Dan Rather stepping down as CBS News anchor

73 year old Dan Rather announced yesterday that he will step down as CBS News anchorman on March 9, 2005, the date that will mark his 24th anniversary on that job.

It had been highly speculated that Dan Rather might end up being fired from CBS News in the aftermath of the network's admission, last September, of the lack of authenticity of documents supporting a story it had aired, which had put in question George Bush’s National Guard Service. Since then, Rather had been under media scrutiny, and it was very likely that he would be the fall guy in a soon-to-be-released report on this scandal. Even though he now claims that he had been discussing his retirement with CBS honchos since last summer, Rather probably opted to retire before being fired. However, he will remain a correspondent on the news magazine 60 Minutes*

I was never a big fan of Dan Rather, but I actually like him better than Peter Jennings, the ABC News anchor, whom I find terribly wooden (my all time favorite news anchor is Tom Brokaw, who will be leaving his NBC News job on December 2. Brokaw is a bit wooden too, but I think he's a wonderful man with a lot of integrity.) At least, Dan had a soul, and a very colorful personality. Although a Texan, and perhaps because he is a Texan, it is obvious that he doesn’t care for George W. Bush. I’ve always liked his liberal views, even though his reporting has often been criticized as being biased. One has to admit, though, that CBS News’ coverage of the Watergate scandal will remain forever in the annals of great TV journalism, and Dan Rather was in the thick of it, one of CBS's golden young turks at the time.

Years ago, I read (while at the beach in the summer) Dan Rather’s 1977 autobiography, The Camera Never Blinks, which I remember as a fascinating and entertaining read.

Rather never became the legend that his predecessor, Walter Cronkite (still alive and kicking at 88), had become before his retirement – “The most trusted man in America.” In fact, ironically, Rather’s career ends with many Americans no longer believing that this TV newscaster can be trusted.


* for which, according to my quick calculation, the average age of its correspondents (I also included acerbic commentator Andy Rooney) is 75:
- Mike Wallace: 86
- Morley Safer: 73
- Ed Bradley: 63
- Steve Kroft: 59
- Lesley Stahl: 63 (go look at her picture on the 60 Minutes Bios page, it’s the most amazing air brush job I have ever seen. The woman barely looks 40 on that photo!)
- Andy Rooney: turning 85 in January.

Now, tell me what’s wrong with this picture – a weekly news magazine run by a bunch of old geezers who would be better off enjoying the retirement they deserve. I see a bit of hubris in these men (and women) who seem to find themselves so indispensable and irreplaceable that they just won’t ever call it quits. There is also something utterly American about this refusal to retire, this supra workaholic, “I will die on the job” attitude.