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Those who thought that 21st century whistleblowers — such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning — have been groundbreaking opposers of fake news, will have to think again. A 20th century journalist shared their line of thought in his approach to reporting: Dan Rather. The documentary that bears his surname, directed by Frank Marshall, was presented at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and is currently available in home video. Rather revisits more than 60 years of the journalist’s career, featuring interviews with him and his family, as well as with Ronan Farrow, Mark Cuban, Andy Cohen, Samantha Bee, Soledad O’Brien, and Shepard Smith.
Sensationalism in the media has a long history, that can be traced back to yellow journalism at the end of the 19th century. It was portrayed also on the silver screen in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, who was inspired for his protagonist by the publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. While this film denounced biased news reporting and emotionally loaded impressions, over a decade later Dan Rather began his career in 1954 with a completely different approach, after growing up in a family that cherished the news.
In his youth Rather developed rheumatic fever, which left him bed-ridden for several months and he found solace in the medium of radio, listening to broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. Having been born and raised in Texas was pivotal for his professional path, since he happened to be in the place where he could report about the devastating Hurricane Carla in 1961 and John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. During the Sixties the civil rights movement was beginning to explode, and Dan Rather reported on the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Ku Klux Klan, and the White Citizens Council. He very quickly became a household name at CBS News, as a meticulous war reporter, covering conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War, besides reporting on the Tiananmen Square protests and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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He traversed several Presidential administrations, such as the ones by Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush. The latter was the one that put an end to his career at CBS with the Killian documents controversy, that allegedly contained false allegations about the President. However, this did not put to rest his journalistic calling, since he joined Mark Cuban’s cable network AXS TV to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports. In recent years he has also experimented with social media, finding a wide and young audience, that considers him an important voice during the Trump era.
Rather portrays also a fun side to this dedicated news commentator. For instance, it shows how American alternative rock band R.E.M. wrote a song “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” which was inspired by an incident that occurred to Dan Rather in 1986. Two then-unknown assailants attacked him in New York while repeating “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” This attack very much epitomised the risks that Rather was willing to be exposed to, in the name of hunting for the truth. As one of the interviewees very well expressed: “There’s a dangerous thing about publicity. The spotlight burns as much as it illuminates.”
Dan Rather has carried out his calling through thick and thin, never being biased by rankings, money or personal beliefs. Despite the media landscape has changed around him, he has kept himself “steady” in delivering non-partisan information. At age 94, Dan Rather is rightly considered America’s national treasure. What is striking is the humbling attitude that has never abandoned him, as he speaks with reverential respect of those who preceded him like American anchorman Walter Cronkite. Furthermore, after having accumulated prestigious accolades in his field, what the Peabody-winning news anchor ultimately cherishes the most are his family and friends.
Editors Curtis McConnell and Joe Fenstermaker coalesce old footage with talking head interviews in a dynamic and compelling manner. The music by Jeff Beal, enhances Marshall’s vision, that uses the life story of a journalistic icon to show us the right path to follow, during today’s spectacularised media world. In fact, Frank Marshall’s film is very efficacious in showing the hard news journalism adopted by Dan Rather, acting as a counterbalance to propagandist media executives such as Roger Ailes at Fox News. Rather serves as a reminder that journalists have the mission to act as watchdogs over elected officials. In these regards, it’s exceptionally moving to watch the footage of Dan Rather’s final broadcast in which he praises courage.
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Final Grade: A