Playboy Interview: Dan Rather

No sooner did Dan Rather take over the most coveted job in television news two and a half years ago--anchor man of the "CBS Evening News"--than the critics began to ask whether he could possibly survive in the job.

Ratings for the program, perennially the leader, dropped precipitously. Within CBS News, the panic became almost palpable. Inside and outside CBS, doubters had a field day.

Why had CBS let Walter Cronkite go? Wasn't Rather too grim and intense as an anchor man? Wouldn't Roger Mudd have been the more judicious choice after all?

As usual, Rather hung tough. "I learned a long time ago that I'm not a race horse. I'm a work horse," he told Parade magazine shortly after taking over the anchor job. "I'll get your field plowed for you, maybe not as fast as some others, but I'll get there." Sure enough, the ratings did bounce back strongly, and the "CBS Evening News" is securely number one again. In 1983, CBS led both ABC and NBC by two full rating points--a substantial and lucrative lead by news-broadcast standards. Few are suggesting any longer that Rather lacks what it takes to keep the "CBS Evening News" on top.

The more open question is, What has happened to the quality of the broadcast under Rather? Some critics, including former Cable News Network president Reese Schonfeld, argue that CBS' ratings improved precisely because its news programs began to "look more and more like entertainment, and less and less like traditional news." That criticism may be valid when it comes to the chatty, zippy-looking "CBS Morning News," which now supplements interviews with world leaders by taking on such subjects as Rona Barrett.

But most observers argue that the changes in the "CBS Evening News" have served largely to improve it. Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw wrote, for example, that "the over-all broadcast is better than it was under Cronkite, in large measure because of changes Rather has encouraged." Shaw cited the fact that the broadcast now carries longer stories, deals more frequently with important social issues and starts out each evening with less predictable stories.

The debate is unlikely to end soon, but at the age of 52, Rather is as used to controversy as he is to tough assignments. During the past two decades, he has covered a remarkable number of the major news events, provoking reactions that have ranged from disdain to admiration but nearly always prompting some reaction. The story of his career has been much chronicled, most notably in his best-selling autobiography, "The Camera Never Blinks." Co-authored with Mickey Herskowitz, it was published in 1977 and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 24 weeks.

Rather was born in Wharton, Texas, on October 31, 1931, first of three children in a family where money was scarce. His father was a pipeliner--a euphemism for ditchdigger--and his mother had been a waitress. Neither of his parents had gone to college, but Rather's interest in journalism was partly sparked by the fact that his father was an avid reader of newspapers.

After high school, Rather enrolled at Sam Houston State Teachers College. There, he was inspired by a journalism professor, Hugh Cunningham, and was motivated to begin writing for the local weekly paper in Huntsville, to string for the wire services and, ultimately, to work as a disc jockey at the local radio station. Following college and six months in the Marines, Rather did a brief stint as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle and then was hired by KTRH, the Chronicle's radio station. There, he met a secretary, Jean Goebel, who later became his wife and the mother of his two children--Robin, now 25, and Danjack, now 23.

His first big break came in 1961, when his dogged coverage of Hurricane Carla for KHOU, the CBS-affiliate television station in Houston, earned the attention of network higher-ups in New York, among them Cronkite. Five months later, at the age of 30, Rather was hired as a network correspondent and shortly thereafter was sent to New Orleans to open a Southern bureau for CBS. During the next two years, he covered fames Meredith's bloody battle to integrate the University of Mississippi, the murder of Medgar Evers and the rise of a black preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. In November 1963, he was dispatched to Dallas to cover President John F. Kennedy's visit to that city. Instead, he ended up covering an assassination--winning praise for his calm under enormous pressure and for his meticulous coverage.

Partly by virtue of his Texas background, he was immediately transferred to Washington to cover the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. A year later, following the 1964 elections, he was shipped off again, this time to London, for further seasoning. Sensing that the Vietnam war was going to become a major international story, Rather requested reassignment and spent a year in Southeast Asia beginning in November 1965. He then returned to Washington to cover the White House, and his sharp-toned nightly reports prompted numerous calls from Johnson, always with the same query: "Rather, are you trying to fuck me?"

After Johnson declined to run for re-election in 1968, Rather stayed on to cover the rise and fall of Richard Nixon. His blunt and relentless coverage of the unfolding Watergate drama, beginning just before Nixon's re-election in 1972, led to his first broad popular recognition. It also won him unofficial designation as "the reporter the White House hates." During that same period, he co-authored his first book, "The Palace Guard," which focused on the aides closest to Nixon.

When Nixon resigned in 1974, Rather was transferred to New York as chief anchor for the prestigious but low-profile documentary series "CBS Reports." The move appeared to signal an eclipse in his career, but two years later, he was named one of the correspondents on "60 Minutes" and suddenly became highly visible again. He proceeded to win further recognition for a number of investigative stories, among them the first report on the dangers of the chemical Kepone.

In 1979, Rather's job discussions with all three networks became the stuff of soap opera on the television pages of newspapers across the nation. When he finally chose CBS and signed a multiyear contract, Time magazine rewarded him with a cover and the headline "Dan Rather: The $8,000,000 Man." Most recently, he starred on television in a less auspicious role--as a defendant in a libel suit brought against him and "60 Minutes" by a doctor named Carl Galloway. The trial was carried live by the Cable News Network, but at the end, Rather prevailed again: He and CBS were found not guilty.

To seek a richer picture of the private and the public Rather, Playboy asked Contributing Editor and television columnist Tony Schwartz to talk with him in New York. Schwartz reports:

"Dan Rather is nothing if not cautious, and the negotiations to do this interview went on nearly as long as the conversations themselves. When he finally did agree, he told me, typically eager to go for broke, that 'I'm prepared to spend as much time as necessary to make this the best I've ever done.' At the same time, he remained on vigilant guard against saying anything controversial enough to get him in trouble or to alienate even his competitors.

"In that regard, Rather managed to keep the settings for the interviews purely professional and relatively controlled. They were all conducted on weekdays, and he was always dressed in a coat and a tie. Our first sessions took place in his office at CBS News, which has the homey feel of a den. The walls are covered in gray fabric; there is wall-to-wall carpeting, a fish bowl that gurgles pleasantly and older furniture that might fit as well in a bedroom. Atop Rather's knotty four-legged wooden desk is the old manual typewriter on which he does all his writing.

"The public image of Rather is misleading. He has usually been portrayed as aggressive and even overbearing, but he couldn't be more polite, solicitous and self-effacing with those who work for him. In all the time we spent together, I never saw him throw his weight around or raise his voice. And if his Watergate reports, in particular, earned him an image as partisan and opinionated, he insists that he was just doing his job--asking tough questions. Although I pressed him hard about his politics, he revealed no identifiable ideology beyond a plainly worn pride in his country.

"There is a formality about Rather, almost a courtliness, and I never really felt I saw him relaxed. On the other hand, when the tape recorder was off, he was tarter, tougher and more colorful in his observations--particularly when it came to assessing colleagues and competitors.

"What did come through, during the hours he talked on tape, was a willingness to take stock of his own shortcomings. It was not so much an inclination to probe his psyche as it was an unusual openness to considering, undefensively, even critical assessments of his personal and professional life. I admired him for that and felt it was evidence that he has a clear sense of who he is--and who he is not.

"Obvious in all our conversations was Rather's love for, and unrelenting commitment to, daily journalism. Even after 30 years in the business, he still gets that adrenaline rush from a big story. Now that he's an anchor man, all the big stories cross his desk. Talking about that new role seemed like a logical place to start."

[Q] Playboy: Is being the anchor man who replaced Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News what you expected?

[A] Rather: This is a peculiar job, much more peculiar than I'd envisioned and maybe even unique in this sense: Anchoring is one of those jobs where the harder you try, sometimes, the worse you are. That runs counter to everything I've ever been taught. Always before, I had said to myself, "You aren't doing the best you can; you simply have to try harder. " Now, with anchoring, it turns out that the harder you try, the harder you are seen to be trying and the more uncomfortable it makes people. It took me a while to learn that.

[Q] Playboy: So what does it take to become a good anchor?

[A] Rather: Time. Part of what you have to do is sit there night after night after night and let the audience take its measure of you. Be yourself, do the best you can, but just be there, and the audience will decide whether or not you are steady, reliable, trustworthy. It's no good saying to yourself, "I'll do something on the air tonight to communicate to the audience how much I really care about what we're doing, how hard we've worked on this broadcast all day and how much it can depend on what it's viewing." No amount of lecturing to yourself before you go on means anything. Indeed, it's counterproductive.

[Q] Playboy: Until you realized that, what sort of things would you to say to yourself before air time?

[A] Rather: That I was going to talk slower or that I was going to talk faster or maybe to remember not to slump in my chair, which would be the natural thing to do at the end of the day. That, by the way, is one of the strangest things about this job--that you're required to be at your peak at the very end of the day, when, normally you'd be winding down.

[Q] Playboy: In your early months as anchor, when the ratings were off, were a lot of people giving you advice about what you should be doing?

[A] Rather: Well, I think it's fair to say there was no shortage of advice. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: As if you were a batter in a slump?

[A] Rather: Yeah, or a basketball player in a shooting slump. When my children, who were very good basketball players, used to get in a slump, I said to them, "You're good shooters, and you've just got to keep putting it up. You'll begin to get your share." It's one thing to give that advice but another thing to take it.

