Dan Rather

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr., born October 31, 1931, is an American journalist, commentator, and former national evening news anchor whose career ran through some of the most closely watched events of the modern age. He began in Texas and became a national name in September 1961, after his reporting during Hurricane Carla helped persuade more than 350,000 people to evacuate. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives. From there, Rather built a career defined by hard news, live pressure, and long assignments in places where history was moving fast.

Rather was born in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and Byrl Veda Page. Neither parent completed high school, but both were avid readers. The family moved to Houston when he was a child, and he later graduated from John H. Reagan High School in 1950, where he played football. Rather wanted to be a reporter, and his mother encouraged him to attend college and become the first person in the family to earn a college degree. He hitchhiked to Sam Houston State Teachers College, walked on to the football team, then turned fully toward journalism when he did not receive an athletic scholarship.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1953 and edited the school newspaper, The Houstonian. While in college, he worked for KSAM-FM radio, calling football games. His early career included work for the Associated Press in Huntsville, United Press, several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle. He also worked as a play-by-play announcer for University of Houston football and for the Houston Buffs minor league baseball team. In 1960, KHOU-TV, the local CBS affiliate in Houston, hired him as a news anchor and director of news.

Hurricane Carla changed the scale of Rather’s career. Broadcasting from the National Weather Center in Galveston, he showed the first radar image of a hurricane on television and conceived of placing a transparent map over the radar screen so viewers could understand the storm’s size. His coverage was carried by New York and national stations. In 1962, he moved to CBS in New York, later becoming chief of the network’s Southwest bureau in Dallas and then chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans.

Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, work that helped lead to his promotion at CBS News. He became White House correspondent in 1964, then served as a foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam before returning to cover the White House. He covered Richard Nixon’s presidency, including Nixon’s trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president’s resignation. In 1981, Rather became anchor of the CBS Evening News, a role he held for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw, he was one of the “Big Three” nightly news anchors in the United States from the 1980s through the early 2000s.

Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 after the Killian documents controversy, involving unauthenticated documents in a report on President George W. Bush’s Vietnam War-era National Guard service. He continued at CBS until 2006, then hosted Dan Rather Reports on AXS TV from 2006 to 2013, along with other interview and reporting projects. In 2018, he began hosting The News with Dan Rather online, and since 2021 he has written the newsletter Steady. His words still carry the sound of a reporter shaped by pressure, conflict, and close observation. As one of his quotes puts it: “A tough lesson in life: not everyone wishes you well.”