The high road, for a change

The Washington Post’s Tom Shales thinks that Dan Rather is “leaving by the high road.” In our joy that he’s leaving, we won’t quibble.
However Shales’ piece shows that even several of Rather’s key liberal colleagues at CBS don’t think that Rather took the high road during his time as anchor.

In a devastating Ken Auletta piece for the New Yorker, such venerable CBS personalities as Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite were quoted as saying they preferred watching Peter Jennings over Rather and basically dismissed him.
Then on Monday, just two days before Rather’s farewell, old man Cronkite, the anchor Rather replaced, had the stupefying temerity to say that he thought Bob Schieffer, the “Face the Nation” host who’ll fill in on the “Evening News” until a remodeled program is hatched later this year, would have made a better anchor. “I would like to have seen him there a long time ago,” Cronkite said of Schieffer on CNN. He also said Rather “gave the impression of playing a role more than simply trying to deliver the news to the audience.”

Rather isn’t responding to this form of criticism. However, he still insists that he wasn’t partisan in presenting the news. However, this collection of his greatest hits tells a different story.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses