From all the years in the business, former “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather has mastered the art of the interview. And by that, we mean he’s mastered the art of dodging the interviewer’s questions.
We asked him Tuesday night while he was in D.C. who he watched on television. He didn’t want to tell.
“Well my answer is not one that will please you,” he said. “I like almost everybody on TV. I think the quality of the work, particularly the on-air talent, is quite good,” he said.
He even paid a compliment to the Fox News Channel. “Give Fox News credit, which a lot of people don’t want to do for various reasons, that they program quite well in the prime time period and they reap the benefits of that.” Do you like Fox News? “I like them all.”
American University professor and longtime broadcaster Nick Clooney, who was hosting Rather at an installment of Reel Journalism, a movie and discussion program at the Newseum, didn’t have much luck either. “I don’t want to duck the question,” Rather responded at one point.
Clooney did take on the elephant in the room, though — Rather’s resignation from CBS News in 2005 for using bogus documents in a story about former President George W. Bush’s National Guard service. “We reported a story that was true, that was an uncomfortable truth for a lot of people,” Rather said. “As a result to that I was asked to leave the anchor chair, and eventually CBS News.”
