 Oh, these lights are really blinding. There are people out there. I'm delighted to see everyone here. We've got a great crowd and we have a wonderful program. Good evening, I'm Don Carlton. I'm the director of the Dove Briscoe Center for American History. Welcome to our program tonight. The Briscoe Center is honored to once again partner with our good friends here at the LBJ Library to bring broadcast news legend, Dan Rather, to our campus. I'm delighted to say that our partnership with the LBJ Library has resulted in a number of special evenings like this one tonight, but our partnership has also produced a book documenting the library's landmark summit on the civil rights movement, as well as several major exhibitions, including our current exhibit 25 Years and 25 Treasures that is currently on display in this library's temporary exhibits gallery. If you haven't had an opportunity to view this exhibit, please do. It'll be on display, I believe, until mid-January and you're going to see some very rare items that are, we have really, some of them have never been publicly exhibited before. And some of those items include the original marble rostrum from the United States House of Representatives. It's especially appropriate for the Briscoe Center to be co-sponsor of this particular program tonight because the center, which has gathered one of the largest news media history archives in existence is currently working with Dan Rather on an ambitious three-year project to produce a website about Dan's work as perhaps the best investigative journalist of his generation. Now that project is nearing completion and we plan to launch it officially with a symposium here on campus next September and I hope you will join us for that special occasion. Stay tuned for more information. Now, before I go any further, I really want to thank some very special folks and those are our sponsors for tonight. And that, those are St. David's Health Care, Frost Bank, and the University Federal Credit Union. Thanks to you for doing it, for your support. Okay, now I know this is a cliche but I will shamelessly say it anyway. Our guest tonight really needs no introduction. But for those of you who have just arrived on planet Earth from whatever expedition to outer space you may have been on for the last six decades or so, I'll briefly bring you up to speed. A native Texan, Dan Rather has reported on and investigated many of the most important stories of the second half of the 20th century. He was a prominent broadcast journalist in Houston as a young man before joining CBS News in 1962. Now the list is way too long for me to go through tonight but after Dan joined the CBS News team, the stories he covered included the civil rights movement, the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and many, many, many others. After Walter Cronkite retired from the CBS Evening News in 1981, Dan became the program's anchor and managing editor, a post he held for 24 years which is the longest tenure in television history. During his more than two decades on the CBS Evening News, Dan continued his investigative reporting and was a correspondent for such television news magazine programs as 48 hours, CBS reports, and 60 minutes too. Dan has received virtually every honor and broadcast journalism including numerous Emmy Awards and Peabody Awards, a prolific writer, he has authored or co-authored seven books including The Camera Never Blinks, The Palace Guard, I Remember, and Rather, Outspoken. In recent years, Dan Rather has worked as an anchor and managing editor of Dan Rather reports on access TV and producing over 250 stories. Dan also regularly contributes opinion pieces online including his popular Facebook page and he has a program on Sirius XM satellite radio, Dan Rather's America. And he appears frequently on cable network programs including The Racial Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell shows on MSNBC. And I wanna point out that Dan Rather has been and continues to be a good friend of the University of Texas at Austin including the College of Communications and the Brisco Center. Now that is a very brief background on Dan Rather but I feel the best introduction for this legendary broadcast journalist is really for us to see a few clips of him, video clips, in action. So I now ask our technician to please push whatever button you have back there and let's take a look. Martin Luther King is among those who is vowed not to let the voter registration movement in Leesburg and the rest of South Georgia fail. Governor Wallace is now walking away from the door, apparently capitulating now in his battle against the United States government to prevent two Negro students from entering the previously all white University of Alabama. We just have a report from our correspondent Dan Rather in Dallas that he has confirmed that President Kennedy is dead. Switchboards all over Dallas are still completely swamped with callers who apparently refused to believe that John F. Kennedy has been shot and killed. No soldier worthy of the name will leave even a dead comrade on the field of battle and abandon him. This outfit was rained on yesterday, rained on again this morning. But they're going to stay out here until they find the body of Rudolph Nunes. Don't push me, take your hands off of me unless you're in plan to arrest me. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Dan Rather. Walter, as you can see, I'm sorry to be out of breath but somebody belted me in his stomach during that. What happened as a Georgia delegate, at least they had a Georgia delegate sign on, was being hauled out of the hall. We tried to talk to him to see why, who he was and what the situation was. And at that instant, the security people, well as you can see, put me on the deck. I didn't do very well. I wonder if you could tell us what goes through your mind. When you hear people who love this country and people who believe in you say reluctantly that perhaps you should resign or be impeached. Well, I'm glad we don't take the vote of this room, let me say. These Afghan clothes I'm wearing were part of an operation to sneak me and the CBS News film crew into Afghanistan. It's a holy war they're fighting. A jihad, they call it. Iran was officially a terrorist state. You went around telling- I'm ready to explain that, Dan. I wanted those- But, Mr. President, the question is- I wanted Mr. Buckley out of there. But, before he was killed- You made a ship. Gentlemen Square, a sea of flags, more