Dan Rather 'at Peace' With Not Being Included in CBS' JFK Coverage

[monmouth3]

The veteran anchor, presiding over his own special on AXS TV, reiterated that his former employer is "trying to airbrush me out of their history."


Dan Rather says he's now fine with not appearing on CBS for their 50th-anniversary coverage of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.


"Look, I’m at peace -- I have my own work and I know what my record is," the anchor said during a call with reporters to discuss his own special, My Days In Dallas: A Remembrance with Dan Rather. The three-part AXS TV program, roughly 50 minutes in total, retraces the context and events of Nov. 23, 1963.

The anchor, however, still reserved sharp words for his former employer. "This follows a pattern of some years of, in effect, trying to airbrush me out of their history," he said of CBS. "That doesn’t bother me all that much, nor should it. If anybody is to care about it -- and I’m not sure anybody should -- it’s one thing for the corporation for their own purposes [to not include him in the coverage]. But as a news organization responsible for history, I think the news consumer might want to question whether you want ... corporations trying to change history for their corporate interests."

The anchor stated that he saw he wasn't included in CBS' coverage plans when a press release went out and he wasn't mentioned. He says it wasn't until after an Associated Press article ran in early November -- including a quote from Rather saying he "held off doing anything" while waiting for an invite -- that the network said it would include archive clips from the anchor.

"They put some people out forward saying ‘Oh, we’re going to run some clips of him in our coverage," Rather recalled.





Much more at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/dan-rather-at-peace-not-656114

[HooptieWagon]

1. CBS's new business plan will fail.

There's no way they can lower the bar beneath Fox to attract Fox viewers. All they'll manage to do is to chase away their current viewers.

[indepat]

7. CBS News has forever chased away this recent viewer: Bye, bye Scott

[HooptieWagon]

8. I unplugged the boob tube several years ago.

Don't miss it one bit. And the savings on cable easily buys a couple beers at the local watering hole while watching a ball game a few times a month.

[MADem]

2. I'm waiting to see if they banish the Benghazi Bullshitter to the outer reaches of hell, too. nt

[Raine]

3. Don't hold your breath on that happening! :-( nt

[lpbk2713]

4. They might not know it but they did Dan a favor.

Who the hell would want to have their name associated with that bunch of incompetent amateurs?

[Boomerproud]

5. The thing that bothers me the most is Dan Rather literally risked his life

more than once as a CBS reporter and this is how he is treated.

[Major Hogwash]

6. Rather was the man on the ground that day in Dallas.

He was the one that talked to Cronkite about the shooting.

His comments about being "airbrushed" out of CBS's history are very revealing -- that is what the old Soviet Union did when they published older pictures of famous Russians, and one of them had been "airbrushed" out of the official USSR photograph.

Amazing.

[applegrove]

9. He was in a CNN documentary.

[marshall]

10. He seems to have made enemies there, or at least made few friends

In those situations you are tolerated as long as you are on top, but if you fall nobody is there to lend you a hand.

I heard another reporter speak at my university. He didn't mention Rather in hi talk, but he responded to a question about him, and referred to the Kennedy assassination. For the few days after the assassination there was I'll will toward Texas, and more so toward Dallas. This am said Rather did a story about that and showed a video of some high school students in Texas being let out of school early on the day of the shooting. They were cheering snd jumping, and the implication was they were happy that Kennedy was dead. It made a great piece because it fed the national anger toward Dallas. But he didn't mention that these students had not been told the reason they were suddenly let out early. The principal and teachers felt the news was so traumatic that they just told them all to go straight home, and they left it to the parents to break the news.

According to this man, this incident created a great rift between the local station and the national station. The local team were upset that Dallas was being portrayed innacurately, but the national folks knew it would capture public interest. It was something this man never forgot, and he said he would never forgive Rather.