[Q] Playboy: Among your competitors at ABC and NBC and among some television critics, there was a school of thought that went, "Rather's a great reporter, but he's not an anchor." Did you ever begin to believe that line?

[A] Rather: No. Some of the criticism I got was genuine and was honestly believed by those who made it. Some was calculated by our competitors to throw me off stride. Fair enough. If I'd been in their shoes, I might have done the same thing. But I was never frightened, and I didn't spend much time trying to sort it out. In the end, Cronkite and Eric Sevareid gave me the best counsel. They told me, "There's a limit to what you can do. Mostly, it takes time." Fortunately, the people who hired me to do this job--on the corporate side as well as in the news division--understood that better than I did.

[Q] Playboy: But this is an industry in which ratings are the bottom line. Did you worry that your superiors would wait only so long for the numbers to turn around?

[A] Rather: I'd be less than honest if I didn't say I did wonder--and still do. But I can also say that among the key people I deal with, all I got was encouragement, and in our worst periods, Gene Jankowski [president of CBS] never wavered for a second in his support.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the current CBS Evening News is better than it was when you took it over?

[A] Rather: It's a good broadcast and I'm happy with it. I think it's impossible to compare. It's like comparing a ballplayer from 1927 with one from 1983. You just can't do it. I suspect if you asked Cronkite, he'd say the same thing. When I came in here, this was the broadcast against which other network news broadcasts were measured. It is now. I hope that doesn't reek of any arrogance or conceit. I think it's a fair, objective assessment of the facts to say that the CBS Evening News is an alert, gutsy, hard-news broadcast. Among the people who work back here, we have a sense of cohesion and collaboration, and I think that's a difference between this place and the two others. I want to be fair. I haven't worked in the other places, but from where I stand, there is a difference. No one here is afraid to come up to me and say, "I think we're making a mistake by putting this in the broadcast tonight, and let me tell you why." Two years ago, I wasn't sure we could develop that kind of environment.

[Q] Playboy: Actually, Cronkite is one of those who have reputedly expressed reservations about the direction that CBS News has taken--in particular, that it is not as committed to hard news as it was. Has he ever expressed such feelings to you?

[A] Rather: Walter and I have had some private conversations, and they're going to remain private. Don't get the wrong impression: Walter cares deeply about this place. Some of our conversations did consist of his talking about how we could improve this place, how we could better meet our responsibilities.

[Q] Playboy: With the exception of the brief run of Universe, Cronkite seems to have vanished from the air. Why is that?

[A] Rather: I think he's been as visible as his time allows him to be. He certainly has not been shunted aside, to the best I can judge. I think Walter is still in the process of figuring out how much time he wants to spend sailing, how much time at his place in Martha's Vineyard and how much doing reporting. But this much is clear: Walter is welcome on the Evening News any time he has the time or the inclination to be there.

[Q] Playboy: Just three years ago, he was still the anchor, you were one of the four correspondents on 60 Minutes and Roger Mudd was heir apparent to Cronkite's job. A lot has been written about how you ended up as anchor man. What's your version of what happened?

[A] Rather: OK. Here was the situation: I was working at 60 Minutes. I was happy. I thought I had, if not the best job in television, certainly the best job I'd ever had. And I wasn't looking to change. I was not near the end of my contract--it had another year and a half to run--but the news division wanted me to sign a new one. Previously, when I got within six months of the end of a contract, the division would come to me and I'd sign a new one. I had been known, and wanted to be known, as somebody who was easy. I didn't go looking around elsewhere. This is where I wanted to work. But this time, CBS came to me and to some other people well before the end of our contracts. Part of it was an increasingly competitive environment for experienced people; it had become a little more common than before to jump from one team to another.

[Q] Playboy: Why, on this occasion, did you hesitate before signing?

[A] Rather: I mentioned to my agent, Richard Leibner, that I'd been approached by CBS. Richard began as my accountant, and then he became my agent. We go back a long way, and he's a good personal friend of mine, somebody I confide in. His reaction was, "I'm not going to let you sign a new contract. I wouldn't be doing my job if we didn't look around and see what else there is out there--meaning, basically, at the two other networks. Let me mention here that anyone who has a fairly decent reputation in this business gets approaches from other networks.

[Q] Playboy: You seem very eager to make it clear that you were not being disloyal.

[A] Rather: I'm eager to have you understand that, yeah.

[Q] Playboy: What happened next?

[A] Rather: Well, fairly quickly, Richard came back and said, "Let me tell you what's out there." And when he told me, it blew my head off--in terms of money, in terms of opportunity, in terms of what some people were willing to write into a contract.

[Q] Playboy: What did they offer?

[A] Rather: Richard said to me, "There are people who are willing to pay you more money than you ever dreamed possible, and they'll let you write your ticket. You describe what you want to do journalistically over the next five or six years, and they'll write that into the contract."

[Q] Playboy: Are we talking about the executives at ABC and NBC?

[A] Rather: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: What was CBS offering?

[A] Rather: It wasn't that explicit at first. Early on, Bill Leonard [then president of CBS News] came to me and said, "I want to know if you're willing to co-anchor. I don't know what's going to happen, but we want to think of you as anchoring in our future, and so it's important to us to know how you feel." I told him yes, I was willing to co-anchor.

[Q] Playboy: Was it explicit or implicit that the second anchor would be Roger Mudd?

[A] Rather: Implicit.

[Q] Playboy: Is it fair to say that you were not on friendly terms with Mudd at the time? Or did the relationship change when you were named anchor?

[A] Rather: The answer is, I don't know. I think it probably changed when I got the job. I mean this: I considered Roger a friend for a very long time. I can't speak for him, but I think he considered me a friend. I'd be disappointed and surprised if that were not still the case. I'd have to hear it from him to believe it was not.

[Q] Playboy: Do you keep up contact with him anymore?

[A] Rather: No.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Rather: Well, I'm not sure why. I feel guilty that we don't. I don't want to mislead you: At the time this negotiation was happening, we were not close. There was a lot of mutual respect, and I felt warmly then toward Roger, as I do now, but I recognized that this business, at this level, is very tough on friendships.

[Q] Playboy: What was your understanding about Mudd's willingness to share the anchor spot with you?

[A] Rather: Well, I said to Leonard that I assumed he was also talking with Roger and I'd be interested to know what Roger's answer was. When I didn't hear anything for a long time, I made the assumption--and I think it was a correct one--that Leonard had not gotten the same answer from Roger that he had gotten from me on sharing the anchor.

[Q] Playboy: Shortly before the anchor decision was made, you tried twice to see Mudd to talk with him, and you were rebuffed. What did you make of that?

[A] Rather: I didn't like it. But there is a difference between having a falling out and ending a friendship. I didn't like the rebuff. But I also have no doubt that I did things at that time that he didn't like.

[Q] Playboy: In addition to those with CBS, your discussions with ABC News and its president, Roone Arledge, were widely publicized. What offer did Arledge make?

[A] Rather: My understanding is that I could have done whatever I wanted to do there. Yet, from the start, one of Arledge's concerns was how his people were going to feel about my going to ABC. However it might have appeared, he had a loyalty to his own people. He told me, "I want you to be happy and, boy, I really do want you, but I also want to be loyal to my people." And I said, "Let's talk." Because, rightly or wrongly, I consider it one of my strengths that I can work with anybody. I think that what you're driving at is whether or not I could have become the sole anchor at ABC--the answer is that it never came down to that.

[Q] Playboy: What about NBC? It's widely assumed that you never seriously considered going to NBC.

[A] Rather: That's not true. I liked Bill Small [then president of NBC News, now head of United Press International]. I think he is a terrific news executive. I know some of my friends at NBC have an entirely different view. But Small was terrific to me, particularly when the chips were down when I was covering the White House during Watergate. And make no mistake: That was a very strong pull for me.

[Q] Playboy: At the time you were talking with NBC, John Chancellor was the anchor man of its evening news. Was NBC offering you his job?

[A] Rather: Well, the offer included anchoring. I didn't insist and they didn't suggest that I be the sole anchor.

[Q] Playboy: Was money a factor in your decision to stay with CBS?

[A] Rather: No. The money was terrific at all three places. It's more than I'm worth--more than anybody could reasonably be expected to be paid in this business.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel comfortable about that?

[A] Rather: No, but in the end, your worth is what anybody is willing to pay. I watched the best political reporter in Texas work at the zenith of his career for $125 a week. Different time, different place. But even discounting heavily for a dollar that doesn't go as far as it did then, if that man was worth $125 a week, there's no way I'm worth what I'm making now. But times are different. What can you say?

[Q] Playboy: Your salary has been the subject of nearly as much speculation as Johnny Carson's. When Time put you on the cover after you signed your new contract, it called you the $8,000,000 man--referring to the salary you were supposedly earning for a five-year contract. In a recent piece on 60 Minutes, your own colleague Mike Wallace suggested you made $2,000,000 a year. How much money do you earn?

[A] Rather: I'm not going to tell you that.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Rather: Because I don't think it's anybody's business what I get paid. There's already been too much talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: Whatever you're paid, we know that it's an enormous amount of money by virtually anyone's standards. Even at CBS News, it's presumably a lot more than anyone else makes.

[A] Rather: That's no longer true. But it's fair to say there was a time when it was.

[Q] Playboy: If your salary is somewhere between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 a year, which represents the range that's been reported, is it fair to say that no more than a minuscule number of people at CBS News earn anywhere near that?

[A] Rather: A minuscule number, true. My point is that it's not unique, that there are others making salaries roughly in that neighborhood. But let's not argue. Look, it's a lot of money.

