Background and career
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist, commentator, and former national evening news anchor. He began his career in Texas, becoming a national name in September 1961 after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla. He has reported on some of the most significant events of the modern age, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, 9/11, the Iraq War, and the war on terror. Rather also famously reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Based on such reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation. In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the United States from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes. Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was dismissed. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a scapegoat in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010. On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on the Young Turks YouTube channel. Since 2021, he has been writing the newsletter "Steady" on the Substack platform.
Rather was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. Neither of his parents completed high school; however, they were avid readers. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston where he played football. Rather aspired to be a reporter, and his mother encouraged him to attend college and to become the first person in the family to earn a college degree. He hitchhiked to Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas and walked on to the school's football team. When he did not earn an athletic scholarship, Rather turned his focus to journalism and found part-time jobs to pay for tuition. In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism, and he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell". Rather worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs. In 1959, Rather began his television career as part of a weekly Coaches Show for the University of Houston on KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. In 1960, he was hired as the 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. news anchor and director of news for KHOU-TV, the local CBS affiliate. In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston and showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in his early years. On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first report for CBS included radio coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a story on the accidental deaths of newborns who were served salt in their formula at Binghamton General Hospital in Binghamton, New York, referred to years later as the Salt Babies. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories". His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, "DON'T ANYBODY PANIC." And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked. In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward. Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV). Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position. When White House correspondent, he contributed to the subsequent events following the Kennedy assassination. In 1965, he contributed to the reporting of return to Washington from Dallas by Charles von Fremd during a conversation that NBC Director Max Schindler, who directed the coverage of the arrival for the networks, did with President Lyndon B. Johnson, at the White House for the TV networks. In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76) and rotated with Bob Schieffer on the CBS Sunday "Evening News" (1976). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon in Congress.
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
