Dan Rather on The Huffington Post

Berlin Wall Newscasts 20 Years Later: Watch Brokaw, Jennings & Rather Report The News (VIDEO)

2009-11-09T16:22:57Z

Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which provides a nice opportunity to look back at the coverage of the historic event.

Below, relive the coverage from Tom Brokaw (NBC), Peter Jennings (ABC), and Dan Rather (CBS) — and vote for who you think delivered the authoritative Berlin Wall broadcast.

Share your memories — or reflections on just how much has changed in the media since then — in the comments section.

Leslie Griffith: Black-Op at Black Rock

2009-10-08T15:54:19Z

Black-op at Black Rock

In all the world only one man challenged the Killing of JFK: Jim Garrison, a bold and dauntless New Orleans D.A.

"It was a coup d'etat," he told a nation. But how could that be? And, if it was and Americans did nothing, what sort of country are we?

Lord Tennyson was quoted in the lone prosecutor's closing arguments:

"Authority forgets a dying King." An eternal flame is a much more palatable thing!

With a Grand Canyon of lies, a president's life is erased. Whew...glad that's over. America is once again safe!

That "Magic Bullet" sure did the trick. And, with Vietnam exploding, military contracts were kept. These were the moments we witnessed our national morality and openly wept.

The unholy trifecta of a Coup d'etat -- denial, disconnect, and deliverance -- saves the psyches of us all. Oh now, come on, let's not be glum! Blaming those victimized or those who try to warn us is such delicious fun!

The fearless, you see, are always targeted first. Especially now, after eight years of a Rovian, Cheneyesque morality dearth. Who is left to regard as the salt of the earth?

Dan Rather was the most notable to go, but there were others who spoke and fell, leaving an information vacuum that creates its own distinct uninformed, divisive hell.

Still, Rather was one of the brave few.

For 44 years he made us look at our lives and what our nation might do. Vietnam, Watergate, Afghanistan too. A gift from God's eyes ... the oft-times difficult, painful other point of view.

Rather is the last of broadcasting's great newsmen. But believing ourselves righteous we fell asleep and, without a shrug, deserted him. We listened when told by tyrants du jour, "there was our national security to keep!" That's a good enough excuse for most journalists falling to sleep.

But, like Garrison, Rather forged ahead. Challenging those in power...digging up buried bodies no matter who might end up dead.

Rove, the political Gapetto, was just playing around. A frame up is easy when a professional gang bang of puppets rule the town. And planting a document? Heck that's nothing new. The beauty of it all was everything in the document was essentially true. Oh, such evils immoral men do.

Now, with one broad brush stroke 44 years of protecting a nation is whitewashed away. So here is what I want us to know today.

We wonder where the press has gone. Did you see what happens when a few among them are strong?

The stakes are so high when the truth becomes a lie. And it's always about the prophets of profits for America's military war machine. It grinds on even at the expense of a King. So make no mistake as we blindly forge ahead, that's why JFK, Bobby, and Martin Luther King are dead.

So now we have some new facts to face.

NBC is the military itself. And CBS is Viacom -- a Hollywood movie machine making war look like a dream. And Disney animated the old ABC scene.

Now back to Tennyson's "Forgotten Dying Kings."

Do we have the authority to remember a trusted friend? Do we have the right to claim what he's seen and where he's been? A man we trusted who had courage and was bold--even when we did not like what we were told?

CBS, the lost child of Murrow, this message is for you. Open the vault and let free a life you want to erase. Dan is part of history, one too perilous not to trace. Why hide his reports from lands near and far? What threat is it to you now that you've shown him the door?

Or perhaps in a news industry where entertainment reigns supreme, Viacom fears we'll remember one of the last of our news broadcasting kings.

Eric Alterman: Think Again: CBS and Dan Rather -- Doing the Right's Dirty Work

2009-10-08T13:24:42Z

Crossposted with the Center for American Progress. With Mickey Ehrlich.

Last week, a New York appeals court dismissed Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS. Rather contends that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on "60 Minutes" after forcing him to step down as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" in March 2005. He also says the network committed fraud by commissioning a "biased" and incomplete investigation of a "60 Minutes" broadcast in order to "pacify the White House." The broadcast presented as authentic documents from the Air National Guard showing George W. Bush went AWOL, which CBS aired less than two months before the 2004 presidential election.

Coverage of the decision in the major dailies, however, focused exclusively on the ironic disintegration of the relationship between the network and the former anchorman. Three articles appearing about the court's decision each closed with earnestly sober quotations from CBS employees about the futility of Rather's case:

The New York Times: "'Dan was a great anchor,' Mr. Briskman [CBS chief counsel] said. 'I hate the whole thing. The whole situation is pathetic. To have to fight Dan Rather is pathetic. I really wish the whole thing would just go away.'"

The Washington Post: "Jeff Fager, executive producer of '60 Minutes,' told the Los Angeles Times in August, 'It's hard to watch' Rather's never-ending legal fight.

'It's like he is in some paranoid nightmare where everybody is out to get him. We're all witnessing the poor guy thrashing around, tormented. ... I can't for the life of me understand why he's doing this, how he could turn such a storied career into this train wreck,' added Fager, who apparently got to know Rather not at all during their years working together."

The Associated Press: "General counsel Louis Briskman said that action 'is technically still pending, but it's hanging by a thread.'"

These quotes, coming as they do from people on the CBS payroll, attempt to portray Rather as some crazy old grandpa who can't get used to the idea that he's been put out to pasture. What's more significant, however, is the manner in which they obscure the major questions about CBS's conduct during the so-called "Memogate" scandal that could be answered by the Rather lawsuit.

You can read the rest of Eric Alterman and Mickey Ehrlich's analysis in their recent article, "Think Again: CBS and Dan Rather--Doing the Right's Dirty Work

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He is also a Nation columnist and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His seventh book, Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Most Important Ideals, was recently published in paperback. He occasionally blogs at http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation and is a regular contributor to The Daily Beast. Mickey Ehrlich is a freelance writer and an English teacher at Kingsborough Community College.

Dan Rather: Lawsuit "Not Over," I'm "Determined"

2009-10-01T16:22:13Z

Dan Rather told Fox News/Fox Business' Neil Cavuto Thursday that his lawsuit against CBS "is not over."

Rather called the case "a long, hard fight" and said, "despite what CBS and their lawyers would have you believe, it is not over. The New York Court of Appeals gets to decide. And they decide, not CBS' lawyers and their promotion and publicity team."

Rather told Cavuto that his lawsuit is about much more than his dismissal from the network.

"The most important principle and the basic reason I'm in it is, what kind of news are we going to have?" he said. "We have very large corporate interests working with powerful political interests to manipulate the news and the people who report the news, whatever their political persuasion. I don't think the American people want them, and what I have been seeking to do in this trial is to bring out the facts."

He added that he's neither "bitter" nor "sad" but rather "determined," saying he believes "so strongly the public needs to understand that this effort by large corporations and partisan political people to manipulate the news and people who cover the news is not the American way."

The interview aired Tuesday on "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on Fox News at 4PM and will air at 6PM on Cavuto's Fox Business program.

Dan Rather To Speak To Neil Cavuto About Lawsuit

2009-09-30T22:55:42Z

The Huffington Post hears that Neil Cavuto has landed an exclusive interview with Dan Rather, his first since his lawsuit against CBS was dismissed Tuesday.

The interview is expected to air on Cavuto's Fox News program, "Your World with Neil Cavuto," as well as on his Fox Business Network program. Rather is expected to discuss his decision to appeal the dismissal of his case.

Rather's $70 million breach of contract suit — in which he claimed that CBS wrongfully fired him over his report on George W. Bush's service in the National Guard — was thrown out Tuesday by a judge in the Appellate Division of New York's Supreme Court. Rather's attorney immediately indicated that he planned to appeal.

Dan Rather Lawsuit Against CBS TOSSED In Entirety

2009-09-29T14:07:32Z

By Karen Matthews, AP

NEW YORK — A New York court on Tuesday dismissed Dan Rather's $70 million breach of contract lawsuit against CBS Corp., noting that the network continued to pay the anchor $6 million a year even after he left the evening news broadcast.

Rather sued CBS and its top executives in 2007, claiming he had been removed from his "CBS Evening News" anchor post over a report that examined President George W. Bush's military service.

The Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court – New York's trial-level court – said the complaint "must be dismissed in its entirety."

The five-judge panel ruled unanimously that a lower court "erred in declining to dismiss Rather's breach of contract claim against CBS."

The court said there was no breach of contract, because CBS still paid Rather his $6 million annual salary after the disputed 2004 broadcast under the "pay or play" provision of his contract.

Rather's lawyer, Martin Gold, said he was "extremely disappointed" in the decision and would appeal it to the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court.

CBS said in a statement it was pleased with Tuesday's ruling.

"The lawsuit is now effectively over," CBS said.

The dispute began with a piece Rather narrated for the now-defunct "60 Minutes II," in which he reported that Bush got preferential treatment during his Vietnam War-era service in the Texas Air National Guard.

Rather cited new documents CBS had obtained, but the authenticity of the documents later came under attack.

Rather kept reporting for "60 Minutes" but was dumped by CBS in June 2006 after 44 years with the network.