[Q] Playboy: What we're getting at is that there are a lot of CBS correspondents who make only a fraction of what you do, simply because you are the star of the show. Suppose you were paid $ 150,000 or $200,000 a year and CBS used the difference to hire ten additional good correspondents or to open a new foreign bureau. Would that make sense to you?

[A] Rather: Yeah, I think there's a logic in it. But I don't think it's going to happen. Look, that's a bit like saying, "Let's not go to the moon. Let's take the money we were going to use for that and let's build hospitals." I'm a space buff, as you know, and I like the idea of going to the moon. But if someone could guarantee that the money used for the moon shot would go into hospitals for the poor, I'd say, "Fine."

[A] Now, the next time around--I hope God smiles and I'm lucky and there is a next time around--next time you bring me a contract that says instead of giving me a raise, they'll raise the following ten correspondents' pay by X number of dollars, I'll buy that in an instant. But it doesn't work that way.

[Q] Playboy: Maybe that will change when the CBS brass reads this.

[A] Rather: [Grins] Before we move on, let me just drive home one more point to you about money. I've been well paid for quite a long time compared with what my father made. I think his best year as a ditchdigger was $11,000. But by current broadcast-journalism standards, I've not been particularly well paid for very long. I covered the White House in what may turn out to have been the best assignment of my career--a tough assignment at a tough time--for $65,000 a year or thereabouts. I was working with guys who made three times as much as that. I had no complaints then, and I have none now. But in that time and place, raising two children on $65,000 a year was a long way from being especially well paid. It was only beginning in 1980 that I became superwell paid.

[Q] Playboy: You actually get paid for doing two jobs: anchor man and managing editor of the CBS Evening News. It's the anchor-man job that commands the enormous salary and the glamor, but it's also the less substantive role. How would you feel about being just the managing editor?

[A] Rather: That would be fine with me. I don't happen to think it's the ideal way to do a broadcast. I think the person who puts together the news should be the one who delivers it. But if you convinced me there was a reason why we shouldn't do that and you just wanted me to be the managing editor, I'd enjoy that. What I wouldn't like--wouldn't accept--would be to be the anchor but not the editor.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that despite the visibility of being an anchor, the almost unprecedented access that comes with it, not to mention the financial rewards, you wouldn't mind giving the position up?

[A] Rather: Oh, I didn't say I wouldn't miss any of that. You used the reporter's technique: You shifted the ground of the question. I would miss some of that. There is a certain satisfaction--and it's a help journalistically--in being able to pick up the telephone, call people and get through. For a lot of years, a great deal of my day was spent trying to get people on the telephone. So, yes, I would miss getting through to people. But not much else.

[Q] Playboy: What about the visibility and the fame that go with the job?

[A] Rather: I don't think I'd miss that for a moment. I consider that one of the downsides of this job. There is a subtle and powerful pressure created by that, with which I've never been comfortable. It's greater here than it has been in other jobs that I've had, including 60 Minutes or as White House correspondent.

[Q] Playboy: What's that pressure like?

[A] Rather: Well, it's the pressure of rarely being able to be completely yourself. Let me give you an example. You go to a play--something I like to do. Despite your best efforts, you find yourself thinking, I'd better be a little careful what I say, because I don't want to read this in tomorrow's paper. You may say, "Well, that's not much of a price to pay for the advantages you have," and I agree with you, but I'm talking about the subtle, powerful pressure always there.

[Q] Playboy: For all the attention focused on TV news, do you believe there's any reason for one who reads Time, Newsweek, or The New York Times to watch it?

[A] Rather: You can't just watch the evening news and kid yourself that you know what's going on--that you get even the minimum of what you need to be an informed citizen. But when I hear someone say that he doesn't watch the evening news, right away that person doesn't meet my standards for the minimum information an informed citizen needs.

[A] Here's why: If you read a good newspaper every day and you read one of the weekly news magazines and you read a book now and again, you're going to know most, if not all, of what's on the evening news and probably a lot more. That's the reason I think you ought to do that. But you won't have seen it. I think there is a difference between reading about the war in Central America and seeing some of it. Even if all you see is a snippet here and there, I think there's a great difference between reading about unemployment and seeing people stand out in the cold, leaning into the wind--4000 of them lined up for 40 jobs. There's a difference.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think most newspaper editors watch evening news programs?

[A] Rather: Frankly, I don't know. But if I owned a newspaper and found out my editor wasn't watching an evening news program, I'd probably fire him.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Rather: Because there's a newspaper that's in mortal peril of being out of touch! Look, I don't know the answer in general, but my guess would be that editors at The Washington Post do watch the evening news and watch it pretty carefully. At The New York Times, however, I think--and this could be a delicate area--that there are some special policies. Now, I think The New York Times is a national treasure, one of the world's great treasures---

[Q] Playboy: Your caveats are noted, Dan.

[A] Rather: Right. But anybody who knows The New York Times knows that the leadership there has a problem with television in general--and with television news in particular. I think it's clear that some of the leadership at the Times believes that television news is a threat--a superfluous, entertainment-oriented, cheap-side threat. I'm not looking for any fight with the Times. I frequently say to myself that I'd love to have its editors over here to see how we work, because I know that there are more similarities between what we do than there are differences. I ache sometimes, because I don't think the Times understands that.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that print journalists generally have a sense of superiority with regard to television news--or, conversely, that you in television have an inferiority complex in regard to print?

[A] Rather: The problem with generalities is that there are plenty of exceptions, but as a broad generality, yes. And I think that print people are entitled to some sense of superiority, certainly among the better newspapers. If you're talking about The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald-- God, I don't want to leave anybody out!--at those places, they're justified in some ways in feeling superior. What I don't acknowledge--and here I could get a little testy--is their superiority in commitment, in their dedication to news coverage.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any newspaper experience?

[A] Rather: Yes, but precious little. I worked for The Huntsville Item, a weekly paper, during college. I was a stringer for A.P. and U.P.I. After college, I worked a few months for the Houston Chronicle, but then I was hired by the Chronicle's radio station. There are plenty of times I say to myself, "I wish instead of spending five years at that, I'd worked full time for the A.P. for two of the years." Fewer and fewer people in broadcasting news come out of print backgrounds or even feel that they should have. If I can't hire somebody with print experience, at least I'd like to have someone who wishes he had print experience. When I talk with somebody who says, "Man, I don't even read newspapers; I'm television, with a capital T," a neon sign goes off in my head that says, "Get thine ass out of my sight."

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Rather: Because I think that in print, one has a better chance of getting in touch with mainstream journalistic traditions, such as accuracy and fairness. It's important, damned important, to know whether a man's name has one T or two Ts. You can work at a lot of local stations and never have anyone say that to you. In fact, in a lot of local newsrooms, even if you mispronounce the name, no one's going to say anything. If it were up to me, I wouldn't hire anybody at CBS News who didn't have some print experience.

[Q] Playboy: In an interview in these pages in March 1983, Sam Donaldson of ABC--who didn't have any print experience--argued that it didn't matter in television.

[A] Rather: I disagree with Sam about that. But he happens to be a hell of a reporter, for all of his self-described idiosyncrasies. And he can work for me any time.

[Q] Playboy: Tom Brokaw has also had no print experience.

[A] Rather: I didn't know that. I think Tom is very good--let's just leave it at that.... Look, I don't want to be cautious to the point of not saying what I feel, but I'm very uncomfortable criticizing anybody else in journalism. For that matter, as far as I know, Ed Murrow never worked around a newspaper. And to say that he was great is to understate it. In anybody's pantheon of broadcast journalists, he's the first, and maybe the only, name worth mentioning. But notwithstanding Donaldson, notwithstanding Brokaw and notwithstanding Murrow--dare one mention his name in the same breath?--I still believe that print experience is important.

[Q] Playboy: OK. Let's move on to some specific questions about the quality of your own broadcast. We'll start with Central America--one of the hottest continuing international stories. The New York Times has two or three reporters stationed full time in Central America. Likewise, the news magazines. But CBS has no fulltime correspondents there.

[A] Rather: Well, that's wrong, at least to some extent. We do not have a full-time correspondent in Mexico City, but we have someone who works regularly for us there. We have chosen Miami as a base for covering much of Latin America, something some newspapers do. Also, when you talk about how the Times has this reporter here and Newsweek has that reporter there, you're talking about the cream of American print journalism.

[Q] Playboy: Agreed. But doesn't CBS consider itself in that league?

[A] Rather: You bet your ass.

[Q] Playboy: Then why shouldn't you be compared with the best in print rather than with small-town newspapers?

[A] Rather: Look, if you took some other area of the world, I would feel the ice melting underneath me very quickly. Not Central America. We were early, not late, on the El Salvador story. I invite you to check me on this. One of the very first things I did when I became anchor was to meet with the top news executives here and say, "We've got to jump all over this, because it's not just a military battle, it's a battle for Central America and the Caribbean." We were among the leaders in any journalistic enterprise covering El Salvador.

[A] Now, we do have our problems. CBS News has problems, and television news in general has problems, of mustering and mastering staying power. It's a legitimate criticism to say to us, "Sooner or later, you people move on to something else." Too often, those of us in television news move on quickly and don't leave anybody behind to cover what we have told our viewers is a developing story.

[A] But I also think you picked a bad example in Central America. If you had picked southern Africa--below the Sahara--we don't do a good job. We do a very poor job. Compared, again lamely, with other television news organizations, we do pretty well. But compared with some other journalistic organizations, we don't.

