Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Rather Not Invited to CBS' JFK Killing Anniversary Show

Dan Rather: "... not a good idea."
I see (here) where Dan Rather is not going to be part of CBS News' 50th Anniversary coverage of the shooting of JFK.

That would be like omitting Walter Cronkite from a show on the first moon landing, leaving Peter Arnett out of a discussion of the first Gulf War, or trashing Edward R. Murrow in a review of WWII in Europe or the McCarthy hearings.

CBS is pissed at Rather for suing it over ditching him (with little justification) and is being both professionally small and journalistically unethical about it. Bob Schieffer will narrate the show. He will be embarrassed.

Says Rather: "Setting my feelings aside about it, this is not a good idea to say we want to change the historical record so we're going to airbrush this guy out because we don't like him. They may want to control the way the public thinks about my record, but I'm pretty sure they have not been able to do that."

(Lawrence Young had this response on Facebook that I found interesting: "Everything that goes around comes around. Rather plotted and schemed for five years to make sure that Walter Cronkite was forced into retirement at 65 and he of course positioned himself as Cronkite's successor. 

"Once Rather was crowned as anchor and managing editor he made sure that Cronkite was frozen out at CBS. Cronkite would have been the logical choice to anchor CBS's coverage of the 50th anniversary of D Day. Rather made sure that didn't happen. Rather was a very insecure individual who became a big problem for CBS management. 

"The Sixty Minutes Air National Guard story was the beginning of the end. And then there was "What's The Frequency Kenneth?" After Rather "retired" Schieffer became interim anchor. Ratings actually went up and Shieffer's casual low key delivery of the news won him a lot of fans. 

"Schieffer has more than proven his 'Journalistic integrity' in his many years at CBS. Face The Nation is all the proof you need.")

I completely agree about Bob Schieffer.
 

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