Dan Rather was not a good anchor.
He was, as he boasted, a great TV reporter. The difference is about $6 million a year. Though appreciated by the wife, this particular difference does not impress viewers. They may not be able to describe the qualities that make a great anchor, but they can recognize it when they see it.
What distinguishes a great network anchor from a great reporter? The reporter tells viewers what he discovers on the scene. An anchor conveys the meaning of what others discover. A reporter, for example, cannot cover the war front and the Pentagon at the same time, as A.J. Liebling once wrote about print reporters. An anchor can, and usually does from a studio in New York.
What makes a reporter reliable is his ability not only to ask the tough question but also to get the tough answer. Greatness comes with the reporter’s ability repeatedly to get the tough answer from powerful sources, even though they realize that giving up the answer is not in their best interest. This requires smarts, courage and effective aggressiveness.
Dan Rather was a great TV reporter. As a young reporter on assignment in Texas, Rather rehearsed the pose that could serve as the metaphor for his entire career. When Hurricane Carla hit Galveston, Rather reportedly prepared for the gale winds by lashing himself to a tree with a metal chain. Four decades later, as a man in his 70s, the CBS anchor would occasionally forsake the studio for the beachfront to gaze forlornly into the teeth of an approaching hurricane.
After landing a CBS job in Dallas, Rather covered the story that made him: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Between stints at the White House and in London, the ambitious reporter developed a knack for working his way toward the mouth of the cannon. He was a swashbuckler in Vietnam and, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he crossed the border done up in the garb of a mujahideen fighter. This landed him in the Doonesbury comic strip, never again to be taken completely seriously.
A network anchor is a journalist to be taken seriously.
Walter Cronkite set the standard with his coverage of the Kennedy assassination. While Rather was scrambling, as reporters should, Cronkite took off his glasses and reassured a grieving nation that the republic would hold. This difference between the network anchor and the reporter was recapitulated during CBS’ recent two-hour tribute to the departing Rather – when both newsmen appeared together. The contrast was stunning.
As the CBS anchor, Cronkite was in synch with television as a cool medium. Dan Rather, for his part, was much too hot. He was a reporter’s reporter. “If it’s a big story, I watch Rather,” said Randy Daniels, the New York secretary of state, who worked as a CBS reporter for 10 years.
Working the most visual of all media, the network TV anchor speaks as much with his face, shoulders and gestures as with his voice. Watching Rather deliver the news was like gazing upon a hive waiting for the bees to fly out. His shoulders jerked, the neck oscillated, and, without warning, those saloon eyes would roll like a gambler counting the house. In later years, the lips of Dan Rather would whistle as they worked, making him sound remarkably like a man trying to talk his way out of a traffic ticket.
This is not to kick a cowboy with his chaps down, as Rather might say. (Though it must be said that Cronkite, Andy Rooney and the other geezers on the CBS bus were most unkind in their criticism of the anchor on the way out. Where have they been for the past 24 years when a chain of owners have been eroding the great tradition that once was CBS network news?)
CBS had better choices for anchor than Dan Rather back in 1981. Roger Mudd had his supporters, as did Bob Schieffer, then and now. My choice back then, not surprisingly, was not on the list of anyone who mattered in the CBS hierarchy. At the risk of embarrassing him, I’ll share the name of the CBS reporter who had all the gifts to be a great anchor and none of the executive votes.
My candidate would have kept CBS ahead of that aloof Canadian as well as the handicapped, nice-guy patriot from North Dakota who can pronounce only 23 letters of the alphabet. Lest the bigots take to the air, race has nothing to do with my choice — it’s competence fair and square. Besides, this reporter — and what a reporter — has worked quite successfully at avoiding being embraced as a “race man.” Given a choice of profiling Barbra Streisand or Nina Simone, he’d pick Streisand every time.
Despite his bad judgment on that one score, as the great CBS anchor who never was, I’ll stick with Ed Bradley.