[Q] Playboy: Is Africa your biggest weakness in international coverage?

[A] Rather: The only major area of the world where I think we're worse might be South America. We don't do a good job there. I don't think anybody in television does a very good job of covering South America, except for the Falklands war. Some newspapers that have regular correspondents there do better.

[Q] Playboy: Russia?

[A] Rather: I think our coverage of the Soviet Union is getting better. I don't think it's distinguished. The only person I'll listen to in criticism about our coverage of the Soviet Union is [former New York Times correspondent] Harrison Salisbury. He can lay down aces in terms of his experience of covering it. With everybody else, my attitude on it is "Fuck you." I don't think other people have a lot to crow about.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of your network competition, it's become conventional wisdom that ABC is better and more ambitious than the two other networks in its foreign coverage.

[A] Rather: I think you are right in saying that ABC has tried to promote that as a popular notion. I praise ABC for upgrading its foreign coverage. But it is also very good at publicity, public relations and propaganda. And it has tried to create the impression that while aspiring to become the best, it has already become it. It hasn't. And ABC knows it. CBS has been at this for nearly 50 years. We've got the tradition of being the strongest of the networks in foreign coverage, and you can see that we are by watching us.

[Q] Playboy: What about the future? What sort of training do you think aspiring network correspondents get at local stations?

[A] Rather: Well, increasingly, what they've done is graduate from college or journalism school, then go directly into a local station newsroom--so they're always being measured against the standard of how good they are as broadcasters as opposed to how good they are as reporters.

[Q] Playboy: What are the standards for a good local broadcaster?

[A] Rather: Has he or she got a good voice? How does he or she look oncamera? Do they have camera presence, stage presence? Do they jump off the screen? Those kids may go to the stations wanting to be good reporters, but they also want to keep their jobs, so they go home at night and say, "How can I convince the boss tomorrow that I'm good?" That standard has very little to do with journalism and a lot more to do with show business or television or whatever you call it.

[A] I don't want to be too heavy-handed about this, but you've got to be careful. Local station executives begin saying things to their anchors like, "Don't worry, you don't have to write anything. We just want you to come in here at 4:15 or 4:30; we'll have it written for you. You just be up, have your energy level up and look beautiful." That's the reality of some local station newsrooms.

[Q] Playboy: Do you find an absence of standards among young reporters recommended to you?

[A] Rather: It's not uncommon for me to get a call from a local news director recommending a new kid. He comes in, sits down and you ask him, "Can you write?" He says, "Yes, sir." You say, "Oh, good, take off your coat. Typewriter over there. Write three five-minute newscasts." You get it back, you say to yourself, "This is awful!" The grammar, the punctuation are nonexistent! It's gibberish! And I'm not talking about people who have been to Beaumont Beauty College. I'm talking about people who've been to the best colleges and universities in this country.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel that affects the journalism that comes out of local stations? For instance, take New York City, where you work and where there are three network-owned local stations. What do you think of their quality of journalism?

[A] Rather: I'm not going to go very far with you in this discussion.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Rather: Because it's dangerous ground for me, and I don't want to get myself in trouble. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: We're not asking you to confess to committing crimes, just to comment on the quality of local journalism.

[A] Rather: I want to respond to the question responsibly, but I also want to respond carefully. The answer is that I think local stations in New York City generally try to cover the news of the city--as they see it. That isn't to say I don't frequently disagree with their definition of news.

[Q] Playboy: Have you been embarrassed by the news coverage at the CBS-owned local station in New York?

[A] Rather: Big improvements have been made in New York during the past several months. There's a new general manager at WCBS. But have I been embarrassed by some of the things we've put on our local stations? Yes. Do I always agree with their approach? No. I think it's bad journalism, for example, not to have somebody covering city hall regularly. I question whether that's meeting the responsibilities of your trust, of the public trust. I don't think it is. Personal opinion, clearly stated.

[A] But set that aside for a moment. Because I believe that to be serious doesn't mean to be dull or boring and that a commitment to serious coverage--and a little patience--will produce the large audience they're after.

[Q] Playboy: What evidence do you have?

[A] Rather: There are stations doing it. WBBM, in Chicago, is everyone's favorite example, particularly in our shop, because it's a CBS-owned station. I'm not holding it up as perfect, but it's damn good. Or WCCO, in Minneapolis. Both stations are solid, and they consistently deliver large audiences. I don't understand why more local station managers don't look at those examples.

[Q] Playboy: When you make that point to those managers, how do they respond?

[A] Rather: They look at me and say, "Dan Rather, you deal in a completely different world, a dreamworld. You don't know what my world is here. Between five o'clock and seven o'clock--when you come on--I've got my back to the wall. I'm fighting for my life in here. I've got to produce an-audience. And my experience tells me that the way to do that is not by talking about MX missiles and starving children in Ethiopia. I get audiences by talking about how to take weight off and how to fix the light socket and by talking with whatever celebrity is in town."

[A] Now, I understand that kind of talk in terms of television. I don't understand it in terms of news. My argument is that you don't call that a news broadcast. It may get an audience, it may entertain, but it's not a news broadcast. The problem is that a momentum builds where a news director in the community begins to feel that he dare not do what is compatible with his journalistic conscience--that he's got to do what the research people tell him to do.

[Q] Playboy: Explain what you mean by research people.

[A] Rather: Too often, station managers go to some outside consultant for advice on how to increase their audience. The consultant says, "Let me tell you what to do. Give me a dark-haired, dark-eyed male anchor. Give me a blonde, blue-eyed female anchor. Give me a Hispanic weatherman and a black sports man. And give me wall-to-wall pictures and no story that lasts more than 20 seconds and you've got a winner." [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Presumably, stations wouldn't call in the outside consultant unless his advice had proved useful in the past.

[A] Rather: I think there's a lot of mythology about research. When someone tells me, "Dan, there are scientific surveys that can tell you a lot about audience," right away, my antenna starts to quiver. I don't think polling is a science. Increasingly, at those stations, people are looking for something on which to base decisions. Nobody understands what pulls an audience to one station and not to another. And in a puzzling, confusing world of decision making, where there's high pressure, high dollars, high audience stakes, everybody is looking for something--anything--on which to base a decision. Up pops Merlin, saying, "I want to do a poll for you. We have scientific ways to determine what can turn this newscast of yours around." Now, when I hear that, something in me begins a low chant, like you hear at basketball games: "Fooled you ... fooled you...." But if you're a station manager saying to yourself, "I've got six months to get this station to turn around or I'm gone," your reaction to a Merlin may be, "OK, how much will that cost me?"

[Q] Playboy: When CBS Morning News underwent its most recent metamorphosis, it emerged looking a lot more like the sort of newscast you've been describing. Indeed, your boss at CBS, Ed Joyce, and his predecessor, Van Gordon Sauter, both ran local stations before going to CBS News. Does that suggest that the local news thinking you decry has found its way into the networks?

[A] Rather: I'm not sure. Maybe. But the fact is, the CBS Morning News continues to be the only one of the three morning programs on the three networks that is run by the news division.

[Q] Playboy: No, the Today show, on NBC, is run by the news division.

[A] Rather: Then I stand corrected. I must say that I thought it was run by the entertainment division. In any case, CBS Morning News is the only one that still says, "We're trying to be a news operation." I don't think the Today show tries to kid anybody that it is a hard-news broadcast.

[A] By my standards, the CBS Morning News, over the years, has been a very successful broadcast. When Charlie Kuralt was doing it, it was a very good news program. Underline, italicize, all caps: NEWS PROGRAM. When Hughes Rudd did it before Charlie, it was a very good news broadcast. It never got the largest audience. It never even came close. But I understand the view that a minimal audience is needed to stay in business. The question is, What does that take?

[A] I haven't agreed with everything done on the CBS Morning News. I don't find myself saying, "That's the broadcast I would do if it were up to me." But I also don't see anything that makes me say, "I don't want to be associated with it." I think Diane [Sawyer] and Bill [Kurds] are under pressure the likes of which very few people in this organization have known--pressure to be a news broadcast and to deliver a large audience. I want to make it very clear to you that my job is to support the Morning News, and I'm going to do it. But I'm not going to duck your question, either.

[Q] Playboy: Sawyer worked for Richard Nixon while you were covering the White House, then continued working with him on his memoirs after his resignation. Did you have reservations about her then coming to work for CBS?

[A] Rather: I did question the advisability of hiring Diane at the time. She had worked at the White House, and she had been with Nixon at San Clemente a long time. At the time, I was surprised. I would have thought she had more sense than that. And I thought the perception of hiring someone directly after that kind of commitment was not a good one. But I think Diane has clearly demonstrated since then that whatever her political feelings may be, she can go to work every day as a reporter and an independent broker of information.

[Q] Playboy: Would you agree that CBS, in revamping the Evening News, modeled itself on what Arledge had done at ABC?

[A] Rather: We did take some of what ABC was doing that we thought was effective and adapted it. There is a lot of cross-fertilization in all of this, and I'm sure Arledge took stuff that he liked about CBS and put it on ABC. Where I fault you, not him, is that you and other critics believe him when he tells you he reinvented television news. He certainly did not. I like and admire Arledge, but I don't think even he believes all the things he tells you.

[Q] Playboy: Just how concerned are you about ratings on your newscast--and how much do they affect your decisions?