than a million students crowded in here today. Respectfully, it is you who invaded another country, not the United States who invaded any country. The documents purported to show that George W. Bush received preferential treatment during his years in the Texas Air National Guard. Tonight, after further investigation, we can no longer vouch for their authenticity. Nelson Mandela at age 75, casting the very first ballot of his life. What we had hoped and prayed would not happen, could not happen, has happened. New York's World Trade Center, in effect, has been destroyed. This is looking south on Manhattan Island, the smoke and, yes, still, the flames from what happened the day at the World Trade Center. To grasp the enormity of it is almost too much for the heart to bear. This night, we can only look back in sorrow at a world that has suddenly, perhaps irrevocably, been changed. And tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and in days and years to come, we will look at the calendar and remember, September 11th, 2001. Dan Rather, CBS News, on the beach near Tomachee. Dan Rather, CBS News, tonight. Dan Rather, CBS News, Salzburg, Austin. Dan Rather, CBS News, with the traveling White House Dan Rather, CBS News, somewhere along the ceasefire line between Indiana's... Dan Rather, CBS News, get up LaPasse in the Himalayas. This is Dan Rather on the campus of the University of Mississippi. And to each of you, courage. For the CBS News, Dan Rather, with you. Good night. Now, before I bring our stars out here in a few minutes, I want to be sure and invite all of you to a reception in the Great Hall of the LBJ Library immediately after the program tonight. Now, Dan Rather will be interviewed by my good friend and colleague, the unflappable and debonair, director of the LBJ Library. Mark up to grove. And finally, yesterday was Dan Rather's birthday. So please join me, not only in welcoming Dan to our stage, but in wishing him a happy birthday as well. Please welcome Dan Rather and Mark up to grove. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Dan, that rousing applause and those clips that Don shared or a testament to your legendary career. And I want to talk about that career and talk about your views on current day politics, which I know our audience is very anxious to hear. Let me go back. As we saw those clips, I want to just talk about a couple of moments within them. And the first one is the Kennedy assassination. You were the one who reported to Walter Cronkhead in that iconic scene where he removes his glasses and talks about the fact that President Kennedy is dead. You were there on the scene. What was that moment like? Well, it's been a long time ago. And as one gets older, memories fade. But the memories of the Kennedy assassination almost every second of those four dark days in Dallas are pretty vivid in my memory. That keep in mind that I was still a junior CBS News correspondent. I had been with the network for less than two years. I was given this assignment in Dallas as a routine assignment, mostly because I was a Texan. But you guys know what the moment was like, while there was some anticipation that there might be some protest against President Kennedy, nobody expected the assassination attempt. It wasn't on my mind when I planned the coverage. And it was such a, frankly, an emotional earthquake on a personal basis when it became obvious that the president was dead, that as with anybody else, I had to wrestle with myself for at least a few seconds, or say more than a few seconds. But at that point, it's the proverbial why. You're either going to succumb to your own emotions, which the nation did almost as one. Or you're going to say to yourself, this may be the biggest story I've recovered. And let's get zone-like focused on the story at hand. And it was, frankly, when I said the president is dead, I said that first to the radio desk. And you asked me how I felt. I didn't really think it through. I was methodically telling them why I knew he was dead to the radio desk. And the next thing I know, they're playing the national anthem. And an announcer is saying that Dan Rather reports the president is dead. On the television side, they knew about it almost immediately. But there was some question as to whether they would go with it or not. But if you take my point of what I felt, my initial feeling was, boy, have I found up here. This may be the end of my career. I mean, I knew the story was true. There wasn't any question about that. But when television sort of flinched a little bit and didn't go with it immediately, and it was later explained to me they didn't have any doubts either. They were just wondering what the impact would be. But I would say overall that I was emotionally drained after those four days. But I think what hit the hammer to the heart that hit most people at the time the president was assassinated, his assassin was assassinated. And we had the funeral in Washington. At that time, I was able, and I think most reporters, they were able to push down my own emotional feelings. And it was a week, maybe eight or nine days afterward that I gave into my emotional side. But as with most journalists, Mark, he asked me what I felt. There was this immediate God, this is terrible for the country and what's going on who's responsible for this. But as a reporter, you're trained, nothing aces the story. If you're on a story, you have to get completely mesmerized, focused on the story. And after the first certainly a few minutes, maybe a few seconds, that was foremost in my mind. So Americans, world citizens of a certain age, remember where they were when they heard the news that President Kennedy was dead. And I think folks of a certain age, remember where they were when 9-11 happened. We saw that footage from 9-11 toward the end of those clips. Talk about your feelings on that day. Well, on 9-11, each story is unique into itself. And with the Kennedy assassination, it was, boom, the presence dead. And there was, for the four or five days, it was a running story. And you knew it would have reverberations for the rest of your life. But with 9-11, the destruction was so great, including the death and injury, that you knew this story was going to go on for weeks, if not months, as the number one story in the world. But I remember going, when I got to the broadcast center, just after the second plane had hit, and I was about to go up to the anchor desk. The anchor desk is somewhat elevated in the newsroom. And there's