Dan] 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.
[Margaret Sullivan] 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.
[announcer] This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
There may be something brewing in Cuba,
besides coffee, that is. For the first time…
[Brinkley] Walter Cronkite was the most admired man in America,
and he developed a bipartisan following.
[Dan] 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.
[announcer] 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 War.
[Robin Rather] 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.
-[man] Start walking. -[Dan] Right.
[Robin] 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.
[choir singing indistinctly]
The Albany Movement depends on these people,
they are the heart of it.
This is Dan Rather in Albany, Georgia.
["Sinnerman" by Nina Simone playing]
[explosion]
[people shouting indistinctly]
♪ Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to? ♪
♪ Sinnerman, where you gonna run to? ♪
[Andrew Young] 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.
[Dan] 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.
[people cheering]
[Dan] 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… ♪
[Dan] 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.
[song ends]
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 shooting them on the streets.
[Dan] 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.
[Howard Stringer] 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 racist. 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.
[Young] 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.
[Dan] 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.
[Dan] 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.
[Young] 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.
[dogs barking]
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.
[Dan] 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.
[man] Stand by, please.
[mid-tempo jazz playing]
[Dan] 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.
-[man on radio] Again, Dan Rather. -[Dan on radio] 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."
[Martin Rather] 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.
[Dan] She was so supportive, and so kind, and really smart,
and besides that she was smoking-hot.
[opening theme of As The World Turns playing on TV]
[announcer] And now, As The World Turns.
Your great-grandson and his mother
are going to have Thanksgiving dinner with us.
[sighs]
I must say I'm surprised.
[static crackling]
This is Walter Cronkite in our newsroom.
There has been an attempt, as perhaps you know now,
on the life of President Kennedy.
[reporter 1] 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.
[reporter 2] 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…
[Dan] 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."
[Brinkley] But that's just an announcement: the President's dead.
What happened? Who killed Kennedy?
Nobody had answers, the only people who had answers was CBS.
Dan Rather in Dallas.
[Brinkley] 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.
[Sullivan] 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.
[Dan] 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.
[Dan] There was no time to draft a script, not at all.
When it was airtime, it was just stand and deliver.
[gunshot]
[reporter] 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.
[people shouting indistinctly]
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.
[Brinkley] 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 killed 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.
["Why Don't You Love Me" by Hank Williams playing]
♪ 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? ♪
[Robin] 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.
[Robin] My father's father laid pipeline in the ground,
in the hot 100-degree Texas sun.
[Dan] 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."
[song ends]
[Dan] 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.
[Robin] To him, Edward R. Murrow was a heroic figure.
Someone that put it all on the line in war,
to really bring perspective and truth back.
[Dan] 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 War 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."
[Robin] 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.
[explosion, gunfire]
[indistinct conversation]
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 War 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.
[colonel] We've captured these rocket launchers
on several occasions when operating against the North Vietnamese.
It's a Chinese rocket launcher, and…
[Dan] The key to this victory was this particular company of the 101st Airborne
under the command of Captain Hank Lunde of Clarksville, Tennessee.
[Dan] 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.
[soldier] Emergency medevac ASAP!
[Robin] People don't understand how deeply patriotic my dad is.
My dad is old-school, to the bone patriotic.
[Dan] I didn't go in with any agenda. I had no agenda while I was there,
except to put on American television screens the war as it was.
[indistinct conversation]
Manny? Is the pain a lot, Manny?
[indistinct conversation]
-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, "War 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.
[explosion]
[Robin] 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.
[Dan] 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 sniper was believed hiding.
And for the first time an all-out attack by Premier Ky's Skyraider.
[Robin] 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 bullets everywhere.
-[gunfire] -This is the 25th Infantry Division.
The newest troops in South Vietnam for the United States.
This is part of their first heaviest action.
[gunfire continues]
[Robin] I really, really missed him.
I didn't really have a perspective on his work.
[Dan] We tried our best to tell it as it was.
"Here's your war.
"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 war I saw,
what was being said in Washington about what was happening in the war
did not match the facts on the ground.
So it became a clash between those who knew what the war 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.
[Perlstein] When officials began to make representations about the war
that were demonstrated to be false and untrue,
for example, that we are winning the war,
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.
-[Dan] I mean, you're a Texan. -Yeah.
[Dan] 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.
-[shouts indistinctly] -[guns firing]
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! ♪
[Brinkley] Lyndon Johnson, he had no idea what was going on.
Why is CBS showing American troops at war in a grim fashion?
Because we did not do that in World War 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.
[Dan] Many in the upper echelons of government and in the military
absolutely felt and they stated
that television incited much of the anti-war movement.
As a matter of fact, it's not a Vietnamese war now.
It's now a land war 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…
[Dan] 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.
-[audience clapping] -The hour is here.
There's an old saying that "The first casualty of war 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 war in Vietnam couldn't be won,
it was over.