[A] Rather: You've got to be aware of the ratings. You've got to notice them. They're part of the fact, part of the reality. The battle is always to keep them from overwhelming you, corrupting you. You can't let the broadcast be out of fashion, but you can't lose your soul, either. How do you sell papers and still do a good job journalistically? That's what it's all about.

[Q] Playboy: Have you, too, done your part to sell more papers for CBS? For instance, was wearing a sweater a response to the ratings, a way to warm up your image?

[A] Rather: No. The sweaters are no big deal. Sometimes, I wear a sweater simply because I'm in the mood to wear one--and for that, I have no apology. But I have never seen any substantive evidence that it matters a damn to the audience. Nor do I think it should. I really don't have much stomach for this line of questioning.

[Q] Playboy: When you first took over, there was some criticism that you seemed stiff, looked a little grim. One thing we've noticed in recent months is that you seem to smile more on the air, particularly at the end of the program. Is that self-conscious?

[A] Rather: It's not conscious. It's interesting to me that you say it at all, because fairly recently, somebody in here said, "You're not smiling as much as you used to." I don't think any of these things matter very much. You and I can joke about them, other people can write about them and make a big deal about them, but the audience doesn't much care. A newscast rides or falls on its coverage. The one that does that best will succeed, sweater or no sweater, set or no set, smile or no smile. When the coverage isn't there, no amount of that other stuff can save it.

[Q] Playboy: You have the ultimate responsibility for that coverage, but do you worry now that the kind of life you lead and the money you earn put you at a distance from the average person to whom you supposedly report every night?

[A] Rather: It's a question I ask myself. Naturally, I don't think it distances me. I hope it doesn't. But I'm in the worst possible position to judge that. I console myself by saying I've spent a lifetime on the cutting edge, reportorially. I think that gives me a reservoir of knowledge about the real world, as opposed to the bullshit world.

[Q] Playboy: But when you took the job, you said you'd like to continue some regular reporting. You've done so very infrequently, haven't you?

[A] Rather: Your point is well taken. I certainly haven't done as much as I'd like to do or thought I'd do. I was wrong. I'm frequently wrong. It turned out that either I didn't have the time or it just wasn't best overall for the broadcast for me to be away. But the day I look at myself in the mirror and say, "Listen, you're no longer a reporter; you've become something else," that's the day I goddamn guarantee you I'll walk into the office of the president of CBS News and says "I want to do something else!"

[Q] Playboy: Isn't part of the problem that you're so well known that you become a bigger focus of attention than the story you're trying to report?

[A] Rather: Before I came to this job, I thought I knew all about being recognized and having to try to work a story around that. I was working at 60 Minutes, and that's the most watched broadcast in American television. I didn't think the problem could get much worse. Well, I was wrong about that, too. There's a difference when you're on every night instead of once a week, and there's a difference when you're the anchor man. So in some ways, it makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to work on a story.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you have the same concerns as the average viewer?

[A] Rather: Well, my lifestyle hasn't changed that much. I still live in the same apartment. If I want to get away and take a vacation now, I can just pick a place and go. I don't think about how far. That's a luxury. I'm aware that there aren't very many people who can do that.

[Q] Playboy: Do you fly first-class?

[A] Rather: Sometimes, but most of the time, no. That's my preference. I'm just uncomfortable flying first-class.

[Q] Playboy: A limousine comes with your job. Do you use it?

[A] Rather: Most of the time, no. Same reason. I still find that very few of the things that really give me joy in life are things that cost money. A nice, leisurely, easy weekend with my wife, Jean--that brings me great joy. If one of my kids does something that makes him or her happy, then that really makes me happy. If I've helped somebody. I don't mean dropping extra money into the church or charity plate. I mean doing something where some action is required on my part. A friend is ill, with his car stuck in Syracuse, and I say, "Hey, don't worry. You worry about getting yourself well. You let me worry about the car." Or calling someone who's elderly and whom I've known for a long time, just to say, "How are you doing?" The point is that it's easy, particularly if you have a lot of money, to say, "Well, here, let me take care of it with money." And that's not what I'm talking about doing.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you do have a lot of money, do you feel a need to be more philanthropic?

[A] Rather: Let the record show that I smiled at the word philanthropic.

[Q] Playboy: May the record ask why?

[A] Rather: Well, a Rothschild can talk in terms of philanthropy. Dan Rather does not. This is going to sound farfetched to you, but I try to be a good steward with my money. And I'm still learning how to do that.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of things do you contribute to?

[A] Rather: Churches. Professional organizations. Some charities. For example, the Salvation Army. It's been my experience in bouncing around a few bad holes in the world that the Salvation Army--let's set aside its religiosity--gets there early and stays late, and it delivers.

[Q] Playboy: Let's turn to your political views. Do you think it's important that you keep your politics to yourself?

[A] Rather: I don't think people give a damn what Dan Rather thinks about a specific political issue or some specific politician. I like to think people care whether he is trying to be an honest broker of information. If you and I go out for a beer and you say, "What do you think of Mitterrand's policy in France?" and I say, "I think he's a full-of-shit socialist and I don't think his policy will work," I don't think anybody cares about that, except in the context of having a beer.

[Q] Playboy: Do you agree with the prevailing view that journalists, as a group, are to the left of center?

[A] Rather: When I first came to New York many years ago, I would have believed that about journalists. Not now. My own opinion is that, if anything, journalists bear slightly to the right of center.

[Q] Playboy: Defined by what beliefs?

[A] Rather: Oh, the suspicion of the Soviet Union, the belief in free enterprise on the global scale. Among journalists I know, there's a lot of thinking that goes, Whatever the economic policies the Democratic Party has been committed to over the past 20 years, many didn't work very well. And maybe we ought to give Reagan a try. That sort of thing. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of journalists voted for Reagan in 1980.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the press has been easy or tough on Reagan?

[A] Rather: I honestly don't know. Some of both. Reagan is very likable, both as a media personality and in person. I care a whole lot about him. When I interviewed him a year and a half ago, he could not have been nicer or more cooperative. And you appreciate that, no matter how much you say it won't influence you. You feel better about that person.

[A] Beyond that, my sense of Reagan is that he is secure with himself. That's an attractive and rare quality in a President, and if that makes it more difficult to be skeptical about him or his policies, then journalists--including this one--can be gently criticized for that.

[Q] Playboy: Did you vote for Reagan?

[A] Rather: I'm not going to say.

[Q] Playboy: Then let's look at where you stand. Do you think the Reagan Administration is allocating enough to the disadvantaged, the handicapped, the elderly?

[A] Rather: No, I don't, but if you had asked me that same question ten or 15 years ago, I would have answered the same.

[Q] Playboy: Fine. Let's ask it another way. Are we doing more or less for those groups today than we were ten years ago?

[A] Rather: It's a fact that we're doing less. It's also a fact that we have less.

[Q] Playboy: For social programs; the defense budget has continued to grow apace.

[A] Rather: Well, again, 1983 is a different time in international relations from 1973. I think that in terms of value for the dollars we spend, on both weaponry and the social programs we're all in favor of, the waste on both sides is enormous.

[Q] Playboy: You'd make a good politician. So far, you've managed to answer our questions without taking any clear positions on any of them. We wonder whether or not there's any ideological issue on which we can get you to take a clear stand. How do you feel about abortion?

[A] Rather: I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: If your wife got pregnant and didn't want to have the child, how would you feel about her having an abortion?

[A] Rather: I believe very strongly that it's her decision, not mine. I think she has a right to it. What is that? Pro-abortion or anti-abortion? The point is that reporters don't often have this kind of discussion.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying reporters don't have ideological discussions?

[A] Rather: Yes. Your average reporter is a guy with a wife, a couple of kids, house payments to meet, and he's worried about the same sort of things that most other Americans are worried about. His mind runs the gamut on ideological issues, like everyone else's. And when election time comes, he doesn't always know how he's going to vote. An image of reporters as people different and apart from the mainstream of the country has been created, and it ain't so. If you ask me about abortion, I have to stop and really think about it. It's not an issue in my house. And if someone with an opposing point of view were to walk in right now and say, "Listen, Dan Rather, I just heard what you said, and let me tell you why you're wrong," I could be taken to another point of view. I don't have strong feelings about it. I go back and forth on these things, like everybody else.

[Q] Playboy: Those comments may come as a surprise to the many people who came to know you through your coverage of the Nixon years. During that period, you became known as "the reporter the White House hates." And it was widely believed that you didn't like Nixon.

[A] Rather: Well, it simply wasn't true, and it isn't true. I was a reporter with a job to do, and I did the best I could. I was at peace with myself about my efforts to do my job at the time, and I'm at peace now.

[Q] Playboy: Much of that impression came from the Nixon news conference in Houston in 1974 when you engaged in a rather sharp exchange with him. You stood up to ask a question, received some applause and Nixon asked, "Are you running for something?" You replied, "No, sir, Mr. President, are you?"

[A] Rather: All I sought to do was get up, ask him a direct question, sit down and listen to his answer. I took his remark as an effort to knock a reporter a little off stride--a common technique perfected by high-level politicians, not just Nixon. I wanted to get on with the question. My remark to him was the quickest way to get on with it.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any personal feelings about Nixon?

[A] Rather: Any is a strong word. Certainly, some. But I would say that most of my feelings were about things that he did. About him personally, no. What's worth remembering is that a reporter--certainly, this reporter, and I think it's true of the overwhelming majority of reporters--saw President Nixon only under very controlled circumstances. I interviewed him for an hour in 1972. That interview was the most time I had ever spent with him, and that isn't long.