a routine. Each anchor has his own set routine, in which, at mine is, I have an earpiece in my left ear that goes to the control room, which controls the photographs, the pictures. And I have an earpiece in my right ear, which they run the cords down, which goes to the editorial desk. And that's the way I operate an anchor chair. But I remember it's, I don't want to, it's an unfair comparison, but it's a miniature feeling like an astronaut. You've got to get hooked up, and you kind of ascend to this thing. But I remember doing two things. One, I made a quick call to my wife, fighting heart, Jeannie Grace-Gobel, rather, who is here tonight with me. Because I just make a quick call to Jeannie, because I knew once I took air, there was going to be very little time to make any other calls. And yes, I said a quick prayer, and then got up, and once in the chair, then again, you know your experience for good and not so good takes over. But those were the things I was thinking. But as the story developed, as one tower went down, the other tower went down, there was talk of the death toll, might be as much as 10,000. It's the only time I could remember on the anchor desk, and I was honored to be Walter Cronkite's successor. In my mind, I never said replacement. You don't replace an idol. But I had anchored quite a bit before then. It's the only time I can remember that there were moments in the early hours of 9-11 when my knees began to shake underneath the anchor chair. And I was saying mentally to myself, I can't let this show. I mean, I've got to stop it down here underneath the desk. It's the only time in my experience when I have any memory of that happening. You once said that you wished you had reigned your passions in a bit more at times when you're reporting. And Don mentioned you are the greatest investigative journalist of your generation. That's hard to argue. How do you reign in your passion? You obviously have feelings as a human being, and you come to the story with a certain point of view in a certain emotional state. How do you reconcile that when you're doing a story? Well, I don't always reconcile it. And I don't think it's possible to do it every day, every moment on every story. Answer your question that I've never advertised myself, nor do I want to be a robot. I always wanted to the viewer, the listener, for that matter, to know that he's a person. He's a human being. This is not robotizes. But it always trains as a journalist that insofar as it's humanly possible that you should keep your own feelings, your biases, your prejudices, any strong feelings you have about a story to yourself, realizing that you cannot do it, as I say, every day in every way on every story. But I was raised in a school of journalism that says, but that is over a period of time, not on any one given so that over a period of time, you want to be OK with having people judge you over a number of times. How hard does he try to be an honest broker of information? And how often does he succeed? And that's the standard by which I wanted to be judged. And I know different people judge it in a different way. But that's what I was trying to do. And I think so often we journalists don't try to explain to the public what it is we're trying to do. That's what I've always tried to do. You can't always do it. I never wanted to show emotion on the air. And for example, through almost all of 9-11, I held in pretty well. When the first time I left the studio, I went to David Letterman's studio, which was not my turf in a way. And I really surprised myself. But I've never apologized for that breaking down on the Letterman program because you shouldn't apologize for grief. And that's what it was. It seems like that program, that was an outlet for all of us. Because we were watching the news. We were trying to make sense of it. You go on David Letterman. And we saw in you the emotions that we all felt. And it seems like you let your guard down at that point. Because why is that? Why was that environment conducive? Well, I think because, as I say, I was disciplined in myself in my own studio at CBS News World, headquarters on 57th Street. And that was my environment all day, every day, for well over a week, I guess it was, except for I'd slip home in the middle of the night, 3 o'clock, or maybe sleep for an hour and a half, two hours, and then get back. The point is that it surprised me what happened to the Letterman program. I didn't plan it. I didn't say to myself, well, OK, I can relax. It's just I had my own work in my own environment. And suddenly I said, then it's time to go over to the Letterman program. So without thinking it, if I had thought it through, it might not have happened. But I got there sort of hurriedly. And the next thing, you know, you're on the program. The next thing, we're talking about it. And the most surprised person in the room was myself when that happened. And David understood and handled very well. But I come back to, in the initial moments, I was saying to myself, no, I shouldn't have done that. And I'm sorry that it happened very quickly. I just said to myself, well, you know, it just, you held grief in for a long time. And you kind of let your guard down unknowingly. And your grief showed. And you shouldn't be ashamed of that. And I'm not. I wasn't then and I'm not now. Yeah. What makes you a great reporter? Well, first of all, and I don't mean this in any false humility way, but I'm still trying to become a great reporter. I think I'm... Isn't that real, clearly shucked? Well, one argument again, I'm not gonna sit earlier. You know, I'm not gonna just look down on my boots and run my hand around the brim with my hat and say, oh, shucks. Right. Oh, that, you know, I certainly want to be a great reporter. Yeah. And that's what I'm inspired to be. But, you know, I've been so lucky in so many ways, including I have worked among genuinely great reporters. In the electronic news era, Edward R. Murrow, in my opinion, not only was the founding saint of electronic journalism as we know it, but was an unbelievably high quality practitioner of the trade for a very long time. Obviously Walter Cronkite, Eric Severite, is the point that I am, I hope, understandably proud of some things I've done. But I want to be the best. I mean, who doesn't want to be the best at this profession? But I know my shortcomings. And you know, as we said here, I think it's very important for the audience to understand that I fully know that, you know, I've made my share of mistakes and I have my wounds to show it. Some of them self-inflicted wounds and some of them still open wounds. I have no illusion. And so I wouldn't, in a way, I always appreciate someone saying you're a great reporter. I'd like to say, even in my 85th year, well, that's where I'm trying to be. I will say that as a very young person that I set as my navigational star, my polar star, to always be moving toward that I wanted to be a great world-class reporter. Right. How would you characterize the state of journalism today? Well, it's in a state of flux. Journalism today, particularly American journalism, but I think in many ways it applies worldwide. We're in a period of transition, in a very difficult period of transition. It's what I would call an inner regdum. That's a term, I'm not Catholic, but it's a Roman Catholic church term, which is very handy for describing where we are, which is the old order is dead or are going. Right. And the new order is not yet in place. So we're in this inner regdum, which is a very difficult period. And the core of it is, for a long time there was a business model that would support journalism that was targeted in the public interest and would finance even the most expensive kinds of journalism, deep digging investigative reporting and first class international reporting, what we used to call foreign news. Right. That business model is pretty much shot. And nobody, with very few exceptions, in fact, nobody's figuring on an ongoing sustained basis, what the new business model would be that could finance and sustain a business enterprise that, yes, makes money, if you will, but sees news in the public service, in the public interest, and can finance a worldwide news gathering organization. What's happened over the last 10 or 15 years, accelerated in the last few years, as we've moved into the digital age, is there's so many what used to be news gathering institutions have become news packaging institutions that place after place, whether it's some local television stations or network news organizations, or for that matter, once great newspapers will worldwide reach, they aggregate other people's news that other people have gathered now rather than gathering news themselves. The Huffington Post model, for instance. Yes. Yeah, and would you, if your grandchild came to you and asked if they should go into journalism, what would you, what would your advice be? Well, as a matter of fact, that question is pretty close to the bone, because I have a 19-year-old grandson who's just about done that. Well, I wouldn't discourage them, and I wouldn't encourage them. I would say the two things that even people who are not related to me, young students, I frequently say, well, the first thing is to determine whether you have the passion for it. Journalism isn't the only profession to craft, but it's one of the professions to craft that to succeed, whatever your definition of succeed may be, you must burn with a hot, hard flame to do it. You must almost see it as a mission in life, as your destiny to do it. And the reason for that is that it's very tough to get a start in journalism. It's very hard to make a living for a while in journalism. I know you're saying, well, Dan, you did all right, but that's true, but that's the exception. It's a version of what I would tell that grandson of a student asked. So you must ask yourself, do I have that passion? Realizing that journalism, it can be a great adventure, it can be a great career, but it's one that's gonna be held on relationships. Journalism is hard on family relationships, romantic relationships, any kind of relationships, because the story dominates and stories tend, sometimes they break on Christmas, New Year's, anniversary, birthday, childbirth times, all of those things, and you have to go and go. So first thing is, do you burn with a hot, hard passion to do it, or do you believe that you could develop that kind of passion? That's the first question. And the second question would be, are you prepared to dedicate yourself to a lifetime of trying to improve your writing? Because writing is the bedrock of the craft. And I don't say that to a young person who's interested in journalism, I don't want to discourage one who says, well, I don't write very well, so I probably shouldn't get in. I would say no, don't let that be a barrier, but just realize that you're gonna have to work very hard to become an increasingly better writer all the time. I'm still trying to make myself a better writer. So those two things are what I'd say to anyone, including my grandson who was interested. Right, when you look at the broad media landscape, we have more media outlets today than we've ever had. Where do you put social media, talk radio, things that are not traditional media outlets, media vehicles? How do you define the media landscape? I guess that's what I'm asking. Well, it's very hard to define it now because it's changing so rapidly that trying to define it, trying to get your head around it, if you will, and get it in some perspective and context, if maybe a word of mine, it's sort of like trying to change the fan belt on a moving Mercedes. That's just, you're constantly trying to shift with it. But in trying to answer your question, that things like talk radio, social media, I think can be an asset to a newest consumer, but only if you're prepared and can take the time to be very discerning. That not confined to talk radio or for that matter to social media. So much of what now is advertised as news is not news. It's not a news program. It's not intended to be. It's intended to be entertainment. If you stop and think about it, you see it all the time on cable television or radio, something that's built as, quote, a news program. What it is, in fact, designed to be and is, in fact, entertainment, people shouting at one another or dealing in the latest tabloid stories, whether they're important stories. But I don't want to digress from the point that perhaps this is a biased point of view and understandably because I am a journalist. But I think now more than ever, we need a definition of what is journalism, who is a journalist and who isn't. Because in the expanded media world that we're dealing with now, so many places advertising themselves as news outlets and what have you, that somebody needs to be the gatekeeper, if you will. Now, some people don't like the phrase gatekeeper. What it is, I'll use this analogy that if your car engine has some difficulty, you want an