His 2007 lawsuit claimed fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, as well as breach of contract. A court threw out the fraud claims in September 2008.

CBS said it expects Rather's related lawsuit against CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves and Andrew Heyward, former head of CBS News, to be dismissed, as well.

General counsel Louis Briskman said that action "is technically still pending, but it's hanging by a thread."

Rather, 77, now produces an hourlong news program for cable channel HDNet.

Read the decision below (embedded via DocStoc, document via TVNewser):

Dan Rather Lawsuit Dismissal -

5 Awesome Cases of The Internet Owning The MSM

2009-09-26T20:19:16Z

In case you haven't seen the ads framing Cracked.com these past few day, Family Guy starts back up tomorrow. Which is kind of strange when you consider that Fox canceled it almost 10 years ago. It's still on the air because the unwashed masses demanded it. In fact, the little guy has been increasingly making huge media companies his prison-wife thanks to the two most dangerous things in existence: incredible amounts of spare time and knowing how to use the Internet.

Dan Rather's $70 Million Case Against CBS Moves Forward

2009-09-21T23:13:59Z

NEW YORK, Sept 21 (Reuters) - A New York judge on Monday rejected CBS Corp's (CBS.N) bid to dismiss former TV news anchor Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit claiming he was fired over a controversial election-year report on former President George W. Bush's Vietnam War-era military service.

Is CBS Erasing Dan Rather From Corporate Memory?

2009-09-17T09:52:48Z

The latest contretemps involve such momentous issues as: whether the forced-out anchorman, who held the job for 24 years, would be welcomed at the recent funeral and memorial service for his legendary predecessor, Walter Cronkite; whether the 77-year-old Rather was sufficiently represented in a CBS News special celebrating Cronkite's life and times, or in photos displayed during the memorial service at Avery Fisher Hall; whether an independent filmmaker hoping to make a Rather documentary would be granted access to CBS News archival footage; and whether CBS, in Orwellian style, is trying to make Rather a non-person and erase him from the corporate memory.

SaraKay Smullens: The Life and Death of Ted Kennedy: Continuing to Learn as We Mourn

2009-09-01T14:28:00Z

When I heard that Ted Kennedy was dead I felt an ache in my upper chest with every breath. It went away but then reappeared the day after he was buried. Life has taught me that this inner wrench is mourning.

For all of us whose teenage and adult years spanned the lives of John, Robert and Ted Kennedy, the hours of public celebration of Ted's life and his burial provided a backdrop montage of love, hope, loss, and persistence, the Kennedys' as well as our own.

As we viewed decades moving toward change through photos, newsreels and shared memories, I imagined three distinct television screens: One devoted to the lives of the Kennedys, one that allowed us to view the lives of other famous people, and one focusing on own lives. At every twist and turn revisited, we could remember where we were and what we faced. For comic relief, we could even visit the way we dressed. How about the political rebellion of the female power suits (oh those shoulder pads, reminiscent of battle arms)! And the non-phallic ties and suit lapels! Dare we analyze what those male sideburns were all about?

The footage and coverage seemed to scream out that despite enormous effort and seeming luck and fortune, life produces ironies and contradictions: Even those who win one moment can face horrific, brutal loss in the next. The rich and famous are no more spared than the rest of us.

We saw Dan Rather and Roger Mudd, both young and famed contenders to replace Walter Cronkite. We revisited Mudd and Ted Kennedy, as Mudd, during the bitter 1980 Carter-Kennedy primary, asked Kennedy why he wanted to be President. Ted Kennedy did not know how to respond, which many see as a large factor in his defeat in many 1980 primaries. I have often wondered if this shocking Mudd-Kennedy interview had any effect on CBS's choice of Rather, rather than Mudd, to replace Cronkite. Rather, now embroiled in a lawsuit against CBS, was fired for the documentary claiming that there was good reason to believe that while a member of our Reserves Bush '43 cheated on his attendance record.

We also visited the lovely Jessica Savitch, a pioneer NBC journalist and anchor, as she reported on Ted Kennedy. Who could have predicted that Savitch, whose private life became one of torment, would humiliate herself on screen with slurred and missed words? Who could have imagined that she would die in the autumn of 1983 in a way horrifyingly reminiscent of the way Mary Jo Kopecne's life ended in the summer of 1969?

But we also saw that loss must be seen in perspective -- that losing can in truth be winning.

Loss of an opportunity to become President freed Ted Kennedy from the burden of replacing his three dead brothers. It freed him from a job that he most likely did not want and was not suited for. Loss allowed him to find his destiny and become the most powerful and important Senator of our time, a man who relished his work, and helped countless people through his constant devotion.

In his personal world, loss propelled Ted Kennedy to leave a dead marriage. After humiliation following the death of a devoted brother-in-law, loss propelled him to marry Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the warm, competent, strong and regal woman whom he and all who loved him recognized as not only the love of his life, but the woman who saved his life.

Visiting the life and death of Ted Kennedy showed that facing loss and fear can strengthen. And bring compassion.

Who will ever forget the words of Kara and Ted, Jr., who endured and triumphed over cancer, or of Patrick, who is triumphing over addiction? We saw Ethel Kennedy quietly, lovingly leave her seat to adjust the partially upturned cloth covering her brother-in-law's casket. We were reminded that with his brothers gone, Ted was ever-present for Jackie and Ethel and his nieces and nephews. We saw Ted's first wife, Joan, who has bravely faced her addictions, find the courage to attend the ceremonies honoring the father of her children, a man she had loved deeply but could not keep. We were reminded how Eunice Kennedy Shriver, in loving memory of her sister Rosemary, changed the lives of physically and mentally challenged children all over the world. Pivotal to the celebration and farewell was the grace and accessibility of Vicki, who, unlike her two sisters-in-law, received the gift of time to prepare emotionally (as well as it is humanly possible to do so) for her grave loss.

We also saw that despite everything, even in the face of certain death, it is possible not to give up. The heart of Ted Kennedy's letter written to the Pope, a plea for Universal Health Care, was read to those present at Arlington, inspiring us all. And perhaps making us smile. What chutzpah! Through written word to the Pope himself, Ted Kennedy seemed even to outsmart death for a few precious moments and speak from the grave.

The last days have confirmed that the Kennedys are no longer outside of those who have grown up during their generations of power. They have become part of us, lives intertwined with parallel joy and sorrow, laughter and tears. Though we mourn, our chosen family members, now inside of us, will continue to inspire and teach.

Thomas Lipscomb: Is Bernie Goldberg Right? Had Bush "In Fact Volunteered to Go to Vietnam?"

2009-08-28T15:39:38Z

Former CBS News journalist Bernard Goldberg is making a major claim on his website and in his appearance as a Fox News consultant on The O'Reilly Factor this week. He claims to have found "A 'Lost' Fact in the Rathergate Mess."

According to Goldberg: "Until now, the controversy over the Rather/Mapes story has centered almost entirely on one issue: the legitimacy of the documents -- a very important issue, indeed. But it turns out that there was another very important issue, one that goes to the very heart of what the story was about -- and one that has gone virtually unnoticed. This is it: "Mary Mapes knew before she put the story on the air that George W. Bush, the alleged slacker, had in fact volunteered to go to Vietnam." [emphasis as in the original]

Much of the Rathergate controversy depends upon questions about the factual basis for Dan Rather and Mary Mapes' assertions about George Bush, which were largely based upon bad forgeries that quickly fell apart as the provenance of the source material was questioned. Numerous investigators' work, including my own in the Chicago Sun-Times [Sept 10, 2004 "Critical Bush Memos on Guard Service Faked?"], concluded that the "Texas National Guard" papers being used could not have been produced on typewriters available in the 1970s. So much for any "facts" they may have contained.

But what of Goldberg's "'Lost' Fact?" What is its factual basis, and why does it deserve our attention now?

According to Goldberg: "Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush "did want to go to Vietnam but others went first." Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had in volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.

This information, despite the fact that it has been available since the CBS report came out four years ago, has remained a secret to almost everybody both in and out of the media ... ."

That is certainly potentially important "information," as Goldberg correctly terms it. But is it fact?

Complaining to your buddies in the service about where you would RATHER be serving is perfectly normal. I did it myself as a young lieutenant. But that is not the same as actually filling out the paperwork for a transfer. Both the report Goldberg refers to and Goldberg's own statements seem to me to go farther than the existing evidence. From Goldberg's account it all appears to be oral testimony. That is a pretty thin basis for the flat statement Goldberg is making: "Bush... had in fact volunteered to go Viet Nam." Mapes shouldn't have ignored the oral statements, clearly. But neither do they have the force of documented fact.

A transfer of duty assignment was the key plot device in two popular World War II era movies. In Mr. Roberts, Henry Fonda did a lot of complaining about his assignment too, and finally got a transfer from a transport to a warship, but he kept formally filling out the paperwork and applying until he got it. A unit commander has to pass on any application for transfer. In Twelve O'Clock High, commander Gregory Peck had to delay his pilots' filled out transfer applications procedurally long enough to build up the morale in his unit. My point is the popular culture already "knows" what a "request for transfer is," and it isn't bitching to military buddies about what one would prefer. Why doesn't an experienced journalist like Bernard Goldberg?

