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By Newsweek Editors
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Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather are vacating their anchor chairs at the same time, but they signify very different strains in recent American media and political history. Brokaw is cool and unifying, the embodiment of the old Olympian view of television anchors as gods of authority and dispassion. Rather is hot and polarizing, symbolic of the old hard-charging "Front Page" reporters, as well as the culture wars that have helped define the last quarter century. One model is not superior to the other just because it's more widely palatable. Each man represents not only some of the better television journalism of the postwar period but something essential--and, for the networks, hopeful--for the future of TV news.
In the early 1980s, everyone agreed there would never be another anchor as trusted as Walter Cronkite. Despite a slight speech impediment, Brokaw proved the world wrong. In a fractious news environment, where legions of self-styled media critics inspect every raised eyebrow for signs of bias, he has managed to uphold the important (if fraying) journalistic tradition of playing it right down the middle. Without that old-time impartiality, all of television news would become a tower of Babel and all TV journalists less credible. To overtake Rather and Peter Jennings in the ratings, Brokaw's "NBC Nightly News" has too often looked like a tricked-up "tabloid in a tutu" (to quote the old line about Newsday). But he has kept the pandering dignified and he brings welcome perspective to almost everything he covers personally.
Brokaw's most memorable legacy, ironically, lies in old-fashioned book publishing, which lasts longer than anything on TV. While he was not the first in the major media to revive the honor due to World War II veterans, Brokaw traded on his broadcasting fame for something big and good, if by now a bit overdone. The whole "Greatest Generation" phenomenon gave grown children real reason to appreciate their parents and generated thousands of new and invaluable personal accounts of one of the signal events in all of human history.
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Rather's legacy is a dicier matter. He has always been miscast as a network anchor, though his intensity and instinct for controversy perfectly anticipated the heavy-attitude "hot" style that works for cable anchors. (Just last week, the new head of CNN's news operations said he wanted his anchors to show more of their personalities). From going to the eye of every hurricane to confronting President Nixon during Watergate ("Are you running for something?" Nixon asked Rather at a press conference. "No, sir, Mr. President, are you?" Rather shot back), Rather was one of the first big-time broadcasters who directly injected himself into the story. But this worked well in the TV medium and it often had the effect of speaking truth to power. And the conservative critics were motivated more by politics than genuine concerns about fairness. Had Nixon been a liberal Democrat, Rather would have become their hero.
Some of the Rather controversies over the years--and there have been many--proved bogus. He was derided as weird for saying he'd been beaten up by a man yelling, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" The story was true, and the disturbed man was later convicted of murdering an NBC employee. In Rather's famous 1988 exchange with George H.W. Bush, the vice president defending himself against Rather's tough questions about how badly his credibility was tarnished by the Iran-contra scandal, asked the anchor if it was fair to judge Rather's entire career based on one episode where he walked off the set in anger. Bush had a point, and it applies as well to Rather's "60 Minutes" story about the current President Bush's National Guard service. Though he stepped down in connection with the incident, it should not overshadow his many contributions to first-rate TV-news reporting.
Rather is important because so much good journalism--and good work in general--depends on a willingness to be seen as overreaching or foolish or strange. Journalists, ideally, are not supposed to worry about being popular when they press for the truth. (What a quaint notion). Although Rather is sometimes not aggressive enough (with Saddam Hussein in 2003, for instance), he has generally been tough on politicians of all persuasions. Whatever his faults in not being more skeptical of the National Guard documents, we need more of his aggressive reporting, not less. The blow-dry era is over--one reason why John Roberts may be the wrong choice to replace Rather. The future of network anchordom lies not just with Brokaw's capable replacement, Brian Williams, but with others who bring some distinctive authority. (CBS's Harry Smith, for instance, would be preferable to Roberts.) And contrary to endless reports, there is such a future. While the evening-news audience will continue to age and shrink, those shows are still considered valuable lead-ins by local affiliates. And big news events like 9/11 and the war in Iraq will continue to bring viewers back to the comforting electronic hearth of network news where they want something a little classier than Bill O'Reilly and more familiar than the usual cable rent-an-anchor. We may yet see the likes of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather again after all.
Alter is also an analyst for NBC News
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