experienced train mechanic. You don't just call your neighbor over and say, listen, I hear a knock on my engine. Can you get underneath there and fix it? Or if you need to have surgery, you want somebody standing over you with a scaffold who's had those years of training and had experience. You don't want your Uncle Jake doing the surgery. Well, in the same way, I think some people need to be trained. Some people need to have the experience to earn the title of journalist and to work to have the title of journalism. But building that kind of respect in today's environment is extremely difficult. That might be a great dovetail into the current election. All right. Let me read a tweet from one of the candidates. I quote, if the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn't put false meaning into the words, I say, I could be beating Hillary by 20%. There is this illusion that, well, I don't know if it's an illusion, there has been talk for years and years and years about the liberal media. You hear something enough times and it becomes an article of faith. Is the media liberally biased in your view? I recognize I may have a bad one to ask. But because of so many people's perceptions, that my answer is no. I know widely believed it may be, but true it is not. For one thing, even the terms of liberal and conservative don't mean much anymore. What I learned early as a reporter is to ask people, I don't plead with people, give me a subject and I'll tell you where I stand. For example, when people say, Dan, you're the most liberal person I've ever run across. My mail runs this way sometimes. But I ask people, well, first of all, take a look at my biography, which is not the standard biography. For one thing, many people say, well, beginning your privilege person because you went to Harvard, I didn't go to Harvard, I went to Sam Houston State Teachers College, which has about as much IV unities as your average McDonald's. And I say that with some pride, not mainly to demigrate. But frequently people say, well, tell me where you do stand. Well, among other things, I'm for strong defense. I'm for clean air and water. And for tight money. Now, whatever that makes me, I guess that's what I am. But back to your question about liberal bias, I think what happens is, it has happened, this has happened over the span of my lifetime. When I first started in journalism, this idea that journalists were liberal or left wing, I was only beginning, it really began during the McCarthy period. What is true is that most journalists spend an apprenticeship developing in their craft and their profession in which you see a part of life that most people never see that is a beginning reporter. You see what happens at the police station after midnight on Saturday night. You see the emergency room at the charity hospital on any weekend. As part of your work, you go into neighborhoods where poverty is deep and abiding. You also go into meetings in which race, hatred is so deep you can almost literally cut through it. The point is that as a reporter in your apprenticeship, it's less true today than it used to be, it is still true. You see a kind of the Keynesian side of life that most other people never see, at least not an entirety. By the way, I even talked about war. I mean, to see the savagery, the madness of war up close and personal, not as a competitor but as an observer, you have these experiences. So there is a tendency to identify with the underdog. There is a tendency to very least to say, you know, folks, you need to pay some attention to this. And those who are opposed to that have to stick some label on you. So it became fairly popular first in the late 40s, early 50s, accelerated during the Nixon administration to say, if you call them liberal, that's a kind of dog whistle to people that they're leftist. And you know, maybe a little pink if not red. Right. And that caught on and it's taken root. But my experience with reporters, by and large, again, it may be hard to believe, but true it is. Most of the reporters I've worked with, including up to now, when I say they're apolitical, they're interested in politics, but they are rarely into partisan political acts of any kind. And as a matter of fact, sort of have a built-in antenna against partisan political activity of certain extreme sorts. And they're not ideological about things. But I sometimes think I'm preaching into a wind tunnel because the climate has been created where when Donald Trump says, what did you say, something about dangers and corrupt or whatever. Well, I guess someone else might say, I'm willing to accept Donald Trump as an authority on what's corrupt. But this is sort of standard fair because it is part of why Donald Trump has succeeded up to now. That is, he's been very good about taking the scent from a wide swath of American life where people are afraid, they're angry, they're resentful. In some cases, in too many cases, race is a factor. And they particularly, this is the swath of Americans. They are opposed to what they see as the elites. And so when any time Donald Trump can hang that sign around you, liberal elite, part of what needs to be changed, he thinks he's going to be banished. But you know my experience over the years we've been, as journalists, like everybody else that could have been through a lot, I can smile and say, I have tremendous faith in the American people to in the end, make the right decisions. Now, who knows who's going to win this election next Tuesday. I don't, I think it's still volatile. I still think it'd go either way. We can talk about that if you like. But you know, my experience was now getting to be a fairly long time. Is that the country is capable of making mistakes, even big mistakes, but overall in the main, we'll get it right. And my experience as a journalist is, let's face it, I've been accused of almost everything over the course of my time, which is an inevitable result of being on big stories. You cover the civil rights in the South in the 60s, you cover the Vietnam War, Watergate and so forth. You're going to have people call your names. But my experience has been that people pretty much sorted out. People figure out, when you make a mistake, they'll be quick to call your hand on it. But they also are quick to forgive if they think you're really trying to do quality work. The Trump is now blaming the media for his standing in the race. But to what extent is the media responsible for his political ascent? Well, I think the media, I prefer