Bush's, or anyone else's commanding officer can state his disapproval, but he has to eventually pass the paperwork on. So there would be a formal record in Bush's file which he already produced prior to the 2004 election.

Remember, pilot training is cued to the "needs of the service." One only gets a limited choice of aircraft, if there is any choice at all, as a new pilot. And it costs a lot of money to train a pilot. The military doesn't want to retrain one on another aircraft, unless his retention in service makes it cost effective and the pilot stays on active duty long enough to amortize the additional cost.

The training for an "interceptor" role Bush flew is vastly different than the "fighter bomber" missions Bush might have been trained for in Viet Nam, since presumably he wouldn't be interested in logistics flying of transports or refueling. His F 102 type aircraft was only used very briefly in Viet Nam in an operation called "Palace Alert" and was found inappropriate to the missions there as it could not drop bombs. Bush's assigned unit, the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, had as its primary mission attacking slow Soviet bombers inbound on nuke missions to the US. The F-102 was a "widowmaker" with lots of crashes. The formal reports on his performance show Bush was an excellent pilot on a difficult plane.

But that does not mean he was an ideal candidate for retention and retraining to become a hot jock over Vietnam as the war was winding down and there was already an excess of pilots. And nothing I have seen shows any interest on Bush's part to stay in the service longer than his service obligation at the time. The controversy over his taking the medical exams raised by Mapes and others was caused precisely because Bush didn't bother to take them, not because he was "AWOL" (Terry McCauliffe), but because he wanted to get out of the service and go to B school and could have cared less about losing his flight status. None of which the press (with zero military experience these days) understood anymore than they understood the holes in Kerry's "record" any veteran could see plain as day.

Much of the problem with reporting this kind of thing these days is the lack of military experience of journalists. Bernie Goldberg overreacted to a valid discovery of some sourced opinion Mary Mapes should not have ignored, a journalistic irony if there ever was one.

If Fox and Goldberg want to play this strong an angle they should directly ask Bush for a copy of any formal application he made to be transferred to Viet Nam (there is a DOD form for it... it is a normal enough occurrence in the service so that there is one pre-prepared for a request for transfer). If nothing is produced, the news story is quite a bit different than what they are running as I am sure they will agree.

I am not for giving either Dan Rather or George Bush a free ride on anything based upon rumor and verbal scuttlebutt. Bernie knows the rules of hard reporting as well as anyone. Let him apply them to himself as well as others.

He has the same challenge to meet Mapes and Rather failed. Show us valid paperwork. And in the case of any request for transfer to duty in Viet Nam by young George Bush, it should be easy to find, if in fact it exists.

As of now it is still only a supposition.

Reese Schonfeld: Why Barack Can't Do What Lyndon Would Have: An Essay on Living in the Past

2009-08-25T15:30:05Z

In a recent essay, Tom Johnson, a Presidential aide to Lyndon Johnson, seems to suggest that President Obama might have had better luck getting his health bill through Congress if only he followed in President Johnson's footsteps. He then lists 17 specific steps that LBJ would've taken to cajole Congress into passing the bill. I don't think any of them would work anymore.

But there is one thing that LBJ did and Tom Johnson doesn't mention that might've have made a big difference: LBJ presented Congress with a Medicare bill prepared by the administration. The bill had been crafted in 1962 for President Kennedy by Social Security Commissioner Robert Ball, one of the finest "bureaucrats" ever to serve the American public. When JFK tried to bring it to the Senate floor, he was blocked by Bob Kerr, an Oklahoma Democrat, commonly referred to as "the uncrowned king of the Senate." (The Wall Street Journal opined, "Mr. Kennedy asked; Mr. Kerr decided.") It is worth noting that in my time, there were two other Democrats who ruled the Senate with absolute authority, Richard Russell of Georgia and Lyndon Johnson, himself. Johnson was the only one who bore the formal title of "Majority Leader," but it was widely recognized that no bill got through the Senate without their support.

As an illustration of Kerr's power, I was told, in 1961, by a former law school roommate, who was in charge of writing the federal tax bill for the Treasury Department, that he was told by his boss that after the bill had been approved by both the Treasury Secretary, and the President, to take the bill over to Bob Kerr's house where Bob Kerr would tell him what to keep in the bill and what to take out. In those days, Senators, particularly as rich as Bob Kerr (Kerr-McGee), had real power.

Bob Kerr died in January, 1963, and Lyndon Johnson succeeded President Kennedy the following November. As President, LBJ carried most of his Senate clout over to the White House (Senators quivered before him), and he became, once again, the most powerful man in the Senate. His combination of legislative and executive power is unique in our history.

I will offer one example of the fear that LBJ inspired in most Senators: When Senator John Stennis, himself a powerhouse as Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, leaked a story to CBS about Defense Secretary McNamara's plan to build an electronic fence across the Vietnam border, a plan of which he greatly disapproved, he so feared Johnson's wrath that he insisted that the leak be presented in such a way that it could never be attributed to him.

Roger Mudd, who covered the Sentate for CBS, and was the recipient of the leak, took the story and Stennis' concerns to Bill Small, who ran the Washington bureau. Small honored Stennis' request by having Dan Rather, who covered the White House, report it on the air. Johnson, assuming that the leak came from someone in the White House, fired a few Kennedy loyalists, and investigated White House phone records to find out who had been talking to Dan Rather. Obviously, Stennis' fears were not groundless. To suggest that a former one term Senator, like Barack Obama, would have the same ability to scare Senators into voting for a bill that many of their constituents, and more importantly, many lobbyists, are battling, is, to say the least, unrealistic.

All this brings me to my last point: There's been a major power shift in the United States over the past forty years. Power has devolved from the Russells, Kerrs and Johnsons to the lobbyists. Calls, such as the ones Tom Johnson suggested, to this generation of the rich and powerful like Lew Wasserman, Henry Ford, Pierre du Pont and David Rockefeller, don't work anymore. Rich men no longer own Senators. Lobbyists do.

The political world of the sixties no longer exists. It's far more fragmented and complicated now. These days, lobbyists, thanks to Democratic Congressional rule changes of the 1970s, are now permitted to attend every Congressional committee and subcommittee meeting, where the lobbyists keep score on how their bought and owned representatives cast votes. It's a wonder that any legislation is enacted at all unless it carries with it a pay off to everybody on the committee.

In Tom Johnson's day, cufflinks and watches could win votes; in these highly partisan days, it takes a hell of a lot more than that.

[In full disclosure, I know and respect Tom Johnson. He was one of my successors as President of CNN.]

Josh Silver: Saving Journalism: Howard Kurtz Is Wrong, Dan Rather Is Right

2009-08-18T12:04:08Z

On Monday, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and CNN criticized veteran newsman Dan Rather for his recent call for a White House commission on the future of journalism and public media.

It was a misguided criticism of Mr. Rather, who has called for the commission as a way to bring attention to the crisis facing American newsrooms (20,000 newspaper jobs lost in the past 18 months alone), and to create the political will necessary to get our elected leaders to address the problem.

If you don't think we have a news crisis, just look at the absurd coverage of the health care town halls by the cable channels, and how they have skewed public opinion against the public interest.

Kurtz's argument can be summed up by the last lines of his article: "Journalists got themselves into this mess by clinging to the past as technology threatened to pass them by. They'll have to get themselves out of it without any assistance from the Oval Office." Kurtz asserts that the journalism crisis is not a political issue, but the result of economic and technological forces alone. If only that were true.

The biggest media companies like General Electric, News Corp., Viacom and Disney spend millions to shape government policies, like allowing consolidation of ownership, eliminating important public interest obligations, and blocking competition, to name a few. Kurtz's call for government to stay out of efforts to save journalism is a denial of policy's central role in creating -- and its ability to fix -- the media's problems. Indeed, the only ones who would benefit from Kurtz's hands-off approach are the media bosses for whom he works.

Investigative, in-depth, adversarial journalism is increasingly rare in commercial radio, television, and even newspapers. And the sort of commission that Dan Rather recommends may be the only way to get a distracted Congress and White House to pay attention - and commit to finding solutions.

Kurtz is also off-base in calling commissions a "classic bureaucratic substitute for doing something." It was a commission, backed by the White House and Congress, that created our public broadcasting system in 1969. The 9/11 Commission's investigation, hearing and report dramatically altered the debate about that tragedy and has helped guide homeland security policy to this day.

Just as our leaders have created national plans to address crises in health care, energy independence and education, it is time to craft a national strategy to renew journalism and public media in America. And that's not going to happen if we ask our nation's leader to sit it out.

While Kurtz's piece reveals a lack of understanding of the role of media policy in shaping and fostering robust journalistic institutions -- and the steps required to protect the fourth estate. I have been to a number of the forums that Kurtz refers to. I was on the panel he moderated along with Rather, and I agree that we need to move from panels toward tangible solutions.

Instead of just another Blue Ribbon panel of elite experts, the commission Rather recommends must focus on concrete policies and business models. And it should be a 21st-century "Citizen's Commission" that fosters a new kind of conversation with the American people. It should be made up of diverse voices and viewpoints and designed to gather input from everyday people and experts alike. It should leverage the on- and offline tools that Obama used so well in his campaign, and be truly inclusive and participatory -- and funded by private foundations. But in the end, it will need leadership and attention from the White House and Congress to make a real impact.