[A] My position at the time was that we had finally reached a stage where what the President and the people around him were saying did not match the facts. Any reporter is going to have fairly strong feelings about that, beginning with, There is a story there. It began with fairly low-level people's saying things that didn't match the facts. Then it got to the higher-level people.

[Q] Playboy: But come on--no personal feelings about Nixon? Did you believe he was honest?

[A] Rather: I think the record speaks to that. Clearly, I don't think so.

[Q] Playboy: There was some difference of opinion within the CBS Washington bureau about whether the Watergate break-in was really a big story. And you apparently took some heat not just from the White House but from members of your own bureau for pushing it so hard.

[A] Rather: I can only say that the record clearly shows that on this story, they were wrong. I have damned little to brag about from that period, perhaps some things to be professionally pleased with. But what breaks me into a cold sweat every time I think about that period is how close I came to not getting any piece of that story--how close I came to being one of those who ignored it for too long. The Washington Post developed that story--Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Whatever you may think of them now, they did one hell of a job on that story. They were the ones out front.

[A] What I accomplished was that I didn't just sit there on my ass and say, "There's nothing there." I got on the telephone and I tried to talk with people and I went out and talked with them, and the more I talked, the more I thought it was more than a third-rate burglary.

(continued on page 264) Dan Rather (continued from page 88)

[Q] Playboy: Did you break any of the big Watergate stories?

[A] Rather: I broke some stories, but was I breaking as many as The Washington Post? Absolutely not. Neither was anybody else. And I wish I had been better.

[Q] Playboy: What was your contribution?

[A] Rather: Well, at a time when it wasn't easy to do, we kept trying to put the story in some perspective and reported it on a national basis. The Washington Post, for all of its greatness, which I think is considerable, does not have a wide national distribution. CBS News does. I thought it was an important story, and I told my bureau chief that, regularly and constantly. We continued to pursue it and to say to our audience, "This is an important story that is developing."

[A] Anybody around during that period can sour-grapes all he wants about how well we did it. But we were the only people in broadcasting who were consistently trying, and in the end, we were right. Thank God, I wasn't wrong about this, because if I had been, I would be selling insurance.

[Q] Playboy: It was during that same period--1973, to be precise--that your fellow Washington correspondents, including Dan Schorr and Roger Mudd, drafted a. letter protesting a decision by William S. Paley, chairman of CBS, to ban the practice of "instant analysis" following President Nixon's speeches. Nixon had complained about the practice. At first, you declined to sign the letter. Later, when Richard Salant, president of CBS News, let it be known he approved the letter, you offered to sign. That created a certain controversy in the bureau.

[A] Rather: Naturally, I think too much has been made of that. I make mistakes, and that was unquestionably one of them. I will try to explain as quickly and succinctly as I can what happened. But it requires some background.

[A] Mudd and Schorr were not always pulling for me during that period. There are any number of examples of that. I considered it, and still do, a fairly natural consequence of competition. My sense of it, looking back, is that they wanted me to succeed but maybe not too much. It happens all the time in the business.

[Q] Playboy: That reminds us of that aphorism "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little."

[A] Rather: Anyway, I knew that I was on to a terrific story in Watergate. I also knew that covering the story entailed some risks. Roger thought I was wrong about it. Schorr thought I was right about it, but he wanted a larger piece of the story for himself. The first thing that happened was that Schorr and Mudd came to me and said, "Don't you think we ought to talk about the consequences of this new policy on postspeech analysis?" My answer was yes. The next thing was, I was brought a letter they had written--I hadn't been asked anything about its drafting--and it had a "sign this or we'll tear your ass off" attitude that I didn't like. I said to myself, "Wait a minute--I thought I was going to be in on writing this letter." So I read it. I had no major objections, but it didn't accurately reflect my own feelings in every detail. My instinct also told me that Schorr and Mudd did not necessarily have my best interests at heart. I wish I had been more thoughtful and said, "The principle is what's important here," but I didn't, and I was very suspicious of what others were trying to get me into.

[A] It's true that Dick Salant's feelings were not known at the time and that sometime later, he let it be known he would not be displeased if such a letter went out. Now, Salant was one of only two people--Bill Small was the other--who were backing me in my coverage of Watergate against a lot of criticism inside and outside the bureau. And I came to believe that if Salant thought it was a good idea for me to sign the letter, I should gulp down my reservations and sign it.

[Q] Playboy: So you did offer to sign?

[A] Rather: Yes. At that point, Mr. Mudd and Mr. Schorr rightly figured that they had me by the short hairs, and they pulled--which is to say, they refused.[In an irritated tone] I am mildly resentful of the fact that this moment has been singled out and concentrated on. It was not my best, but there were moments when Mr. Schorr was not at his best during that period, and I'm damned sure Mr. Mudd was not at his best.

[Q] Playboy: Of course, your colleagues claimed you were kissing up to your boss, that your offer to sign was purely careerist.

[A] Rather: I think that is clearly, obviously and demonstrably bullshit! If I had had that in mind, I wouldn't have gone anywhere near the Watergate story, as was the case with some others who pride themselves on the reputation of being among Washington's best correspondents. They ran from that story like the high explosive they knew it to be.

[A] Now, if the first thing I had in my mind was, What is good for me from the career standpoint? I would have done what some of those other people did; that is, say, "God deliver me from any story that has any controversy," because the way you make it in broadcast journalism is to stay in the middle, not to make anybody mad. Which is exactly what some CBS correspondents did on the Watergate story.

[Q] Playboy: But you do have a reputation within CBS as someone who goes to extraordinary lengths to be polite.

[A] Rather: My mother taught me politeness. The least I can do is stick to that. I can see her turning over in her grave if she heard, "Dan Rather, the rap on you is you're too polite." There are people who have written about my politeness and have concluded that it's false. Well, this much about me you can believe: With me, it's real. It's the way I want to behave. If the worst thing that anybody can say is that I try too hard to please people and I have good manners, I'll take that.

[Q] Playboy: The rap goes a little deeper--that you have a need to please and be loved by everyone. Do you think that's true?

[A] Rather: No. Which may be one reason I'm not liked by everyone. This sort of thinking is what I call psychological bullshit--and I think that's exactly what it is--and it won't stand scrutiny. The same people who talk about my need to be loved will say in the next paragraph or the next chapter that Rather is feisty or overly aggressive or he grates on people. He worked on Watergate, did those 60 Minutes stories, investigating crooked doctors and crooked lawyers, and wasn't he terrible out in that parking lot pursuing that story? Those things don't match. It is one or the other, maybe, but it can't be both!

[Q] Playboy: But it can be both: You can do one thing as a reporter and another in your personal relationships. As you've just said, you do try hard to please. Do you ever worry about the consequences?

[A] Rather: I guess it's true that in my desire to get along, I sometimes wonder how far I can go without risking compromising my principles. I do want to get along, to be well liked by my bosses, by my colleagues. I think F. Scott Fitzgerald called it the American disease, wanting to be well liked. I have to watch out for that.

[Q] Playboy: Do your small-town Texas roots still have a big hold on you?

[A] Rather: I am not from Texas. I am of Texas. One of the advantages of growing up in a place such as Texas is that you evolve a strong sense of place, of who you are and where you're from. I've never grown away from it. Someone else might say, "He never outgrew it." Either way, it's true.

[Q] Playboy: What does it mean to be "of" Texas?

[A] Rather: A lot of things. One is learning to judge a person not on the basis of what he is but of who he is, being taught to judge a man--or, for that matter, a woman--from the look in his or her eye. In Texas in my time and place, nobody cared what your degrees were or what your résumé was. People wanted to shake your hand, look you in the eye and take your measure.

[A] The other thing about Texas is the land. Every Texan, in my time and place, was tied very directly to the land. The two overwhelming physical things in Texas are the immense blue sky--my first memory in life is of a seemingly endless blue sky--and the rich, flat, productive land. Almost a mystical thing.

[Q] Playboy: Were you a serious student?

[Q] Rather: No. I thought I was. But it turned out that I didn't really know how to study. And I didn't even learn that in college. It was only when I went to law school that I realized I'd been kidding myself.

[Q] Playboy: Later, when you moved from local television to the network, did you feel at a disadvantage?

[A] Rather: It was a bigger jump than I'd imagined it to be, intellectually. I had the tools, and I had the training to do most, if not all, that was required. But if I wanted to be really good, I quickly realized I had to get a lot smarter than I was pretty fast. I had to deepen myself intellectually. And at one point, early on, I went to Sevareid for advice. He said, "You ought to start by reading more than you do."

[Q] Playboy: What did he tell you to read?

[A] Rather: Montaigne's essays. All the King's Men. The Elements of Style, by E. B. White. He told me to commit that to memory, and I nearly did.

[Q] Playboy: What have you read lately?

[A] Rather: Well, I read Megatrends. I read Ancient Evenings, Mailer's new book. I read a book about feminists of the 20th Century, because my daughter, Robin, happened to have it around the house.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think of yourself as a feminist?

[A] Rather: I can't honestly say that. My mind doesn't work that way. If the thrust of the question is, "Why did you pick up that book?" it was just my mind at play.

[Q] Playboy: No, the question was meant to refer to your attitude toward women in your profession.