the word press, but I take the point that, I think the media, and I include myself in this, has a good deal to answer for in the rise of Donald Trump, particularly during the primary season. The reason for it is that they gave him almost, we gave him almost unfettered access of that he got by far the most free television time by a factor of 10, at least, that any candidate for the presidency has ever had. The last estimate I saw, he got about $2 billion, $2 billion worth of free airtime. Maybe that estimate is right or not. But back to the point, media has a lot to answer for by giving him unfettered access, overwhelming access to the airways. Now, they did so for understandable reasons. They did so for the money. I don't mean in future reporters, but the people who own the outlets of distribution, Donald Trump appearing on your air equaled immediate raising, ratings jump, right. Immediate ratings jump meant a raise in advertising rates, and it was about the money. With the possible exception of one of the television networks, I don't think anyone did this, gave him this overwhelming access to airtime. For any ideological or partisan political reason, I think it was about the money. So it has to answer that. I think this is a long list, and I'll keep it short as I can. But I think the media in general did far less investigative, really deep digging investigative reporting on the candidates, comparing what they said and what were facts, demonstrable facts, then it has been done. If there have been some exceptions to that, and I give the exception, but overall on the main, it's been take the easy way. If a candidate starts talking about the other candidate's sexual preferences, or then that's what we run with. If it's about emails, it's easy, but it's harder to dig it. So missing the deep digging investigative reporting and missing the tough questioning. Again, there have been some exceptions, but my enlarge, both of the two major candidates have escaped any really hard questioning, asking tough question, following up on tough question, and following up on that, until and unless it's clear, the candidate's going to answer it. And that applies to Donald Trump, but also Hillary Clinton hasn't held a news conference, I think, in close to two years. So the press is not on the job, I think, about asking these tough questions. But they also, it seems that treated Donald Trump with kid gloves, because they didn't want to alienate him, knowing full well that if they had him on their air, they would get those eyeballs, they would get those viewers, and they would get that advertising revenue. Do you think that they've, you've alluded to this, but I'll ask more directly, has the media treated Hillary Clinton responsibly? Well, I think it's a broad generality. I think they have done it responsibly. The problem areas are, in no particular order, one was becoming known as false equivalency. That for a very long time in the campaign, there have been some changes late in the campaign, but to this day, there's a tendency to say, Donald Trump hasn't paid his taxes in 19 years, whatever it is. If we're going to run that story, then we have to run a negative story about Hillary Clinton. So we'll run a story, this is hypothetical, about she stumbles getting into her limousine. So there has been some false equivalency, I think, applied on fairly a deal to Hillary Clinton. But again, I think it's very hard for the Clinton campaign to complain when they've tried to run a tightly controlled media operation in which the expose their candidate as little as possible to ground, to an environment in which they can have some control. But again, I don't want to engage myself in false equivalency here. That given his overall background, and while there has been some investigative reporting, I'll point to one thing specifically. This, what has happened with Vladimir Putin and the Russians involvement in aiding and abetting the leaking of information damaging to the Clinton side, however you come out on Trump and Clinton, this is very serious to have a foreign power, this deeply involved in trying to affect the outcome of an American election. I don't want anybody to walk out of here saying, well, Dan Rather's carrying Hillary Clinton's water for her. That's not the case. I think by any objective analysis, this fans, this folks is serious. What are the known facts on that? Now, in this week where the FBI director has chosen to release, including some new ones this very day, some new information about investigations done with the Clintons. On the other hand, what are the facts as the FBI knows them about the Russian case? I'm fairly deep into this, but I'm trying to make the point that I do think that Donald Trump overall and in the main, part of the keys to his rise have been free air time. Part of the key to his rise has been he's a master at social media and the Clinton campaign has had a lot of money and a lot of expert people running a social media. But Donald Trump has dominated social media pretty much the way he has dominated television. But the press is going to have a lot of questions to answer once the election over on all sides. Dan, put this election in context. Have we ever seen anything even remotely like this in your experience? No, not only I would argue. No, look, every presidential election is important. And every president's election is unique into itself. That's true. But this election, not only have I never seen anything like this, but no American going back for a 19th century, 18th century has seen anything like this. Well, okay, what's the supporting evidence of that? Well, in no particular order. First of all, although we have had nasty campaigns and nasty campaign practices before, never has such a low level of campaign discourse so much insubility, so much really terrible campaigning, negative campaigning been done on such a sustained basis. Yes, we've had campaigns before where people played dirty and people engaged in nasty campaigns. But I define defined any campaign in which it's been this down and low. Now, second thing, we've never, no presidential campaign in history has ever had each of the two nominees of the major parties with the negatives above 50%. There have been times when one party nominated a candidate who had fairly high negatives and the other medium negatives. But here, with each of the two major candidates, consistently and about this at least, the polls have been consistent, more than 50% of the population is negative about