Journalism is in crisis, and we must be proactive in identifying and advancing solutions. We must re-imagine the structures and policies needed for quality journalism and public media to thrive in the digital age, and our leaders must help ensure that our media meet the demands of an informed society. Our democracy simply cannot wait.

I'll return to this space in the coming weeks with more ideas about what this commission might look like -- and how to stay informed.

Howard Kurtz: "Dan Rather Is Wrong"

2009-08-17T10:29:05Z

Dan Rather is wrong.

Barack Obama should stay out of it.

We don't need no stinkin' presidential commission.

Dan Rather Sues Les Moonves, Andrew Heyward To Reinstate Them As Defendants

2009-08-04T08:30:32Z

Former TV news anchor Dan Rather sued CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward on Monday in a bid to have them reinstated as defendants in his $70 million lawsuit against the network.

Dan Rather Calls For Commission On Media Reform

2009-07-29T15:30:51Z

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather called on President Barack Obama to form a White House commission to help save the press Tuesday night in an impassioned speech at the Aspen Institute.

"I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media," the legendary newsman said.

John Farr: The Ten Best Movies About Journalism by Farr

2009-07-27T14:31:44Z

I don't know how many of you caught the superb "American Masters" tribute to the late Walter Cronkite on PBS last week, but it was highly illuminating.

Most of us think of "Uncle Walt" sitting behind his anchor desk at CBS, but this program also outlined just what brought him there. Throughout the Second World War, he served as a war correspondent for UPI, and appears to have seen nearly as much action as most battle-fatigued infantrymen.

What's particularly interesting is that Cronkite never forgot his early training. Over the course of his long and distinguished television career, he was hardly chained to that anchor desk. The correspondent in him saw the value of going out into the field, whether to cover the space program or the Vietnam War. And the succeeding generation of top newscasters- Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw- would all follow his lead.

We often speak of the "golden age of film", but juxtaposing Cronkite's legacy with what we're seeing now in the news business, there is no doubt that print and television journalism had its golden age too, and that sadly, we are now past it.

In the wake of this revered figure's passing, I've attempted to isolate the ten best movies about journalism. Included are serious films about war correspondents, investigative journalists, as well as pictures which portray the sensationalism which Cronkite so hated, and which represents the enduring Achilles' heel of the industry. (Note: I've intentionally excluded "Citizen Kane", as it's such an obvious choice.)

Here then are my own ten picks, in chronological order:

Foreign Correspondent (1940)- Crime reporter Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) is renamed Huntley Haverstock by his editor and sent to Europe as a foreign correspondent. On the brink of war and teeming with espionage, the continent is full of juicy stories - and Johnny/Huntley soon finds one. Covering a peace mission, he witnesses an assassination, and is soon on to a nefarious spy ring and wide-ranging plot to aid the war-mongering Fascists. Can this Yank in treacherous waters uncover the whole mystery, and survive long enough to post the biggest scoop of his career? This unsung Hitchcock thriller is outstanding, his first to deal directly with the new war in Europe. Bolstered by a first-rate script (both James Hilton and Robert Benchley contributed dialogue) and superb cast (with the suave yet treacherous Herbert Marshall particularly memorable), "Correspondent" is consistently engrossing and entertaining, with some indelible set-pieces only this director could conjure up.

The Story Of G.I. Joe (1945)- At the height of World War II, war correspondent Ernie Pyle (Burgess Meredith) follows Company C, a platoon of infantrymen led by commander Lt. Bill Walker (Robert Mitchum), from the battlefields of North Africa to the devastated townships of Italy, getting to know each intimately. As the campaign progresses, Pyle sticks with them through the worst of circumstances and earns their respect. He, in turn, records their stories for readers at home, noting their courage, fierce loyalty to each other, and the mounting exhaustion they feel at the end of each battle. William Wellman's cinematic homage to the real-life Pyle, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has been called one of the greatest war films of all time, and it certainly earns that distinction. The combat scenes are intense and realistic, but the film also shows the humdrum day-to-day duties and concerns of enlisted men with an almost documentary-like fidelity. Meredith lovingly evokes Pyle's humanistic and devoted attitude toward the ordinary soldiers who were his subjects, and Mitchum - in an early, star-making role - combines grit with gut-wrenching emotion. Pyle advised Wellman on this treatment, but sadly never saw the end result: He was killed in action in 1945.

Ace In The Hole (1951)- Thanks to womanizing, a drinking problem, and a defiant streak, fiery big-city journalist Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) has been relegated to working a local beat for a tiny New Mexico Daily, but he hasn't lost his taste for the big time. When a miner is trapped in a cave-in, Tatum savvily exploits and prolongs the man's plight in hopes of engineering his own prime-time comeback to the big-city dailies which have discarded him. Prescient, cynical, and daring for its time, Billy Wilder's acid-tongued satire on media sensationalism stars Kirk Douglas in one of his fiercest early roles. As Tatum, he's a mean-spirited multiple loser pursuing self-glorification at any expense. The luscious Jan Sterling wins points, too, for her portrayal of the trapped man's battered, unhappy wife, Lorraine, who threatens to blow the lid off Tatum's whole circus act. Wilder's astute handling of the chaotic scene around the mine - the media hordes, the gawkers and hangers-on, the souvenir and snack peddlers profiting off the situation - has much to say about our culture's lingering appetite for "human interest" tragedy.

The Parallax View (1974)- Reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is onto a terrifying, wide-ranging conspiracy in the wake of a prominent senator's assassination. He must substantiate his theory to editor Bill Rintels (a seasoned Hume Cronyn), who has reason to doubt him thanks to past irresponsible behaviors. Frady does indeed have a tiger by the tail, but will he live long enough to get his scoop? One of our top political paranoia thrillers (and owing an obvious debt to John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate"), director Pakula uses this story to stir up close-to-the-surface fears and doubts about hidden machinations deeply embedded in our country's recent past. The result is eerily compelling. Direction, script and acting are uniformly excellent, and the film's climax is particularly intense. This subtle, intelligent thriller ranks among my favorite Beatty outings, with Paula Prentiss and Cronyn providing first-rate support.

All The President's Men (1976)- A true-life detective tale about a pair of intrepid reporters, this film follows Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) as they uncover a possible connection between the 1972 Watergate burglary and a White House staffer. With the blessing of executive editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) and inside dope from Woodward's ultra-secret source, "Deep Throat" (Hal Holbrook), they "follow the money" all the way to the top. Although you never glimpse anyone playing Nixon, this Oscar-nominated film documents how the power of the press and determination of two young journalists brought down this president, who two years prior had won re-election by the widest margin in history. Faithfully adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book authored by these reporters, the movie is more exciting than fiction, and the starring triumvirate of Redford, Hoffman, and Robards merge seamlessly with their real-life counterparts.

The China Syndrome (1979)- To the consternation of her bosses, ambitious TV reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) wants to get away from doing cheesy lifestyle segments and latch on to a serious story. She inadvertently finds it when she and cameraman Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) cover a day in the life of a nearby power plant, and witness some frightening irregularities. Not surprisingly, the powers-that-be don't want their cover blown on these life-threatening issues, but senior plant official Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) won't accept a cover-up, and bravely attempts to get the story out, with Kimberly's help. This tense and timely nail-biter is effective not only because director James Bridges gets all the fundamentals right, but because its explosive subject matter would soon hit home with a terrifying real-life incident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Lemmon's Godell is a shattering portrayal, for which the actor received an Oscar nod, and Fonda is appealing and believable as a journalist who wants to be more than a pretty face. Co-star Douglas also produced.

The Year Of Living Dangerously (1982)- In 1965, Australian reporter Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) arrives in Indonesia to track the turbulent Sukarno regime. There he meets half-Chinese news photographer Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), who quickly gets him acclimated to the people, place and politics. Billy then introduces Guy to Jill (Sigourney Weaver), a British embassy attaché, and romantic sparks fly. But Guy is there to uncover the next big story, and a country on the brink of revolution is no place to fall in love. This romantic thriller is one absorbing and atmospheric ride. Director Peter Weir heightens our awareness of impending societal disruption, keeping us continually on edge. Gibson has never been more magnetic as Guy, and the captivating Weaver exudes sensuality and mystery. Yet actress Hunt is the revelation in the gender-bending role of Billy -- it won her a richly deserved Oscar.

The Killing Fields (1984)- True story chronicling the experiences of New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg (Sam Waterston), who, with his assistant Dith Pran (Dr. Haing S. Ngor), covers the growing unrest in Cambodia, until the 1975 take-over by Khmer Rouge guerrillas forces him to evacuate. Unfortunately, Dith Pran is less fortunate, and endures years of torture and confinement during the ensuing genocide before attempting a daring escape. Harrowing tale of man's appalling cruelty to man would seem incredible were it not true. Director Roland Joffe crafts an authentic and intelligent portrayal of individual heroism, as Pran overcomes enormous hardship and suffering to seize his chance for freedom. Both Waterston and Ngor (a non-professional actor who won an Oscar) are outstanding. A disturbing but important film.

