Rather May Have Been a Victim of His Own Style

The network newsman was in hot pursuit of presidential wrongdoing, never afraid to ask tough questions. And his work, he reflected later, had met the highest standards.

“If I’d have gone off half-cocked, if I’d gotten my facts scrambled, if I’d run with unconfirmed leads, I’d be selling insurance right now,” is the way he put it.

As Dan Rather struggles to overcome a scandal over his flawed “60 Minutes” report this month on President Bush’s National Guard service, these words just may be ringing in his ears -- especially since he wrote them, in “The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist,” his 1994 memoir. He was referring to his reporting during Watergate; as for the idea of being fired, Rather the memoirist continued, “The public and my bosses at CBS would have demanded that, and they’d have been justified.”

As things have unfolded since Rather’s “60 Minutes” broadcast on Sept. 8, a public controversy indeed is swirling around the CBS anchorman, though his superiors appear to have remained supportive. Overall, the picture of Rather that has emerged over the last 2 1/2 weeks is of a fighter, embattled as never before, perhaps, but still on his feet. It is also a time of strong emotion: Rather’s eyes are said to have welled up when Barbara Walters saluted him as “my wonderful colleague” at a party last week marking her retirement from ABC’s “20/20.”

Rather has seen conflict before and endured firestorms in his career, but this time he conveys the unmistakable sense of a lion in the arena, facing one of his last great challenges. He is a larger-than-life personality, a man accustomed to having his way at the nation’s most-watched television network, and yet he is wrestling with what has clearly become a low point in a celebrated career.

Should he resign? And how will this black mark affect his legacy?

Opinions differ sharply about how much responsibility for the “60 Minutes” report falls on Rather, but friends and critics of the veteran anchor, now 72, agree on this much: The same hard-charging qualities that propelled him to the top of CBS News may have worked against him in the reporting of the National Guard documents piece.

And as he fights to survive, observers say, Rather is at the mercy of forces that have dramatically altered the media landscape since he first broke into TV news at a local CBS affiliate in 1959.

The huge national audience that once religiously watched network news has shrunk sharply, and the newscast Rather inherited from Walter Cronkite has slipped from No. 1 to No. 3. The authoritative voice of the American anchor is now loudly challenged by an army of bloggers and political pundits who dominate 24-hour cable news channels. The result is a fast-moving, de-centered media in which a personality and working style like Rather’s may soon be an anachronism.

Admirers and detractors alike say Rather is known for wanting to do as many high-profile stories as possible. Some Rather-watchers call the phenomenon ADATT -- All Dan All the Time.”It’s gotten to the point where he would be very happy if he were the only person doing every story,” said David Blum, who wrote the newly published “Tick

“He suffers from an excessive desire to be on TV, and he’s infatuated with the red light,” the author added. “One person can’t do it all, and there’s a price to pay.”

Yet Rather has also throughout his career displayed two qualities that may help him ride out this storm: A dogged devotion to the values embodied by old-style network news -- impartiality, sobriety, responsibility to the public trust -- and a personal resilience that may seem surprising in someone often accused of having so big an ego.

He is willing, however belatedly, to acknowledge his mistakes. “With Dan, what you see is what you get,” said Alex Jones, head of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. “He has been far more willing to talk about the problems of network news than other anchors. He has been willing to flagellate himself in public. He truly cares.”

And what to some comes across as an overaggressive need for control is to others evidence of a strong work ethic: “The fact that he works so hard, so very intensely, is a credit to his integrity,” said Marvin Kalb, a former NBC correspondent.

But this time, Rather’s fate may not be in his own hands. His survival could depend on the verdict of a panel probing the program’s reporting, and on network officials who live in a world of media conglomerates, not newsroom sentimentality.

Years from now, some may see Rather as one of the last champions on television of old-fashioned news values and investigative reporting. Yet others might dismiss him as a relic -- an elitist, old-school journalist who exemplified liberal bias in the news.

“I believe that CBS will somehow survive this,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “But whether there will still be a Dan Rather is something we have yet to find out.”

In the short-term, few experts think CBS can afford to dismiss their longtime anchor because the network does not have a clear successor in line to replace him. Most think the answer must await the findings of a new panel, made up of former U.S. Atty. Gen. Richard L. Thornburgh and former Associated Press President and Chief Executive Louis Boccardi, that is investigating the “60 Minutes” report.

Rather did not grant an interview for this article. But in an earlier interview with The Times, he took full responsibility for the mess at “60 Minutes,” saying: “I am the leader of the team and in that role a mistake was made. I’m responsible.”

Asked if heads, including his own, might roll at CBS, he added: “Given the number of people involved in this, directly involved in the news gathering, vetting and approving, I just don’t know. There were a lot of people, including myself.”

During a career spanning four decades, Rather has publicly tangled with Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush and a host of other powerful officials. Unlike most news anchors, who are known for button-down decorum and a calming presence, he has been a persistently outspoken, dramatic and frequently polarizing figure.

Millions watched him tussle with Chicago cops on the floor of the 1968 Democratic National convention. He made headlines by slipping into Afghanistan after the Soviet Union’s 1980 invasion, but also earned the sarcastic moniker “Gunga Dan.”