[A] Rather: Women are the underdogs here, and I tend to pull for underdogs. CBS is better than most places. Having said that, I'd also say that women aren't treated equally here. It's harder for a woman to get a job as a correspondent than it is for a man. It's harder for a woman to stay a correspondent--to come here at a reasonably young age and make it all the way to retirement age as a correspondent. The same can be said of executives. There's no joy in saying that. But I know it to be true. And I can be guilty of stereotyping, too.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Rather: Well, I'll give you an example. Somebody will say, "Hey, there's a pretty good reporter in Oshkosh; can you look at her tapes?" Now, I don't like to look at tapes as a way to judge people, but it's become a part of the business. So the tape will come in, and I'll look, and I'll find myself saying, "She's pretty good, but I don't like her voice." Now, if I'm not careful, I won't like her voice because it's a female voice, a feminine voice, instead of the deep male one I'm used to hearing. That's a tiny example but one that sticks in mind.

[Q] Playboy: Does your wife work?

[A] Rather: She works like hell. She works harder than I do. If your question is, "Does she work outside the home?" yes, she paints. She has a studio and she paints professionally

[Q] Playboy: Early in your marriage, did your career come first in terms of where you would live and who would have the opportunity to work late?

[A] Rather: Yes, and I'm sorry that's true. The decision to move from one place to another was based on what I wanted to do, what was best for me professionally. I wish I had been smarter earlier, because if I had been, I don't think we always would have made the decision on that basis. It takes my breath away sometimes how dumb I was, how insensitive, and how little I've considered those questions the way that we do now. Many of them did not occur to me as we were making the decisions. Jean has always had difficulty in getting me to stop what I'm doing and think. If she can do that, she knows she has a reasonably good chance of getting me to make a rational decision. Otherwise, I tend to offhand it.

[Q] Playboy: What would you have done differently?

[A] Rather: Well, one will never know, but I think Jean would be a better painter than she is. She's very good, but any reasonable person, looking back on our 26 years together, would have to say she'd be better today if she hadn't moved around so much and had painted more. We both regret moving around as much as we did for a lot of reasons, another of which is the effect on our children. They got through it; but looking back, in some ways, it was close. I shouldn't have put their education at risk, for example. And I should have spent more time at home with them instead of running around the world. Don't get me wrong. I'm not racked with guilt. But I would do some things differently now.

[Q] Playboy: But could you have really reached for the top of your profession--as you did--and still have been an involved husband and father? Could you have gotten where you are if your wife had also worked full time? That's the question your own children and other young people are facing today.

[A] Rather: Honestly, I don't know. Is it possible to be a good person, a good friend, a good husband and an accomplished professional and go for the top? I believe in trying. I think you ought to go for it. But I haven't always stopped to really think those things out.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been tempted to get some help in thinking things through, perhaps by talking with a psychiatrist?

[A] Rather: No. I don't think people from my time and place in Texas would consider doing that. I don't say that with any pride, mind you. But I think that's the truth.

[Q] Playboy: What is your attitude toward psychiatry?

[A] Rather: I just don't know a great deal about it. Until I was well into adulthood, I didn't even know what a psychiatrist was, nor had I ever known anyone who'd been to a psychiatrist. Certainly, I now know people who go. But frankly, I don't know what to make of it. It's not something that I could ever see myself doing.

[A] I recognize this is probably a vast oversimplification, but I think that if one has friends one can talk with, really talk with, they probably fill the role a psychiatrist does. Now, I suspect that psychiatrists reading this are going to throw down the magazine and say, "This man doesn't understand psychiatry." And I would have to say, "You're right, I don't." I just have this sense--where I came from, people had problems, real problems. What did they do? They talked with friends, with relatives. They might go see the preacher. Or a high school teacher. I haven't thought much about it. If I felt the need to talk with a psychiatrist, I would do it. But that hasn't happened.

[Q] Playboy: Do you see yourself as a man of action rather than one of reflection and introspection?

[A] Rather: I once read something someone wrote about Bobby Jones, the golfer. The writer said, "I came to realize that one of the things that was different about Jones was that he always seemed to be looking up and looking forward." I think of myself that way. I like to think of myself as a doer. When it gets down to the choice of action or reflection, I'll probably take the action. I am from a school, professionally, that says, "Damn it, grab a pencil and get out of the office." It worked for me. I'm not saying it works for everyone. Maybe the next fellow ought to stay in the office, drum a pencil on his table and think.

[Q] Playboy: Does daily journalism lend itself to reflection, to deep thinking?

[A] Rather: It certainly requires curiosity. But journalism is not a haven for philosophers, intellectuals, academics. The reality is that the deadline is there. It's always there. And you'd better make it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever find yourself wondering about what else you might have done--or could do--besides journalism?

[A] Rather: I don't recall ever asking myself that question in the sense of "Should I be doing reporting?" I've asked it a number of times about specific assignments. When I went to Afghanistan for 60 Minutes, I said a number of times to myself, "This is a foolish thing to do."

[Q] Playboy: But that's in the realm of an immediate danger rather than a broader self-doubt

[A] Rather: I know what you're saying. I work with a lot of people here who ask themselves with some regularity, "Should I be doing what I'm doing? Should I be working for a company such as CBS? Should I be in news? Should I be in the Peace Corps instead or working full time for the nuclear-freeze movement or for a political candidate? Wouldn't that be a better use of my life? Have I lost my idealism by working in this place for X number of dollars a week and being a sort of glorified factory worker?"

[A] Now, if you're asking, "Have you asked yourself those questions with any regularity?" the answer is, I haven't. Really haven't. When I do ask, the thing that comes back to me is, "Reporting is the only thing I remember wanting to do."

[A] When you're young--this may be the point--when you're young and trying to figure out what to do, I think if you're lucky, a number of things appeal to you. There weren't a number of things that appealed to me at what you might call the critical time. I just had in my head that I was going to be a reporter without really knowing what the hell that was. It just hit me: I want to be a reporter.

[Q] Playboy: And from the start, you went to great lengths to get a good story. For example, in your Texas reporting days, you took heroin as part of your research for a story about its effects. Today, you're reluctant to discuss it. Why?

[A] Rather: Because it comes back to haunt you when it can't be seen in its pure context. After the controversy it created when I spoke about it several years ago, I realized that any time one talks about drugs, one has a responsibility to make sure people fully understand that drugs are dangerous as hell. I took that heroin in the presence of the police, for the purpose of doing a story on what it was and what the effects of it were. But what got the attention was that I'd tried heroin, not the context in which I'd tried it.

[Q] Playboy: All right, let's shift the focus to those who write about you--the critics.

[A] Rather: I am very happy to change the subject.

[Q] Playboy: What is your feeling about television criticism?

[A] Rather: The quality of criticism has gotten a hell of a lot better. The critics underestimate their influence on television. If they write something about the CBS Evening News, you can damned well bet I'll read it. I am not proud of that. My other point is that my bosses get a steady stream of this stuff and read it. And it affects them.

[A] My lament is that critics do not often enough accentuate the positive. When they see something wrong, unethical or unclear, they ought to light into us, and that's a service. But then they go and publish the ratings every week, just like the football top ten. On the one hand, thoughtful press critics say television is consumed with ratings, and they're right. But the same newspapers will publish the ratings every Wednesday. And one of the many reasons television executives are consumed with the ratings is that they have to read how they've done every week in the newspapers.

[Q] Playboy: You've written blurbs for at least two books written by television critics--one by Tom Shales of The Washington Post, the other by Ron Powers, who used to be with the Chicago Tribune. Why?

[A] Rather: Well, maybe I shouldn't do that. Here's why I do it: I know books are precious things to people who write them. And if anyone I know writes a book and asks me to read it, I do. And if I can in good conscience say something positive or write a blurb, I do.

[Q] Playboy: The Shales book includes a piece about you that is not entirely flattering.

[A] Rather: Yeah, the most charitable thing I can say is that it's scathing. I don't say it's wrong; I think he picked out the things about me that I worry about. I found myself saying, in some cases, "Well, unpleasant as it is, it's true."

[Q] Playboy: He referred to your penchant for sprinkling your descriptions of serious news events with sports metaphors.

[A] Rather: I tend to do that, it's true. I think it's because I was around sports and coaches a lot in my youth. Admittedly, it's not the best intellectual environment. The problem with talking a lot about winning and losing is that I have tended to define them too narrowly. I don't always have a broad enough definition of what it means to win and to lose.

[Q] Playboy: How about your portrayal in The Evening Stars, a book that was published recently and discusses the role of television anchor men--including you?

[A] Rather: I'm not going to complain about the book. It is uncomfortable, painful for me to read things that I deeply believe to be untrue. To read in black and white that Dan Rather has not given a flip about his family, has cared only about his work ... I can only say that anybody who knows me well knows that is not true. I have made mistakes; I've acknowledged them to you. But this is the kind of thing that can be misunderstood. Each time it comes up, it's uncomfortable.

[Q] Playboy: You were also apparently unhappy about the impression you felt the book left that you were driven, obsessed with work.

[A] Rather: Well, yeah. It's going to be written on my tombstone, He Was Dumb But Driven, And He Did All Right. I do Work hard. I was taught to work hard. But then it's described not as working hard but as being driven. As for being dumb, how can anybody deal with that sort of thing? You can't spend your life trying to go around trying to set the record straight.

[Q] Playboy: Nothing in the book suggests you're dumb.

