Dan Rather

Dan Rather (b. October 31, 1931) was the anchor of the CBS Evening News for twenty-four years, until his retirement in March 2005. He also contributed to the show "60 Minutes". Rather covered many important events during his twenty-four years, and was known for his coverage of Nixon in the Watergate Affair and of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He has been accused of having a liberal bias, and retired suddenly under a cloud after the scandal known as "Rathergate" was exposed. In September 2007, Rather sued CBS News for $70 million, claiming that they gave him insufficient airtime on 60 Minutes after forcing him to step down as anchor of the CBS Evening News in March 2005.

Rathergate

In September 2004, the middle of the presidential election, Rather claimed on "60 Minutes" that he had authentic typed documents from the 1970's which called into question Bush's National Guard service. These documents were almost immediately questioned in blogs to be forgeries based on font and script print that was not available to typewriters of that time period. Indeed, it appeared to be written in Microsoft Word, a program that did not exist at the time the documents claimed to have been written. Instead of admitting the documents may have to be looked at further, the initial response of Rather and CBS was to stick to their guns that they were genuine.

"As a standard practice at CBS, each of the documents broadcast on "60 Minutes" was thoroughly investigated by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity"

Indeed, CBS had actually been warned by some of the people they interviewed for the story that the document they were talking about was probably a forgery, but they were dismissed as 'pro-Bush'. Only when it was overwhelmingly apparent that they were shoddy forgeries, did CBS and Rather relent. CBS and Rather himself later apologized for running the story, but their obstinence in light of the building evidence had already done its damage.

The documents were reviewed by experts who decided that the documents were false, and that CBS was negligent in airing them. Four CBS employees were later fired over the controversy, including the Senior Vice President, and many suspect that Rather retired in order to avoid the same fate.

Some have said that Rather intentionally ran the story in order to influence the election. Others have said that the false documents were included due to the story being rushed, and that they were not intentionally used for political purposes. A senior official of the Kerry campaign made a phone call to the man who was the source of the false documents four days before they were aired, a rather odd coincidence. Republicans have pointed to this as a conspiracy. Kerry claimed that his employee did nothing wrong. A few desperate Democrats tried to blame Karl Rove, but apart from a knee-jerk accusation to deflect attention, there was no evidence.