them. We've never had that happening before. And beyond that, other things that make it unique. And I don't leave any about this, you can accuse me of being opinionated. I would argue that by any reasonable analysis, this has been what I think the Wall Street Journal called, this is a garbage dump fire, the whole campaign. And the Clinton people frequently argue what was Trump people who started it, but that's an old, old game. And we have to be careful if we're gonna hold this Constitutional Republic based on the principles of freedom and democracy together, that this doesn't take hold to be the new normal, this campaign. What worries me most about the campaign, and I will say, you said, what makes it different? That I would argue, and I'm not the only one, although I don't think it's for each majority opinion, that we're very close to having reached it with this campaign, a post-truth political era. An era, a political era in which the truth doesn't matter, the facts don't matter. It's a, okay, we have to move beyond the truth. That's pretty scary for a country such as ours. If we in fact move deeply into a post-truth era, we're not gonna like what the future does. So one can say, maybe it'll be contains just this, but I think looking ahead, that's what to be alert to. That we simply can't, we shouldn't, we can't move into a complete post-truth political era, but I think we're very close with this campaign to have done that. So you have an electorate that is not motivated by the facts, but rather by passions, and we're seeing that in this race very clearly. So you've interviewed every president from Eisenhower forward, which is just absolutely astounding. You've seen presidents up close. Can the next president of the United States, whoever he or she is, can they unite this country given the passions run so deep? Well, I think the answer is yes, but I will confess, if confess it's the right verb, that I'm an optomist by experience and by nature. I think the next president of the United States, and I mean it, whomever is elected of the two finalists, has an opportunity to, as I like to say, to light a candle of hope, healing, and unity in the country. I do think this is, I think the majority of the country, by no means everywhere, I think the majority of the country is yearning for that. I think they're thirsting for that because I think they realize we need it. And a president has, among the presidential powers, is the power to persuade. And I do think if the new president sets her mind to it, it will not be easy. But I think understanding of, look, I'm elected by, to be president of all the people of the United States, because this is sort of hypothetical. If Donald Trump loses, he would still have gotten no fewer than 36%, no less than 36%, perhaps 40 to 42% more. And if Hillary Clinton loses, she will have gotten at least 42, 44% of the vote. My point is that there's a tendency, particularly when you've had a very low-load campaigns such as this, for the victory to say, okay, I want to deliver for my people. That would be particularly dangerous, I think, in this era, the president, the new president coming in must say, I've got to be president of all the people, work on healing, fueling hope, healing, saying, look, we must be united on the most important things. But we sit here in the Lyndon Johnson, the LBJ Library, at Lyndon Johnson, who was by no means a perfect person, nor was he a perfect president. But Lyndon Johnson got arguably the most important domestic legislation of the 20th century, certainly some of it passed, because President Johnson, and I'm not patting my part here, that was running quite a bit, and yes, I'm pleased to say without bragging, but knew him for a while. President Johnson, what made him effective, what made him a can-do president, insofar as he was, there'll always be Vietnam, but with domestic legislation, was he took the view with every single person that had a vote in the House or the Senate or anywhere he needed a vote. Okay, he sized up the person, then would actually talk to the person and the group, the person of it, and said, we disagree about 50 or 100 things, and we're not gonna get very far if we spend our time arguing about this. Can we, will you join me in finding one or two things where we can reach common ground and get something accomplice for our people? This was Lyndon Johnson that is best. There are plenty of examples of Lyndon Johnson in another context that is worse. My point is that in recent presidencies and in recent administrations, there's been, it's the combination of loss of desire to do it and the lack of ability to do it. Now one reason I'm optimistic about the new presidency, partly because I think we have to be optimistic, but also even a small return to that, I think would pay big dividends of saying, look, let's don't talk about the intractable things which we disagree. Can we find some common ground and let's concentrate on the common ground? For example, infrastructure, rebuilding infrastructure is a possible place for common ground between a Democrat and Republican. And I'll give it just as one example. So I understand that the new president can and should try to unite the American people. Actually, I'll take it back. Let me question the can. Assuming Hillary Clinton becomes president and that is an assumption. Can she unite the country when she has her vanquished opponent questioning the integrity of the voting system? Well, under your hypothetical, and I want to make it very clear that this is very hypothetical at this stage because I do think the race is very volatile. My own opinion is it still could go either way. But let's take your hypothetical. If the loser does that, it will make it extremely difficult for the new president to accomplish what out as possible. And this is a worst case scenario in many ways in which the loser says, well, it's illegitimate. They didn't win correctly. But again, I come back to confidence in people. Whining is not really an American character. And we have a lot of flaws, but that's generally not an eye character. And the player who complains about the ref's calls and the game being rigged by the cameras, they rarely get very far here. But there is some, I don't want to ask you a question, don't you question. There is some real danger if the tradition of losing presidential candidates, even in breathtakingly close elections, the 2000 election comes to mind. Al Gore won the total vote, but he lost also nearly in the electoral vote by losing in