The Insider (1999)- Based on a well-publicized true story, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), an embittered tobacco company employee, decides to blow the whistle on mammoth employer Brown & Williamson's deceptive practices. He enlists the help of Lowell Bergman, senior producer on 60 Minutes (Al Pacino), to get the story out. The process quickly becomes dangerous, however, and both men's lives are nearly destroyed. Carrying the imprimatur of reality-and courtesy of Michael Mann's tense, semi-documentary shooting style- the shocking events of the Big Tobacco scandal get brought into close proximity, holding you breathless. "The Insider" represents a cautionary tale wrapped up in a top-notch thriller. Watching the byplay between Pacino and Crowe, viewers get to witness two consummate actors at the top of their respective games. Crowe is particularly impressive playing against type.

Shattered Glass (2003)- Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is a rising young reporter for The New Republic whose shocking stories about celebrity hackers and illegal hijinks at a Young Republican convention earn him the respect and admiration of his peers, not to mention kudos from managing editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria). But Glass's highly irregular reporting practices gradually come to light when new editor Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) steps up to replace Kelly. Director Billy Ray's "Shattered Glass" stands alongside the classic film exposé "All the President's Men" as a riveting journalistic thriller based on real-life events. Dealing with the disturbing present-day phenomenon of journalistic plagiarism, the drama's timeliness gives the film an edgy, unnerving effect. While Glass's blank, unlined face never betrays his personal motivation, the movie addresses a familiar pitfall: the insidious attraction of taking the easy way out, and the peculiar arrogance and excitement that builds when you actually get away with doing something very wrong.

For close to 2,000 more outstanding titles on DVD, visit www.bestmoviesbyfarr.com.

Also check out John's weekly DVD recommendations on www.reel13.org.

Richard Valeriani: July 27 2009 - News Update

2009-07-27T13:35:27Z

President Obama pitches Health Care Plan at prime time news conference, catches flak over Henry Louis Gates affair.

Obama says Cambridge police acted "stupidly" in arresting Gates in own home.

In fact, "stupidly" abounded.

Obama acted stupidly by answering question unrelated to subject of news conference and by commenting without knowing all the facts.

Cop acted stupidly by arresting Harvard Professor in own home after he identified himself.

Gates acted stupidly by misplacing his keys and then by being belligerent, pugnacious and perhaps obnoxious to cop, although none of that is arrest-worthy.

So much for Post-racial society. And why does Harvard have a "Black Studies" program anyway?

Obama invites cop and Gates to White House for a beer. To be served with helpings of crow all around?

Fox Noise doesn't carry Obama news conference live. New slogan: We ignore...You Remain Ignorant.

Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid says no vote on Obama health care plan until after recess. If ever.

Reid votes for NRA-sponsored bill to allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons across state lines. This is leadership?

Senate vote against bill considered defeat for NRA....Not so. This bill so ridiculously outrageous that next NRA-sponsored bill will seem reasonable.

Gun bill proposed by Rep. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who now enters running for dumbest person in Senate.

However, Thune lags far behind South Carolina Rep. Sen. Jim DeMint who calls for defeat of Obama's health care plan, saying it will "break" him and be his Waterloo. What a patriot Reality is, Republicans don't have a Duke of Wellington. They did have a "Duke" Cunningham, but he's in jail on corruption charges.

Of course, South Carolinians can always console themselves with their Governor, Mark Sanford. Sanford recently wrote that God will make him a better person. Apparently he doesn't know that God is an Argentinian.

CBS Newsman Walter Cronkite passes away at age 92. Notice how nobody "dies" any more? They pass away...or just pass...like speeding down the highway to death. "Uncle Walter" in life. Saint Walter in death. Buried last Thursday. Did not rise from the dead three days later.

Dan Rather attended funeral -- but without his lawyer.

CBS Evening News will keep Cronkite's voice as introduction. Is that a good idea-reminding viewers that CBS Evening News ain't what it used to be?

But not as creepy as keeping Billy Mays commercials on air.

Astronauts repair lone broken toilet on space station. Broken toilet full of sh-t -- apt metaphor for US space program?

Fortieth anniversary of Apollo moon landing observed. Can you believe people are talking seriously about going back to moon at cost of billions of dollars? What's the goal-to collect more moonrocks now that we have e-Bay?

Speaking of which, news reports say Michael Jackson's prosthetic nose is missing. How soon will that show up on e-Bay?

Senate finally votes to end production of F-22 fighters, which not been used since Civil War. F-U to F-22? But not to worry....Pentagon will come up with plans for new multi-billion dollar something any day now.

Comedian Al Franken finally sworn in as Senator from Minnesota. Nice touch-Gumby held the Bible. Does this mean "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot" will become part of the Congressional Record?

Obama nominates black woman to be Surgeon General. And she's not even on television. Pat Buchanan not yet denounced her as "affirmative action" nominee.

Gov. Sarah Palin steps down as Governor of Alaska. Next stop-skinning a moose on "America's Got Talent"?

FBI arrests several politicians, rabbis in major New Jersey political scandal. New York Post calls it "Kosher Nostra." Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano accused of taking bribes after only 3 weeks in office. That may be a record -- even for New Jersey.

Memo to Liz Cheney -- Dick's daughter -- who defended "birthers" (wackos who claim Obama not born in US) on Larry King: Stupid doesn't work on television -- unless you have your own cable show.

Senate delays vote on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to Supreme Court. If she doesn't make it, there may be an opening on American Idol.

Jackson Williams: Dan Rather Wins Big Round In CBS/Bush National Guard AWOL Case

2009-07-22T04:14:33Z

Dan Rather won't let go of his 2007 lawsuit against CBS. There's a reason. He's holding a decent hand, and he's got sticktoitiveness.

The July 22 NY Times reports that he's just won access to thousands of internal documents. He's also gotten a fraud charge reinstated against the network that had previously been dismissed.

In my mind, this case means more to him than monetary redemption. The guy made upwards of $10 million a year for a quarter-century of evening anchor duty. That's over $200 million before wise investments. He has the juice to go the distance in this litigation, so it ain't about the money.

I remember it seemed fishy that well-orchestrated internet attacks about the CBS memos from Bush's commanding officer were unleashed literally on the very night Rather's now famous 60 Minutes broadcast (Wednesday edition) aired in 2004. Yes, those memos had questionable lineage, and may have been reproductions.

Still, some of the accusations by the right wing blogosphere (that typewriters in the early 70's didn't have raised th capability) were demonstrably false. I inherited my older sister's electric Smith Carona when she went away to college back then, and it already had that feature.

In any event, Rather did a follow-up the week after the initial broadcast, remember? He interviewed the 86-year old personal secretary of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's commanding officer in Houston. The elderly woman, a straight shooter, thought CBS's cache of Killian's memos were not originals, but she fiercely stuck to her guns that everything in them, all the bad stuff about Bush, was accurate.

Her evidence: she'd typed the damn things originally, and was Killian's "right hand" for years. Shrub's presence was naturally a big deal because of his father's national prominence, and she remembered like it was yesterday.

I think Rather's ultimate goal is as much about reopening the whole Bush National Guard story as it is getting his pound of flesh out of a former employer.

Unlike the nuttiness from the anti-Obama "birther" crowd, evidence (from the Boston Globe and others) strongly suggests that George W. Bush literally bailed on his Guard duty, got a transfer to Alabama, and then disappeared for at least the final 12 months of his military commitment, perhaps up to 17 months. Some have a lost weekend; he had a lost year.

Viewed within this context, that's what Bush's whole "Mission Accomplished" photo-op in the flight suit was about: rewriting the biggest embarrassment in his background.

Stay resolute, Gunga Dan. You've got a tiger by the tail.

Dan Rather Wins Access To Thousands Of Documents In Suit Against CBS

2009-07-21T22:36:27Z

Dan Rather won significant victories Tuesday in his suit against his former network, CBS. He won access to more than 3,000 documents that his lawyer said were expected to reveal evidence that CBS had tried to influence the outcome of a panel that investigated his much-debated "60 Minutes" report about former President George W. Bush's military record.

Karen Ocamb: Walter Cronkite and the Player Piano

2009-07-20T10:40:08Z

Dateline, Christmas season, 1975. A cab left me off in front of Walter Cronkite's Upper Eastside townhouse. Fresh out of college, I had joined CBS News two years earlier as a desk assistant and had become a regular substitute for Jim McGlinchy, Cronkite's clerk on the CBS Evening News. And now I was invited to his staff Christmas party.

The house was warm, filled with people, laughter and music. I found my way into the living room where Uncle Walt, sporting a Santa red vest, was playing the piano and loudly warbling some corny country song -- karaoke before there was karaoke. Of all the people gathered around him, some laughing, some just being polite, Uncle Walt was the one having the best time. I, for one, wondered why he was singing a country song for Christmas -- until he got up from the piano bench to go talk to someone and the piano kept playing by itself.

I was dumbfounded. I had never seen a player piano before and I never thought the "most trusted man in America" would have one -- let alone be a country music fan. Truthfully, I just never thought of Walter Cronkite as being fun until then.

I liked Uncle Walt. One night after the broadcast, we chatted about how he started out at a radio station in Kansas City, Missouri when my father worked for the Kansas City Star. He remembered my father's name. And curiously, just as Cronkite joined UPI and left the Midwest to cover World War Two, my father left to become one of the first Americans to join the RAF, the Royal Air Force, before the US officially declared war.