Rather embarrassed CBS in 1987 when he walked off the set and caused the network to go dark, angered that a tennis match had pre-empted the start of the news. The year before, he made headlines and engendered a fair amount of joking after a strange incident in which he was beaten by a man who confronted him on Park Avenue and asked: “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”

Proud of his roots, Rather is known to spice up the news with Texas lingo: “Sip it, savor it, cup it, photostat it, underline it in red, put it in the album, hang it on the wall, George Bush is the next president of the United States,” he said on election night 2000.

There was no humor, however, in the “60 Minutes” story that Rather delivered on Sept. 8. Relying on unverified, photocopied documents purportedly taken from the files of Bush’s commander, the story accused Bush of getting preferential treatment and violating regulations in the Texas Air National Guard. After initially standing by the story, Rather and CBS News have since apologized.

But that hasn’t stopped the report from becoming a hot issue in the 2004 presidential campaign, amid revelations that Mary Mapes, Rather’s producer, put her key source on the story in touch with a top Democratic party campaign operative shortly before the piece aired.

Although longtime friends and allies have rallied to Rather’s side, even as they deplore the mistakes “60 Minutes” made, conservative critics have had a field day, blasting him yet again as a symbol of alleged liberal bias in network news.

“I wish Dan Rather was half the man that George Bush is,” Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) said on CNN. “What he [Rather] did showed real criminal negligence.”

Beyond any partisan wrangling, some voice dismay that Rather and CBS seemed so blind to the consequences of getting an explosive story about Bush wrong.

“It is incredible that CBS News rushed to get this flawed story on the air, knowing that there’s such a culture war raging out there,” said Jay Rosen, chairman of the journalism department at New York University. “Dan Rather is seen as the arch enemy by so many people -- and a mistake of this magnitude was a prescription for disaster.”

Rather broke into the TV big leagues in the early 1960s, first with his dramatic, marathon coverage of Hurricane Carla from the seawall in Galveston, Texas. He subsequently broke the news about President Kennedy’s assassination, and was one of the first to report about Abraham Zapruder’s historic film of the shooting.

Promoted to the White House beat in 1964, the young newsman was a pit bull during Watergate. He stirred GOP anger in 1974, when Nixon taunted him at a press conference: “Are you running for something?” Rather shot back: “No sir, Mr. President. Are you?”

The exchange prompted GOP calls for Rather’s resignation, but CBS stood by its reporter. In his memoirs, Mike Wallace, a longtime CBS newsman and “60 Minutes” correspondent, said Rather eventually parlayed that notoriety into the plum job of succeeding Cronkite in 1981 as anchor of the network’s evening news.

But Wallace also said Rather’s tough White House reporting “had made him a divisive and controversial figure” to many. “Hardly anyone was neutral on the subject of Richard Nixon,” he wrote, “and, as Washington’s resident nightclub comic Mark Russell once observed, ‘Dan Rather is to Nixon what hiccups are to a glassblower.’”

The partisan rancor deepened in 1988, when Rather had an acrimonious, nine-minute interview on live television with then-Vice President George Bush.

Trying to get answers from Bush about his role in the Iran-Contra affair, Rather peppered the vice president with questions, asking if he was “irrelevant” or “ineffective,” as Bush grew more indignant. “I don’t want to be argumentative, Mr. Vice President,” Rather began at one point, and Bush interrupted: “You do, Dan.”

As the exchange continued, Bush landed a stinging punch: “It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash of Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Rather, momentarily stunned, later shot back: “You made us hypocrites in the eyes of the world.”

Ken Auletta, a longtime media observer who writes for the New Yorker, described the clash in “Three Blind Mice,” a history of the three networks, noting: “With Walter Cronkite as the model, viewers had come to expect their anchors to perform as gracious hosts, polite, judicious, cool. Instead, they saw the hot, prosecutorial side of Rather’s personality.”

To a host of observers, the CBS anchor is little changed since then. His role in the “60 Minutes” story, they say, shows it.

Hours after producer Mapes told her bosses that she had found the alleged documents about Bush, for example, Rather and his team shifted into overdrive, moving to get the story onto the air by the following Wednesday, five days away.

Then things went terribly wrong.

Although outside experts said they voiced doubts about the Bush documents’ authenticity, CBS gave the story a green light. The program’s executive producer said the White House’s failure to question the documents, after examining them for three hours, effectively gave the network the go-ahead it needed to push forward with the broadcast.

Dan Bartlett, White House Chief of Communications, ridiculed such an explanation, saying Bush and others had scant time to check the documents’ accuracy, and that their response could in no way have been confused with an endorsement.

Hours after the explosive story aired, bloggers began questioning the documents’ accuracy, suggesting that the typefaces and fonts found on the photocopied memos could not have been produced on a 1973-era typewriter.

As criticism grew, Rather and CBS officials took aim at political opponents for trying to discredit the report. The anchor said his key source -- a former National Guard official who later conceded he had lied to the network -- was “unimpeachable.”

The network apologized 12 days later, and Rather, looking somber and a bit shaken, said it was wrong for the report to have relied on such questionable materials.

As they survey the wreckage, many are shaking their heads.

“It’s hard to believe that someone as experienced as Dan Rather got into a barrel and went over Niagara Falls,” former White House advisor David Gergen said in a CNN interview. “He’s drowning now. We don’t know if he’ll survive. We’ll have to wait and see.”