Blogger Dan?

Moving Ahead, Rather Throws Sad Look Back

The 74-year-old man with the Mets cap pulled far down on his forehead slid into a booth at a diner on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and ordered a glass of milk without so much as turning a head — so quietly, in fact, that it was hard to believe it was Dan Rather.

In place of the swagger that had served him so well throughout his 44-year career at CBS News was an obvious sadness that his tenure at the network was ticking down to an inglorious end. Mr. Rather complained that since stepping down as anchor of the " CBS Evening News" last year, in the aftermath of a reporting scandal, he had been ill used as a correspondent on "60 Minutes" and had been given virtually nothing at all to do for the previous six weeks.

Among the places he had sought solace, he said on a recent afternoon, was in "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's homage to Edward R. Murrow and the CBS News of old, a film that Mr. Rather said he had seen five times in theaters, most recently alone.

Rather deserves better than this. I always liked him--while I thought Peter Jennings was the better anchor, I had no doubt Rather was the better person; he may have even been the better journalist, his in-the-field reporting track record was second to none.

In my view historians will record that CBS cravenly seized upon a second-rate reporting mistake, on their watch as much as his, to push him out the door in search of demographically stronger ratings.

He's a real journalist with nothing to lose at this point, still in full possession of the curiousity, drive and experience that made him anchor of CBS News in a time when that was the pinnacle of achievement in television news. Were this a Greek tragedy, Rather will now find a deserving outlet for his talents as CBS and the other broadcast networks spiral to oblivion; maybe he and Ted Koppel can team up and do something online.

File photo from 2004 of Rather by Fred R. Conrad for the Times.