When should an anchor person, an anchorman, become a commentator?
Maybe once in a lifetime.
[Sullivan] When the most trusted man in America
tells you something pretty stunning about your government
and its role in a foreign war,
people listened, and it was very consequential.
[announcer] 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.
[Brinkley] The counterculture was there in Chicago
and it was basically a war 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.
[Donald Peterson] Mr. Chairman, most delegates to this convention
do not know that thousands of young people are being beaten
in the streets of Chicago.
[people shouting indistinctly]
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!
[Walter Cronkite] 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?
-[people clamoring] -[Dan] 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--
[Cronkite] 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.
[Cronkite] I think we've got a bunch of thugs 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.
[Cronkite] 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.
[Brinkley] 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."
[Cronkite] 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.
[Perlstein] 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.
[Brinkley] 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.
[Dan] Mr. President, I wanna state this question
with due respect to your office, but also as directly--
-That would be unusual. -[laughter]
[Dan] I'd like to think not.
[Brinkley] There became a counter offensive
to start trying to even the playing field.
[Dan] Mr. President--
[Dan] Thank you.
The background of this--
[Nixon speaking]
[laughter]
Thank you, Mr. President. I remember yours too.
[laughter]
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.
[Cronkite] At first it was called the Watergate caper.
Five men apparently caught in the act of burglarizing and bugging
Democratic headquarters in Washington.
[Sullivan] Nixon didn't like it when there were leaks given to the press.
You hire a plumber to stop a leak.
[Dan] 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.
[Roberson] 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.
[Larry Doyle] 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.
[Dan] The President's popularity rating continued to drop.
The House Judiciary Committee began to consider impeachment.
[Doyle] 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.
[tape playing]
I'm quite confident that Nixon's plumbers group went after Dan.
[Robin] Our house got burgled.
My main memory of it
is my dad standing with a shotgun on the landing of the stairs,
cocking the rifle 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.
[people applauding, booing]
Mr. President…
-[Nixon] Are you running for something? -[laughter and applause]
-No, sir, Mr. President. Are you? -[laughter]
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.
[applause]
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.
[Jim Murphy] 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.
[Nixon] 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.
[Cronkite] 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.
[Dan] The pace at 60 Minutes
was immediately really rapid and I loved that.
It took off and became a talk-about program.
-[man] 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?
[In Spanish] Actually, the elections went perfectly well.
[Dan, in English] This is the scene outside a New York disco called Studio 54.
[Susan Zirinsky] 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.
[Stringer] 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.
[Robin] 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.
[Tom Bettag] 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.
[Zirinsky] People made fun of Gunga Dan and the clothing.
But you know what? He went and he reported.
[indistinct shouting]
[Dan] 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.
[Brinkley] Television is about ratings and money.
It's an industry, and 60 Minutes was dominant.
[David Buksbaum] 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.
[theme music playing on TV]
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.
[Stringer] And Cronkite got ratings.
Cronkite could read the phone book and have an audience.
[announcer] 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.
[Brinkley] Cronkite knew what a great reporter Rather was,
and was very comfortable having him be his successor.
[Dan] 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.
[man] 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.
[Murphy] 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?"
[man] Sound up. Mic. Cue.
Good evening, this is the CBS Evening News.
[Stringer] 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.
[Dan] Petroleum refining?
-[speaking indistinctly] -I'm sorry, I do have it.
[Dan] Please.
[Cohen] 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.
[man] Five minutes.
My grandmother thought Dan Rather was just
[kisses] perfection.
Keep it warm and friendly. Think warm and friendly.
[apathetically] I believe I can manage that without any problem at all.
[canned laughter]
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.
[Cohen] 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.
[Bettag] 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.
[Nelson] 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?
[Robin] He really respected them. They really respected him back.
But it was a game of who's scooping who.
[Dan] 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?
[Bettag] 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."
-[man speaking other language] -[in English] Okay.
You ready, Jorgen?
Day four of the student strike.
Day four for the 3,000 or so hunger strikers…
[Bettag] 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. -[siren wailing]
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…
[Nelson] A television network,
if they were willing to spend the money could cover the world.
[Dan] Hunger strikers had
what may be their last meeting before the army moves in.
[Nelson] There's instantaneous news.
[Bettag] 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."
[reporter] Shortly before midnight, Eastern Time,
Rather made one last effort to keep broadcasting.
I do protest in the most respectful manner.
[reporter] But the Chinese had finally had enough.
There would be no more live coverage. The satellite was being shut off.
[static beeping]
[Bettag] 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.
[Dan] The Berlin Wall. Once, it divided East from West.
[Zirinsky] 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.
[Stringer] 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.
[Dan] Scattered gunshots were heard
as the Marines moved and secured the seaport.
Airport terminal building, Mogadishu.
Out there in the darkness, US Navy SEALs…
[Bettag] 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.