My father had also moonlighted as a local bandleader and we talked about the Big Bands, Louie Armstrong, Cole Porter and a fellow named Hoagy Carmichael. My father died just before I joined CBS News, so the exchange was poignant.

At the Christmas party, as many of my young colleagues went upstairs to watch a cool new television show called NBC's Saturday Night with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, I chatted and drank wine with Kathy Cronkite, who was around my age. She said she was thinking about going into acting -- and sure enough -- the following year she played a Patty Hearst look-alike in Paddy Chayefsky's incredible take on broadcast news -- Network. I didn't need to drop any LSD to know how psychedelic that was!

Like so many other Baby Boomers, Walter Cronkite stands out in the timeline of my life.

Though my father chose a military career instead of journalism, we always had the news on in our house. I was transfixed by John F. Kennedy and how the torch had been passed to a new generation -- a vigorous generation characterized by Jackie and Caroline and John-John playing in the Oval Office.

As a "duck and cover" kid who lived on or near Strategic Air Command Air Force bases when the Berlin Wall went up and Kennedy stared down Kruschev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, my first thought when I heard the news that Kennedy had been shot on that fateful Nov. 22, 1963 was that the Communists got him.

But the steadiness of Walter Cronkite and a young reporter named Dan Rather calmed me. For the next four days, my family was glued to the television -- including watching "live" the murder of suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald by Dallas club owner Jack Ruby and the mournful procession down Pennsylvania Avenue of JFK's flag-draped casket on a horse-drawn caisson and a riderless horse with the stirrups turned backward.

Later, in 1967, we were riveted again as Cronkite and Rather did a four-part series -- "The Warren Report" -- that included re-enactments of the shooting to examine the conspiracy theories.

But the most powerful Cronkite moment for me was his commentary about the Vietnam War.

It's difficult for many people today to realize just how revolutionary the 1960s were -- smacking back against the dark, closeted, conformist 50s. The JFK generation was kids joining the Peace Corps and using folk songs and marches to support of the growing civil rights movement -- which Cronkite insisted upon covering. Meanwhile, however, Robert McNamara (who also died recently), one of JFK's "best and brightest," was sending military advisors to Vietnam. The practice expanded under President Lyndon Johnson and Gen. William Westmoreland who started drafting ground troops in 1965. Over the years, Johnson and Westmoreland kept up a steady drumbeat that America was winning the war, tossing out authoritative-sounding "body counts" of the enemy.

But the anti-war movement, which coincided and often overlapped with the civil rights movement, the student movement, and the Black, Chicano, gay and women's liberation movements, took to the streets, demanding accountability.

Initially, Cronkite talked about Vietnam in a stodgy World War Two style, uncritically reporting the White House's "domino theory" that if communism wasn't stopped in Vietnam, it would spread throughout Southeast Asia. But Vietnam increasingly became a television war, with reporters such as Rather, Charles Kuralt, and Morely Safer reporting from the frontlines. The country was divided: conservative response to Safer's famous report showing Marines lighting thatched village huts with Zippo lighters, for instance, was that it was a common practice during search and destroy missions when you can't tell the communist enemies from the innocent non-combatants.

Veteran war correspondent John Laurence covered the bloody battle of Hue during the Tet Offensive, a turning point. Launched Jan. 30 and 31, 1968, over 80,000 Viet Cong swarmed South Vietnam to the shock and surprise of unsuspecting South Vietnamese and American troops. The American public was totally shocked to see footage of the US Embassy in Saigon under attack.

Cronkite wanted to see what was going on for himself. He spent two weeks talking to everyone -- officials and soldiers -- and reporting on the battle of Hue. Upon his return, he did what no one expected him to do -- he dropped his renowned objectivity and outright criticized the military and the Johnson Administration.

As someone who vehemently opposed the war -- my friends were being drafted or running away to Canada or trying to figure out how to be homosexual so they wouldn't be accepted or coming home injured, crippled or in a body bag -- I watched Cronkite's Feb. 27, 1968 commentary with nail-biting anxiety.

Cronkite said in part:

"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest cloud....For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate..... And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.... But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."

I watched in jaw-dropped silence and then I jumped up and yelled and danced around -- catching the eye of my father who had retired from the military and joined Avco-Lycoming, an aerospace industry based in Stratford, Connecticut. Our move to Westport a few years earlier introduced me to a very liberal crowd -- and at one point I even called my father a "professional killer" over the dinner table. He slapped me and we were officially at odds. But after Cronkite's commentary, he changed his mind about the war.

He wasn't the only one. Bill Moyers reported that President Lyndon B. Johnson -- who withstood thousands of protesters screaming "Hey, Hey LBJ! How Many Kids Have You Killed Today?" -- said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

The next month, LBJ announced he would not seek re-election and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy announced he would run in the Democratic Primary against poet and antiwar Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. My father liked RFK because he had a "strategic plan for withdrawal."

It was way past time, as Seymour Hersh's reporting of the My Lai Massacre revealed: On March 16, US Army forces murdered between 347-504 unarmed civilians, most of whom were women and children and elderly. Many of the victims had been sexually abused and tortured. Only William Calley was convicted, getting life but serving only three years under house arrest.

We came together as a family again to watch Cronkite's coverage of the assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and RFK -- the latter on the day I graduated from high school.

We knew the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was going to be an opportunity to draw world attention to the Vietnam War. But I don't think any of us -- or at least not grunt students like me -- had any idea that Mayor Richard Daley would unleash his baton-wielding, head-bashing cops on the commie-pinko-faggot-scum demonstrators who were littering his city with unpatriotic puke. Daley was the Bull Connor of the North.

What we really, really didn't expect to see was the outside brought in when Rather got punched in the stomach and sank to the floor, yelling on air: "Get your hands off me unless you intend to arrest me!" Perched in a skybox watching with the rest of us, Cronkite was livid. "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan," he said, in a rare moment of pique. I always wondered, however, why CBS News didn't haul Daley into some TV booth and demand an explanation and on-air apology.

That unbridled hostility under the color of authority had its pinnacle at home with the May 4, 1970 shooting of unarmed students at Kent State University in Ohio. The Ohio National Guard wound up killing four students and wounding nine others. Some of the students were protesting President Richard Nixon's invasion of Cambodia. But others were simply walking on campus. Eight million students went on strike to protest the shootings, shutting down hundreds of universities and schools.

This is why Cronkite was so important: he was about the only person in this intensely divided America that both sides could trust. He was our no-frills common bond.

"And that's the way it is," he'd say closing each 7:00pm broadcast, as if that summed up one day, now we're on to the next. In his book A Reporter's Life, Cronkite writes that Richard Salant, the highly respected president of CBS News, didn't like the line because it ate up four seconds. Cronkite said that while he thought Salant might be right, "I was too stubborn to drop it." Thank heavens because the routine of that catch phrase was something to depend on.

I honestly can't tell you where I was or with whom the day 40 years ago on July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11's space craft Eagle landed on the moon. We all needed a break -- a moment of pure unadulterated wonder watching as NASA relayed "live" pictures from the moon. Once again, Cronkite summed it up appropriately -- rubbing his hands with glee and saying, "Oh, boy!"

I started working as a desk assistant at CBS News in late 1973 (I took the proverbial one year off for an "identity crisis"). Coverage of the Watergate scandal was already well underway and I was thrilled to be there. The Washington Post broke the story but CBS News with Cronkite at the helm -- and Salant defending him against White House power plays -- brought the story to television and the national stage in late October 1972. Then Rather, the primary White House correspondent, worked the hell out of story which had so many threads until Nixon resigned in 1974 that I even broke a story one night on the assignment desk.

The CBS Newsroom at the time was one long loud unvarnished off-white room with a bank of wire service machines clanking away, muffled only by plastic enclosures that we lifted to roll copy for the reporters and writers. Facing the Flash Studio where Douglas Edwards still did the 12:30 news, the right hand side was for radio reporters and writers -- with a bank of closed-in radio studios at the far end. The left side was TV with offices for the National News Editor (wunderkind Peter Sturtevant who told me not to get an MA in journalism but to "learn by doing") and the brilliant Foreign News Editor Bob Little, with whom I would later get drunk at The Slate restaurant when Saigon fell and Bob thought his beloved and faithful Vietnamese cameraperson who stayed behind to get the story would be summarily killed. Bob later become my boss at Syndication, now Newspath.

Beyond Sturtevant's office was a door to the inner sanctum of the CBS Evening News. On the immediate right was the "Fish Bowl" where the executive producer sat. On the immediate left was the horseshoe desk where the writers sat -- national, foreign and "everything else," supervised by editor John Merriman. Against a long desk in front of a wall sat McGlinchy (or me, when I substituted) and others who were key to putting on the show.

The newsroom was really ruled over by Cronkite's short, stern secretary Hinda Glasser. She sat right outside Cronkite's sizable office but kept an eye on everything. I think she even threw a scare into the producers. But she could also be very protective and understanding.
Being a clerk was not an easy job when it came to airtime. Cronkite would come to his anchor desk a few minutes before broadcast and if there was a new story or he didn't like the way something was written -- he'd toss it back and gruffly order -- "Do it over!"

