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Almost seven months after Rather retired from his post as the lead anchor of "CBS Evening News," the veteran journalist spoke about his longtime career at Monday's National Press Club event, sponsored by GW and the Harvard University's Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy.
"To this day, no one has proven whether it was what it reported to be or not," Rather said. "There's part of me that says 'Damn, I wish I hadn't caved. I wish I had stuck with it.'"
The discredited National Guard story, which Rather anchored on "60 Minutes" in September 2004, two months before the 2004 presidential election, questioned Bush's military record and alleged that he received preferential treatment to escape some of his military duties. CBS retracted the story after the network couldn't verify the authenticity of documents cited in the report. Rather resigned from the anchor chair in March. He said at Monday's show that his decision was completely voluntary.
Following the story's retraction, CBS commissioned an internal panel to investigate the factors that led several high-level producers to back the story. The report criticized Rather for standing by the story too long, even when it became apparent that the documents cited were potentially falsified.
"We dealt with a story that had thermonuclear potential for reaction," Rather said. "We did not do it perfectly."
Monday's hour-long interview centered on what Kalb introduced as "two deceptively simple questions" - the definition of journalism and journalists.
The advent of bloggers - authors of Internet Web logs - and other alternative media forums has caused many in the news industry to reevaluate the defining characteristics of journalism. Criticisms of the National Guard story originated with the blog freerepublic.com.