[Doyle] 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.
[man] Here we go. Quiet down.
[Nelson] 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.
[Murphy] 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.
[Brinkley] 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.
[crowd laughing]
If it looked like the right wing was out to get Dan Rather,
you were right, they were.
And they still are.
[reporter] 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.
[Dan] 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?
[sighs] I don't know whether they would hear about it.
I think we have been doing things that are positive for them.
[Samantha Bee] 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.
[Stringer] Everybody who disliked Dan for whatever reason,
particularly politicians, didn't believe the story.
[Magee Hickey] 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 assault?
Dan Rather?
Straight-arrow Dan Rather?
[Cohen] The What's-the-Frequency guy got caught.
He was a real person, and he was a real dangerous person.
He killed someone at the Today show.
[reporter] Tager is charged with pumping the bullets 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 assault.
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.
[rock music playing]
One, two, three, four.
♪ What's the frequency, Kenneth? ♪
[Robin] 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!
[Stringer] 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.
[reporter] 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.
[reporter] 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.
[man] 10 seconds. Open up, Dan, full 9.
Eight, seven, six, five…
The climax 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.
[Bettag] 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."
[Bettag] 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.
[Bettag] 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.
[Bettag] 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.
[Nelson] 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.
[Dan] 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.
[Bettag] 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…
[Stringer] 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.
[Zirinsky] 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 terrorist state.
"You've gotta stop. You've gotta stop."
[Dan] 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…
[Stringer] 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.
[Zirinsky] 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."
[reporter] The Bush people say he was bushwhacked.
Well, maybe they were interested in the alliteration more than the reality.
[Bettag] 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…
[man 1] Morning. Rather's a jerk.
[Bond] This lady thinks Rather's ears should be pinned back,
and if the Vice President can stand up to him, he can to anybody.
[man 2] 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.
[Dan] 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. -[reporters clamoring]
-Thanks a lot. -If you'll let us get to work.
[Stringer] 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.
[announcer] Fox News Channel. Fair and balanced.
Where news is going where news should be.
What I recognized was, the American people
[on tape] 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."
[laughing]
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?
[both laughing]
Let's not kid ourselves. Of course he is.
[Sullivan] 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.
[Zirinsky] 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.
[Farrow] 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.
[Nelson] 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?
[laughing]
I don't know, but I'm willing to fulfill them.
[Smith] 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.
[Smith] When you want to know what it feels like,
Dan Rather brings you there.
[Dan on TV] Showdown with Saddam.
The deadline for war.
Commando missions set up inside Iraq
as huge force prepares to invade on a moment's notice.
[explosions]
[Dan] At the height of the Iraq War, I was a frequent flyer to Baghdad.
Are you afraid of being killed or captured?
[Roberson] 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.
[soldier over phone]
[Dan] 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.
[Roberson] 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.
[Dan] 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.
[Nelson] 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.
[Dan] When it comes striving to meet the responsibilities of the public trust,
that is the practice of journalism in this country…
[Roberson] 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.
[reporter] 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 war against terror.
[cheers and applause]
[Dan] 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.
[Dan] 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?
[reporter] 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.
[Dan] We had a document which I believed was what it purported to be.
[Zirinsky] Was the information coming from a flawed source?
That was really the crux of the problem.
[Dan] 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.
[reporter] 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.
[Zirinsky] 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.
[Dan] 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?"
[Dan on TV] It was a mistake. CBS News deeply regrets it.
Also, I want to say personally and directly, I'm sorry.
[Murphy] 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.
[Zirinsky] 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.
[Robin] 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.
[Roberson] 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.
[Dan] 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.
[Brinkley] 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.
[Martin] 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… ♪
[Mark Cuban] 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.
[Martin] 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.
[Cuban, in English] 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?
[Robin] Dad literally called Wayne
and said, "Let's put together a crack production team and go get it."
[Nelson] 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.
[Cuban] 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.
[Dan] 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.
[Robin] 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."
[Sullivan] 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.
[Doyle] 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.
[O'Brien] 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.
[Bee] 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.
[laughs] It is comedy.
I just wanted to point out that Dan Rather is a national treasure.
The level of shade on this man… Whew!
[Martin] 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 fucks. Okay?
He's given enough.
He's having fun, and I love it.
[Martin] 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.
[Dan] 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 War?
"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.
[Robin] Dad and I have a sign-off, which is LNF.
[Dan] LNF is "Love Never Fails."
[Robin] 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.
[Brinkley] 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."
["Sangria Wine" by Jerry Jeff Walker playing]
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.
[audience laughing]
Steve Bannon said the press needs to shut up.
Well our answer to that has to be, "With respect sir, no."
[audience cheering]
♪ 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 ♪
♪ 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 ♪
♪ Yeah, whoa, I love sangria wine ♪
♪ Whoa, I love sangria wine ♪
[song fades out]