I would quietly freak out. I had to "break down" the script, give it to Uncle Walt, and then the teleprompter guy and then run like hell out the side door between the Fish Bowl and Cronkite's office down the hall, whip a left into the Control Room, hand the pages to the directors, and dash back to give the final copy to the executive producer and get ready to do it all over again in seconds, if necessary. Falling, running into people, hitting a knee -- no excuses. It was about getting those pages to the people who needed it right now with Cronkite live on air.

When I clerked for Rather, Bob Schieffer, and Morton Dean over the weekends -- my usual gig -- things were much calmer -- unless a story broke unexpectedly, of course. The paced quickened when CBS News transitioned to videotape from film, as well.

Charles Kuralt was a dream to work for when he substituted for Cronkite. He was famous for his On the Road series, which was a favorite kicker for the show. I asked him if he ever wanted to take over for Cronkite when he retired and Kuralt chuckled and said, no, he was an old hippie and he loved living in Greenwich Village and going out to meet people on the road.

My least favorite Cronkite substitute was Roger Mudd. A lot of the older journalists really liked him. But I thought he was an uncouth, arrogant sexist pig who droned the news. Now I grant you -- his documentary The Selling of the Pentagon was great. But he was really creepy to a young "everything else" writer named Carol Ross and everyone knew it -- and he just didn't give a damn.

This became a big deal for me when Cronkite was forced to retire -- not by Rather as some thought -- but by founder and chair Bill Paley's stupid rule that everyone had to retire at 65. There had been a lot of speculation about who would replace him -- with Mudd in the lead over Rather since Mudd substituted more.

I heard that Cronkite wanted Mudd -- but now -- 28 years later, I'm learning that may not have been the case. Regardless, I was a Rather fan. He was my mentor, he was smart, ambitious, generous and he created a terrific working environment. By the time they gave him the anchor job, I had been promoted and was working in Syndication so I wasn't involved with or privy to all the hoopla that happened afterwards.

But as Rather was finding his sea legs as anchor with an new administration in the newsroom and in the White House -- I got upset with Uncle Walt for what I thought was "bad-mouthing" Rather. He was saying that the news -- which had always been straightforward and headline-ish -- was now going "soft" and blending into entertainment.

But that was not what Rather was doing! One of the things I always admired about Rather was that he never forgot where he came from. He had hard-working parents during the Depression -- his father was a ditch digger and his mother waitressed. So when the Reagan White House put out unemployment numbers -- instead of just reciting the figures and showing a nice graphic -- Rather sent reporters to towns where the steel mills were shutting down. He wanted to tell the stories behind the numbers. That's not soft -- that's smart and humane.

I confess that I was miffed over that for a long time. But then Cronkite came to Los Angeles and I had a chance to chat with him after a lecture he delivered at the Wadsworth Theatre. (I moved here in 1984 -- my last assignment for CBS News was setting up a newsroom and co-producing the Olympic coverage for CBS News affiliates.)

I called him Uncle Walt -- which some of the older folks around me thought was rude. But he smiled and remembered me and we joked about that player piano and this odd little burlesque strip tease he'd done at that Christmas party.

My last best memory of Walter Cronkite was the night he opened the Emmy show after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and the war in Afghanistan forced the show's postponement -- twice.

Sitting in front of the television with my family of choice, I watched Cronkite tell the audience that in the coverage of those two historic events, "television, the great common denominator, has lifted our common vision as never before."

And then on came show host Ellen DeGeneres who said she was the Taliban's worst nightmare: a lesbian in a pantsuit surrounded by Jews.

I just know that the most trusted man in America -- the guy with the player piano -- was cracking up backstage.

Walter Cronkite PHOTOS: The Legendary Newsman Out In NY

2009-07-20T09:54:18Z

Legendary newsman, Walter Cronkite, passed away this Friday. The former CBS anchorman was a staple in the New York media world. Photographer Patrick McMullan recorded many of Cronkite's nights out in recent years.

See the slideshow:

Barry Michael Cooper: Walter Cronkite, Anchorman: When Holdin' It Down Lifted U.S. Up

2009-07-18T10:58:10Z

"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America..."

President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1968, when he learned
that CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite believed that
Vietnam was "unwinnable".

On Friday, 17 July 2009, we lost another chunk of America. Walter Leland Cronkite crossed the finish line of a most noble marathon. He was 92 years old.

According to journalistic lore, network news producer emeritus Don Hewitt coined the term anchorman on 7 July 1952, to describe the late Walter Cronkite's coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Hewitt defined Cronkite's role in that national event, as the anchor leg in the relay race of reporting.

The word anchor is apropos, especially as the term is applied to defining the violent, cultural riptide of the 1960s (and 70s) that crashed onto the shores of our consciousness. The JFK-MLK-RFK assassinations, astronauts doing the unimaginable and walking on the moon, the bloody Kodachrome footage of the Vietnam War, and thugs dressed up as political operatives (who tried to beat a young Dan Rather to the ground) at the1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, were unstable currents churning into the New American Maelstrom. A maelstrom that could have easily drowned our collective psyche in its dark and powerful undertow, had it not been for Walter Cronkite's calm and soothing sign-off: And that's the way it was.

Uncle Walter Cronkite was our sturdy anchor in the New American Maelstrom. It felt like he steadied the swaying zeitgeist on the CBS Evening News. As we say in the hood, Unc held it down. Cronkite supported us--as we gathered around those monochromatic (and later, color) television sets, eating our Swanson TV dinners on TV tables--hoisting our anxious spirits with a fulcrum of solid reporting, a firm but warm delivery, and eyes that occasionally exposed the compassionate human behind the unblinking journalist. For the next seventy-two hours, on cable and network tributes; on YouTube searches, and a ton of tiny Twitter urls, there will be the clip of Cronkite removing his black, horn-rimmed glasses -- almost losing his composure -- as he confirmed the murder of President Kennedy in Dallas.

That teary chink in Walter Cronkite's stoic armor, unified a racially divided nation -- glued to a cathode ray of black and white images -- to come together and mourn its savage loss. Cronkite pulled focus, finished the newscast, and came back the next night, and the next 6500-plus nights after that, until his retirement in 1981. And that's the way it was, was the Cronkitian summation of the world at large, and how it impacted us. It was the benediction in that shinning city on the hill, that was struggling with intermittent moral blackouts (Vietnam-Nixon-Watergate).

Will there be another Walter Cronkite? As much as I would readily elect bright candidates such as Keith Olbermann, Brian Williams, Rachel Maddow, and even MSNBC newcomer Carlos Watson, to fill the vacancy of the most trusted person in America, the answer is a resounding, No. Walter Cronkite cast a long, imposing shadow. On the Rachel Maddow Show, the legendary Dan Rather -- who was mentored by Walter Cronkite at CBS -- grievously reflecting on the sui generis of Cronkite, said he was able to get through the glass. Walter Cronkite could connect with the viewers at home in a truly personal way,

We are living in a different time: the internet is the virtual hammer that allowed us to break on through to the other side of the glass. It only takes a credit card to pilfer the date of birth, real name, drivers license, and the GPS of where your favorite talking head is, at any given moment. Simply stated, this is the end, my gentle friends. We are The Generation Who Knows Way Too Much, and the more we know about your private life, the less we trust you.

While it may be true that the anchorperson on this side of the millennial divide is interested in helping us stay the course, more often than not, they also feel the need to raise their own profiles. Their Performer Q's. They can passionately speak to power, as Keith Olbermann does in the eloquent, even brave rants of his Special Comments, sorely needed during the Bush debacle.

However, unlike Cronkite, these nouveau anchor-people wear too much of their heart on their bespoke sleeves. They are a Network of intuitively refined and Ivy-League'd Howard Beales, who are not only mad as hell, and are not only not going to take it anymore, they are going to twitter-it-down to a sexy soundbite. Their is no layer of separation between their public facades and their private selves, and maybe that's just it. Maybe their public facades are not facades at all. It's hard to tell in a 21st Century where Me-ism masquerades as We-Ism. Or maybe I'm just getting confused by all of these isms.

Here's the thing. Could you imagine President Obama conferring the same power and access the unassuming Cronkite had with LBJ, to the narcissistic glitter-babies sitting behind the computerized desktops of the various cable/network news channels today? That might not be a good look. But who knows?

What I do know is this: like the death of Michael Jackson two weeks ago, the passing of Walter Cronkite represents the end of an era. Their departures embody nearly a century of American history that we viewed through the lenses of their lives. The sight of my parents crying in the living room of our shotgun flat on Amsterdam Avenue and 165th Street -- in the Little Washington Heights section of New York -- as a five-year-old, when Walter Cronkite announced the death of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on 22 November 1963, will live with me forever. I can now add two more dates to that spectral calendar: 25 June 2009, and 17 July 2009.

Walter Cronkite and Michael Jackson are two different men, who introduced us to two different moonwalks--the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon will be this Monday, 20 July 2009--that we'll always remember. And now, both men have come to the end of their individual journeys. When we lose public figures who become such an enduring part of our private lives, we lose a part of ourselves. We also realize, like Dylan Thomas, that we too, won't go gently into that good night. But we will submit to it.

