Dan Rather, the CBS news anchor who made headlines this fall after using bogus documents to question President Bush's National Guard service, announced today he will leave his position with the network in March.
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According to the Associated Press, Rather will step down on the 24th anniversary of his taking over the anchor chair of "CBS Evening News" from Walter Cronkite. Rather, 73, will continue as a correspondent for "60 Minutes" and "60 Minutes II."
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![]() Dan Rather |
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"I have always been and remain a 'hard news' investigative reporter at heart," he said in a statement. "I now look forward to pouring my heart into that kind of reporting full time."
Said CBS News President Andrew Heyward: "Dan's dedication to his craft and his remarkable skills as a reporter are legendary. He has symbolized the CBS Evening News for nearly a quarter century. He'll continue to apply his talents to everything he does at CBS News. I look forward to saluting his extraordinary tenure in the Evening News chair early next year."
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AP reported CBS made no mention of a potential successor.
As WorldNetDaily reported, in September, after 11 days of widespread criticism, Rather issued a statement saying he no longer defended the authenticity of the questionable documents he had used in his report about Bush.
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Said Rather in his apology: "We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
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"Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully."
After Rather initially released the documents, purported to be created in the early '70s, blog users and others quickly discredited them based on characteristics of the font used and other factors. It became clear the documents, first used on a Sept. 8 "60 Minutes II" broadcast, were fraudulent.
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Among the assertions the news program derived from the documents – four memos by Bush's late squadron commander Col. Jerry Killian – were that the commander was pressed to "sugar coat" a performance evaluation for Bush and that the future president did not follow an order to report for a physical.
CBS identified Bill Burkett, a fierce critic of Bush, as the source of the documents. Heyward said at the time of the mea culpa that Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source."
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The documents were found to have been faxed to CBS from a Kinko's in Abilene, Texas, 21 miles from Burkett's Baird, Texas, home.
Rather than harm President Bush's re-election, what became known as "Rathergate" did more to hurt CBS News and its credibility, as well as the reputation of Rather himself.
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Rather worked for CBS for over 40 years, covered the Nixon administration for the network and served as the longest-running major network news anchor on television.
The news anchor's detractors have for years brought attention to what they consider a bias in Rather's reporting, as evidenced by the site RatherBiased.com. Reed Irvine, the late chairman of Accuracy in Media launched a "Can Dan" campaign 16 years ago. AIM joined effort this fall calling for the network to fire Rather over the document scandal.
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