Dan Rather is stepping down!

[SharpLS-96]

Well it's about time

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6567283/?GT1=5809

Rather to step down as CBS News anchor
Veteran to remain with network as correspondent
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:25 p.m. ET Nov. 23, 2004

NEW YORK - Dan Rather, whose nearly 24-year tenure as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” was clouded by a recent questionable report on President Bush’s National Guard service, said Tuesday he will step down in March.

Rather said his last broadcast as anchor would be March 9, the 24th anniversary of when he assumed the position from Walter Cronkite.

The 73-year-old newsman said he will continue to work for CBS, as a correspondent for both editions of “60 Minutes.”

“I have always been and remain a ‘hard news’ investigative reporter at heart,” he said in a statement. “I now look forward to pouring my heart into that kind of reporting full time.”

He made no mention of the National Guard story in announcing the change, saying he had agreed with CBS executives last summer to leave sometime after the Nov. 2 election. But he was forced to fight for his professional life after anchoring a September “60 Minutes Wednesday” story about Bush’s service that turned out to be based on allegedly forged documents.

Investigation of Guard story imminent
A report on what went wrong with the National Guard story, from a two-man independent investigative panel, is due imminently.

CBS didn’t talk about potential successors. Newsmen John Roberts and Scott Pelley have long been considered in-house candidates, but the network will also probably look outside.

Rather has been with CBS News for more than four decades and made his name as a reporter covering the Nixon White House.

“He has been an eyewitness to the most important events for more than 40 years and played a crucial role in keeping the American public informed about those events and their larger significance,” CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves said.

Changing of the anchor guard
Rather’s announcement comes eight days before his NBC rival, Tom Brokaw, steps down as “Nightly News” anchor and is replaced by Brian Williams (MSNBC is part of a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft).

The triumvirate of Rather, Brokaw and ABC’s Peter Jennings has ruled network news for more than two decades. Rather dominated ratings after taking over for Cronkite during the 1980s, but he was eclipsed first by Jennings and then by Brokaw. His evening news broadcast generally runs a distant third in the ratings each week.

His hard news style was mixed with a folksy Texan style that led him to rattle off homespun phrases on Election Night. But odd incidents dogged him: In 1987 he walked off the set, leaving CBS with dead air, to protest a decision to let a tennis match delay the news. And his claim that he was accosted on the street by a strange man saying, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” led rock band R.E.M. to write a song with the same name.

[THE_CEO]

yep hes being forced out!

CEO

[mmarshall]

Yeah....Rather has had a more turbulent history than just about any network newscaster I can think of. In 1987 he made a fool of himself on camera arguing with then VP George Bush, Sr. In 2000, the now-famous Florida vote count fiasco started WHERE?.......You guessed it. CBS and Dan Rather when CBS prematurely called FL for Gore, then put it back into the undecided column, then called it for Bush, then put it BACK into the undecided column....where it stayed for a month and a half. It set off a can of worms that people still argue about.
And...just this year, the Bush National-Guard service and the fake documents.
Yes, this guy richly deserves his "retirement". Good riddance.

[EmeraldLexuSC3]

Dan's fall is Nixonian

Rather's smearing of his critics was even worse than the bogus hit on W!

To the end, Gunga Dan liked to play the part of the crusading journalist, a regular reporter just digging up the facts. That was his TV persona. In real life, his hubris made him more like Richard Nixon than Walter Cronkite. And like Nixon, the coverup was his downfall.
The CBS announcement that Dan Rather will give up his anchor chair in March made zero mention of Rathergate, the big-time blunder in which he used fake documents to charge that President Bush got favored treatment in the National Guard 30 years ago.

I guess we're supposed to believe it was mere coincidence that Rather is packing even before the network's probe is released. Or we're supposed to believe that, as Rather claimed, he and his bosses had been discussing his retirement over the summer.

Whatever. The fact-fudging was perfectly consistent with the dishonest way CBS handled the story from Day One.

First it lied by saying the documents it used on the tainted Sept. 8 broadcast had been authenticated by experts. In fact, three of the four experts said they warned the network they could not be certain all the documents were real.

Still, CBS dug in its heels, making the ridiculous claim that even if the documents were bogus, the gist of the story was true. It introduced a shocking new journalism standard - a "preponderance of the evidence" to justify going with the National Guard story.

Bad as all that was, Rather managed to make it worse. He went on the offensive against bloggers and others raising questions, smearing them with sweeping charges of partisanship. "I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces," he told The Washington Post. He told The Wall Street Journal that doubters attacked the documents "because they can't deny the fundamental truths of the analysis."

It was rancid hypocrisy, given that it was Rather who, in the eyes of many Americans, had turned CBS into a subsidiary of the Democratic Party. And for such a media bigwig to accuse anyone who doubted him of political bias only fed the eat-the-media frenzy, where every story was being viewed through blue state/red state divisions.

It was all so, well, Nixonian: Accuse your critics of partisanship and wrap yourself in the flag. A younger Rather had a famous run-in with Nixon, but apparently he learned something from the disgraced President. Tricky **** became Tricky Dan.

Indeed, when the public outcry forced CBS to retract the Bush story nearly two weeks after it ran, the network said only that it could not authenticate the documents. It has never admitted they were fake. Ever since it gave the probe into what went wrong to two independent executives, the network has gone silent on the subject.

Having outsourced its ethics and all responsibility for accountability, Rather & Co. pretended it was business as usual during the final six weeks of the campaign.

In one sense, it was. Even as the network planned an election-eve hit on Bush's management of the war in Iraq, its ratings continued to fall. Mired in a distant third place in a three-network race, it was sometimes outdrawn by Fox cable.

Maybe that embarrassment prompted the knock on Dan's door. After all, TV news is a big business, and Rather was proving no better at that than he was at gathering the facts.