[A] Rather: No, I guess not. But it does set up a contrast between the thoughtful Roger Mudd and the driven Dan Rather. Maybe it's a true picture, but I don't think it is.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk a bit about 60 Minutes, which is the most popular of all news programs--and, increasingly, the subject of criticism. You yourself were one of the defendants in a suit brought against it by Carl Galloway, a doctor who believed that he had been slandered in the course of a story 60 Minutes did on insurance fraud. You and CBS were found not guilty, but some interesting issues were raised. One of them is the notion that 60 Minutes has, to some extent, become a parody of itself--that, as former CBS News president Fred Friendly has said, it has become an entertainment show in which the avenging angels descend, throw a net around the bad guys and leave in a blaze of glory.

[A] Rather: Untrue. Let me put in parentheses that I like Friendly. He's a tough critic and he and I have often disagreed, and we disagree about this. But I appreciate his criticism, even when I think it's wrong, because I know that he's pleased that 60 Minutes is on the air. One of the lessons of this trial--at 51, I thought there weren't that many left to learn, but I was wrong--was how few people are going to stick by you when the heat is on. Fred was one of those people. Now close parentheses. As to what he said: I believe that 60 Minutes is one of the few places in American journalism that will still take on gutsy, tough stuff. It may be the only place in broadcast journalism that does that consistently. It's a risk to do it at all. One reason is that you know you can't do it perfectly, and so some of it is going to blow up in your face. Management doesn't like it; people you work around don't like it. You get bad publicity out of it, even when you do it reasonably well, and others in your own profession are going to be jealous and will try to pull it apart. Journalistically, it's a dangerous line of work.

[A] Mistakes have been made--including, in some cases, its becoming what Friendly and others call a parody of itself. But I deeply believe that this is a case of looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The proper end is the one through which you see that 60 Minutes is one broadcast that has guts. It has encouraged, even forced, other networks to experiment with the same kind of material. It has even encouraged some of the better local stations to try it. Now, certainly, some of the imitators have compounded some of the mistakes that 60 Minutes made and have done awful things. But as for 60 Minutes, if it's not a national treasure, it's certainly a national asset.

[Q] Playboy: We'd still like to address some of the specific criticisms that have been made of the show. One is that the program too often oversimplifies or trivializes subjects by framing stories in very bold tones--good and evil, black and white--and by playing the prosecutor's role, rather than that of a dispassionate journalist, in trying to prove its case.

[A] Rather: I reject that argument. Respectfully reject it. In the 15 years 60 Minutes has been on, it has probably made nearly every mistake that a journalist can make. It's in the nature of journalism to do that. Has The New York Times made the same kinds of mistakes? Yes. Has The Washington Post? Yes.

[A] There are a limited number of words and pictures in a story. 60 Minutes does not broadcast books. But it's less limited and superficial than nearly anything else in broadcast journalism, and it compares very favorably with most newspapers. As for the prosecutorial thing, that's bullshit. Yes, we confront people with evidence that contradicts what they've told us. But nobody in 60 Minutes has the power of subpoena. Give me the power of subpoena and the penalties against perjury, and I'll produce 60 Minutes pieces that are a hell of a lot better than the ones we've had.

[Q] Playboy: But would you agree that 60 Minutes is exceptionally popular at least in part because it's entertaining?

[Q] Rather: I wouldn't deny that the audience watches partly because it's interesting. You said entertaining; I prefer the word interesting. The same audiences that watch other shows to escape, to be entertained, will watch 60 Minutes because they want to be informed, to know about what's really going on.

[Q] Playboy: Is the motive for 60 Minutes' investigative reporting really as high-minded and as pure as you suggest? Isn't it true that the dramatic way the show presents its investigative reporting is crucial to the show's success?

[A] Rather: I'm not sure you're right about that. Certainly, when 60 Minutes started, that was not the belief.

[Q] Playboy: No, and it wasn't a popular show, either.

[A] Rather: Well, fair enough. But even to this day, there is a strong school of thought at CBS that 60 Minutes would be a lot better off if it didn't do the strong investigative pieces, period. Any number of its imitators seem to believe that: They'll do just enough investigative pieces to have the appearance of being in that business, and then they'll go out and interview starlets and rock stars and do softer, glitzier pieces. If 60 Minutes stopped doing the investigative pieces, I argue that it would remain very popular.

[A] Before I went to 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace had to fight to get his investigative pieces into the broadcast. At the time, he was the only person over there that I'm aware of who wanted to do them. Not for ratings reasons but because it was the kind of journalism he wanted to do and that he felt met the responsibilities of the trust that an hour of prime-time television with a journalistic imprint on it bears. It's very popular now to take Wallace apart, but that's the fact about his role.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any pieces you did on 60 Minutes that you regret?

[A] Rather: I've done any number of interviews that I didn't think were tough enough. I didn't bore in hard enough on George Bush during the 1980 campaign, for example. It was a mistake not to be tougher. We did a story once--I can't remember which one--in which we said that someone had been charged with a crime and, indeed, he had; but at the time we broadcast the story, the charge had been dropped. That was a mistake in accuracy. And that shouldn't happen.

[Q] Playboy: You were criticized a great deal for a piece you did titled "The Kissinger-Shah Connection?" in which you suggested, in essence, that there had been a collusion between the shah of Iran and Henry Kissinger, acting on behalf of the Nixon Administration, that effectively resulted in higher oil prices. The criticism was that you simply didn't have the evidence to prove your case.

[A] Rather: I don't believe we used the word collusion, but with the exception of that word, I stand by the story. Kissinger disagrees. We've discussed it, believe me, at great length, because in the wake of that story, the Kissinger network of friends and supporters gave us a very hard time. Kissinger and I agreed to disagree about that. Within reason, we now get along, and that's taken some nurturing on his part and on mine.

[Q] Playboy: Why? Do you now have a friendship with him?

[A] Rather: We are not close and dear friends. Probably my loss, but we are not.

[Q] Playboy: What about the Galloway case? Do you have any regrets about that one?

[A] Rather: The Galloway story is one that the overwhelming majority of journalistic enterprises in this country would not have tackled. It was about widespread corruption in the insurance business. We spent months on it. Most others would have spent less time and probably would have settled the thing out of court if they had been sued.

[Q] Playboy: There were stories suggesting that CBS did make an offer to settle--and that Galloway's side rejected it.

[A] Rather: Galloway planted the story that CBS offered to settle. We didn't, even though a lot of people advised us to do just that. Including, of course, the plaintiff's attorney, who said, at least implicitly, "We're going to drag you through court, you're going to get all kinds of bad publicity out of it--why not settle for a half million dollars?" I'm everlastingly grateful to CBS for not doing that.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Rather: The dynamics in the courtroom itself. Everything from the fact that the other side had a designated curser, whose job it was to pass by me as many times as possible during the day and mutter some obscenity--in the hope that I'd react, or overreact--to its designated starer, whose job it was to stare at me every second. I was unprepared for that kind of dynamics. I was glad when it ended.

[Q] Playboy: A recent article in the television magazine Channels by former Cable News Network president Reese Schonfeld takes the CBS Evening News to task. He claims that your news program has been more entertainment oriented since you took over. He claims there is "more crime, less international news, more light stories, fewer think pieces." Since that's been a fairly lively topic of discussion in this interview, do you want to take the opportunity once and for all to answer that criticism?

[A] Rather: You'll pardon me if I don't take too seriously the criticism of a man who was recently one of our competitors. I haven't read his article, but from what you tell me, his criticism is typical. He clearly hasn't watched our broadcasts or read the transcripts. More crime? No. Less international news? No. Fewer think pieces? No. More light pieces? No. It's just horse-feathers! And the reason I use only that word is in deference to my grandmother.

[Q] Playboy: Dan, you've used considerably blunter language in this interview.

[A] Rather: I have? Hmmm. Then I trust my grandmother will understand.

[A] [As we were going to press, a minor furor erupted in the press, ironically enough, about the use of Rather's language. In response to a syndicated TV reporter's request for an interview in late September, Rather asked if the reporter's camera was on and his tape rolling and, receiving an affirmative answer, said, "Fuck you."]

[Q] Playboy: In light of our comments about blunt language, what provoked you to reply to reporter Steve Wilson's request by saying, "Fuck you"?

[A] Rather: I mistook who he was. I thought I was being harassed again by people connected with the 60 Minutes Galloway case, as I described to you earlier. As soon as I realized he was legitimate, I apologized to him and offered to do the interview with him. What I feel worst about is having mistreated a fellow reporter. While I don't excuse the language I used, you know it's hardly uncommon among reporters.

[A] What got all of this started is that the producers of the show Wilson worked for tried to use the incident as a way to generate some publicity. Fair enough. At first, nobody bit--not even the gossip columnists. Then The New York Times ran it, and once that happened, the other media picked it up. It's funny: The Times gave more space to a story about Dan Rather's using profanity than it did to a story about CBS' announcing a new prime-time news broadcast a few days earlier. It makes you think, Aha, is somebody trying to do us in?

[Q] Playboy: That sounds a little conspiratorial, doesn't it?

[A] Rather: Well, maybe after the Galloway trial and this incident, I'm a little shell shocked.

[Q] Playboy: When we last spoke, you said you hoped your grandmother would understand your language in this interview. How do you think she'll react to the Wilson incident?

[A] Rather: Oh, I've already heard from her, you can be sure of that.[Laughs] She didn't castigate me. She just said she'd already heard I said it was a dumb thing to have done. She wanted me to know that she agreed with me--it was dumb.

"The day I look at myself in the mirror and say, 'Listen, you're no longer a reporter,' that's the day I goddamn guarantee you I'll tell CBS I want to do something else!"

"In Texas in my time and place, nobody cared what your degrees were or what your resume was."