And that's the way it is.

Thank you, Uncle Walter.
Read more: John F. Kennedy, Dan Rather, LBJ Vietnam, Walter Cronkite, Walter Cronkite Dead, Media News

Dan Dubno: Walter Cronkite: When He Wasn't 'The Most Trusted Man in America'

2009-07-18T10:34:48Z
News of Walter Cronkite's death did not come as a surprise. For more than a month, his close friends and family made it clear the former CBS News anchorman was gravely ill and would not recover. That his passing coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing is less a surprise than a cosmic alignment. In the days ahead, we will celebrate the men who first walked on the moon and the anchor who took us there with them. As we mourn "the most trusted man in America" we also mourn the kind of television news that no longer exists.

Listening to tribute after tribute by journalists who remember Mr. Cronkite, every reminiscence appears to share the same sentiment: "Walter Cronkite was why I wanted to work in broadcasting." Even as a boy of seven, I recognized that he had that effect on me. It seemed miraculous for a Brooklyn kid that our babysitter's mom worked for Mr. Cronkite at CBS News. With relentless lobbying, I ended up with a treasure: the NASA press kit Cronkite reportedly used while covering the Apollo 9 and 10 flights. Just days ago, I paged through this relic: amazed at the audacity of the race to the moon and the memory of Cronkite's undisguised glee as Neil Armstrong touched the surface of a new world.

Everyone who watched Walter Cronkite somehow felt a personal connection to the newsman: whether they shared his coverage of the moon landing... or his agony announcing the assassination of President Kennedy... or endured with him the daily torment of an endless war in Vietnam or the despicable hostage-taking of diplomats in Iran. He was an outstanding journalist, to be sure. But we connected with him because of his obvious compassion, modesty, and joyous enthusiasm.

Thirteen years after my first attempt to work at CBS, I finally landed a job at the news network I was certain I'd work for. By then, Mr. Cronkite had retired. I feared I would never meet the man who inspired so many of us. I'm glad I was soon proved wrong. Let me share a brief encounter with the newsman everyone knew:

Did I say "everyone?" Well, almost everyone. Covering yet another war, this time Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Mr. Cronkite kindly agreed to help our coverage with an interview. I ran down to the lobby of the CBS News Broadcast Center to escort Mr. Cronkite to a studio. Well, in he came to the same building he hosted his broadcast for 19 years. As I prepared to whisk him off, a security guard at the front desk stopped him. "You need to show me some ID.," the fellow demanded. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Cronkite, " I said as I turned to the clueless guard. With quiet clarity and some ferocity, I let the security guard know the man before him was the Walter Cronkite, and we would not be showing him any identification and we would, right now, be on our way. The CBS News security man began to protest but saw a murderous look in my eye and wisely let us pass.

Ever genial and humble, Walter Cronkite laughed. I apologized again as we walked through the hallways and studio he knew so well. "That wasn't why I was laughing, young man," Walter said to me. "I was remembering another time. It was the same place ... and a similar thing happened. " Walter smiled modestly. "You see, this is when I was anchoring the broadcast. A few minutes before air, I really needed a cigarette. So I stepped outside for a few moments for a smoke. Heading back, I'm stopped by another security guard... a fellow I never saw before. I left my jacket and wallet in the studio... and we're going to be on the air in a few minutes. And this security guard just will not let me back into the building."

Cronkite is laughing now: "So, I tried to explain but the guard wouldn't budge. The broadcast was just moments away. Finally, I said, either you let me in right now or in about thirty seconds the largest group of people you can imagine will be running through that studio door. And they'll be looking for me." The security guard didn't fully believe him, but finally let Walter Cronkite in. "Indeed, a bunch of people were running around but I got to the chair in time for the broadcast."

Walter Cronkite defined the role of a television news anchor. Today, the job he perfected has largely lost its relevance. News no longer waits for a single trusted voice... and "the way it is" depends on who you choose to believe. Some claim to be "fair and balanced" and are clearly neither. Cronkite genuinely believed journalists could and must be "objective." It took a man of great character and outstanding humility to so sublimate his personal views and inherent bias to achieve that rather impossible standard.

At the CBS News Broadcast Center, and throughout the news business, Walter Cronkite largely defined the ethical and journalistic standards that engendered the trust of a nation. Yet the "most trusted man in America" seemed rather pleased he wasn't recognized at his own front door. It was as if he enjoyed being reminded to remain humble, especially after all of the success and adulation he earned throughout his remarkable career.

Forty years ago, a man walked on the Moon. Words fail to describe the magnificence of this accomplishment. Yet, much as I wished it might one day be my foot that stepped out beyond this Earth, being an astronaut didn't seem as much fun as doing what Walter Cronkite was doing. A rocket, more than 350-feet tall, lifted the astronauts into space. But it was Walter Cronkite and the team of journalists he inspired that brought the rest of us to the Moon. "Whew, boy..., " he said, as Armstrong descended the ladder. As the world saw a boot finally touch lunar dust, words briefly failed Walter Cronkite. Then he exclaimed, "Armstrong is on the moon -- Neil Armstrong, 38-year-old American, standing on the surface of the moon." Yet, in the silence, with a huge grin... his hand taking the horn-rimmed glasses off of eyes nearly filled with tears... Walter Cronkite told us all we needed to know.

Thank you, sir.

Read more: Nasa, Katie Couric, Apollo 11, Walter Cronkite, Walter-Cronkite, CBS News, Walter Cronkite Dead, Dan Dubno, Moon, Dan Rather, Cbs, Walter Kronkite, Media News

Don McNay: Walter Cronkite, a Journalism Role Model

2009-07-17T21:10:37Z
This is a column I wrote in October, 2004. Cronkite was the best broadcast journalist who ever lived.

Walter Cronkite, a journalism role model

Monday, 04 October 2004

"Why is the last one to know, the first one to cry and the last to let go?"

-Reba McIntyre

Some people believe that the media outlets in the country are in a conspiracy to push a political agenda on the American people.

If you read their stuff you get the idea that Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and others get together and decide what to hide from the American public.

There is a slight problem with this theory. Dan Rather and Peter Jennings don't own CBS and ABC. CBS and ABC are owned by big corporations that make decisions based on making money for the shareholders.

ABC is owned by the Disney Corporation. If Disney figured out that they could make more money by having Mickey Mouse as the news anchor, Peter Jennings would be fired and Mickey would be in his place.

One of the reasons that media outlets make money for their stockholders is that the public will pay for a source for information they can trust. Media outlets work hard to maintain that trust.

I was thrilled that this newspaper brought in Walter Cronkite as a columnist. (He has recently retired again.) I grew up watching Cronkite, "The most trusted man in America," on television. When rockets were launched into space or world events occurred, we always turned our channel to Walter Cronkite. When he said "and that's the way it is," he meant it.

Cronkite worked for a corporation that also broadcast the Beverly Hillbillies and Hogan's Heroes, comedies based on horrible stereotypes. CBS made huge profits on those shows and also made profits allowing Cronkite to do the news in the balanced fashion that he did.

Just like politicians need to avoid the perception of conflict of interest, media outlets and journalists need to avoid conflicts. I hate seeing business writers push products that they sell. I suspect the public is smart enough to realize they are getting a sales pitch, and tune it out.

For most of my adult life, I have been involved in politics. I've helped run many political campaigns and was a state coordinator when Al Gore ran for President in 1988. In almost every election cycle, politicians could count on me for a donation.

Until now. I stopped giving to political candidates and being actively involved in campaigns earlier this year. Even though I am a business columnist, not a political columnist, thousands of people read my column, see me on television or hear me on radio.

For a long time, I stayed away from writing about politics. You have never seen President Bush or Senator Kerry mentioned in this column. I bashed on Ralph Nader, but he is a publicity hound who has never been elected to anything.

Then I got mad about Kentucky firing park workers for having long hair and tattoos. I used to work on the clean up crew at the Kentucky Horse Park and know what life for those workers is like.

I hesitated to write those columns as I had given money to two different candidates who had run against Governor Fletcher. I did not mention Fletcher in the column but focused on the business and fairness issues.

I decided that if I wanted to speak out on all issues, I could not be supporting politicians who shaped those issues.

It has been hard to sit on the sidelines during a presidential year. My family and friends are up to their ears in activity. Not all of my friends from my former life have gotten the message. I have had people try to add my name to sponsor political fundraisers, assuming I am still one of the usual suspects. I've had some politicians think I am mad at them and not helping them for an unspoken reason.

Although I am sure that Walter Cronkite had friends in politics, he did not give money to political campaigns or actively support candidates. I won't either. If I have a story or an issue to speak out on, I don't want my reader to be "the last ones to know."

And that's the way it is, Sunday, October 10, 2004. Don McNay reporting from Richmond. Good night.

Don McNay is President of McNay Settlement Group where we don't want to be "the last ones to know." He is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. You can email him at don@mcnay.com or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com
Read more: Abc, Peter Jennings, Richmond Ky, Walter Cronkite, Nbc, Kentucky, Richmond Register, Broadcast-Journalism, Beverly Hillbilllies, Don McNay, Dan Rather, Cbs, Disney, Journalism, Hogan's Heroes, Walter Cronkite Dead, Media News