Florida. But after a certain amount of time, he did what his predecessors, his losers and presidential campaigns did, and then it spade and say, look, I don't like it. I may have my questions about it, but for the good of the country, we need to move on. So the winner takes over. But there is this danger and increasingly, Donald Trump has seen to leave the groundwork for doing that same thing. And also leaving the groundwork talks in terms of if we don't win, it's a revolution. That's not a direct quote. Certainly people around him were talking those terms. This is why, you know, it's a dangerous ground we're walking on here. Right. As a story, a journalist, yes, it's a very exciting time because it does make a difference who's elected this time. It'll make a big difference. But I think my base camp is take a deep breath, stay steady, let's see what happens over this next week. I won't put you on the spot by asking you to predict who the next president will be, but can you tell me what you think their gender might be? I think maybe transgender. Look, I don't mind playing the game with you. Thank you. If you had to bet your mother's back 40, which I hope you don't have to do, I still think you'd bet on Hillary Clinton. But things have narrowed down this week. The FBI director's releasing this email headline, which for the moment it all was a headline, it's hurt her, it's particularly hurt her in some key areas that she needs. But if you had to bet Hillary Clinton, but I hope you don't have to bet it because there is a possibility, I reckon it's a strong possibility, that there is a so-called silent vote for Trump that has not been heard from. I've never agreed to the phrase silent majority because that assumes a majority. But there may be, it may be in this election, a larger group of voters, particularly in some key states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, who just stay quiet because they think it's, may not be popular, maybe it doesn't seem to come out for Trump, we'll show up. But you know, last slide, it's gonna be, election night's gonna be fairly easy, I think, that if you see an early election night that Donald Trump has carried, Pennsylvania, then you're gonna say to yourself, we better put a pot of coffee on because this is gonna go a very, very long time and he could win. If on the other hand, in the early going, if you see that Pennsylvania is pretty clearly going for Hillary Clinton, if you're a Clinton fan, you can breathe not a complete sigh of relief, but say she's probably gonna win. You talked about Comey in the investigation. Donald Trump said today that email gate is worse than water gate, you covered water gate. We saw that wonderful clip of you and Richard Nixon in 1973. Is that a fair comparison? Look, without, look, he has no evidence. And again, I wanna, you know, I try hard to be respectful of both campaigns, but here's the case, when somebody says something that's demonstrably untrue, then it needs to be said, that's untrue. Right. Because he does not have one centella of evidence that what she has done with the emails at the worst is an impeachable offense. Right. So it's up to now, there's very little evidence of criminal events, but he could make it. But there's no evidence of that. But this is the kind of hyperbole that has lowered the race and this is by no means the worst that he has said or for that matter she has said. But again, I think most people recognize that for what it is. Yeah. His biggest problems are not statements like that, which on their face of them, you say, ah, I'm for Donald Trump, but that's pretty ridiculous. We can make a list of Hillary Clinton's biggest problems, including talking about deplorables, which was a telling mistake on that part. Right. But with Donald Trump, the disparaging John McCain and his war record, on television, mimicking and mocking a person with physical disabilities and how he handled the whole thing with the con family who lost his son in battle. I mean, these are the most telling negative things that Trump has done. Less so this business about emails. You know, for the life of me, I don't know how the emails in the end are going to cut. Right. Right now they put Hillary Clinton back on her heels. The momentum has gone to Trump. And so the atmospheric has been negative every day about Hillary Clinton and the emails. But keep in mind that in most states, somewhere between 30 and 40% of people who are going to vote have already voted. How much effect this last week and a half will have? It also raises the possibility that the Clinton people would try to, this is possible, the Clinton people would try to offset this by unloading something of their own in the last few days of the campaign. And you talked about that silent voter who might cast his or her vote for Donald Trump, but not want many people to know about it. Could you have the converse occur? Could you have, in your view, could you have the silent Hillary voter? Someone who says, you know, I'm in a Republican state or I'm in a Republican district. I don't want people to know this, but I'm going to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. Certainly could exist, particularly among women. Oh, that's, you know, get out. You know, try to have a look. Or, if Hillary Clinton has to win, the winning margin, the cumulative vote will meet up with a lot of different aspects, but the winning margin for Hillary Clinton will be suburban white women. Yeah. For Donald Trump, if he were to win, the winning margin will be among white males in the middle and below socioeconomic class. And I like to talk in terms of class, but nonetheless, when I say that Donald Trump has a path to victory, I agree it's a narrow path that there is a path. And that path, they pretty clearly outlined what they, the Trump people think the path is. And that is get a larger turnout and a larger percentage of white males at the polls that any Republican candidate has gotten and certainly more than Mitt Romney got to have a lower voter turnout among African-Americans. They know they're going to lose bigger than African-Americans, but they're just hoping against hope that the voter turnout with African-Americans will meet and that the voter turnout among people of Latino heritage will be low. That's what they see as a path to victory. The Clinton people see as their path, which is a wider path. Maybe they get fewer African-American heritage people voting for them than Obama did, understandably, but still get in the high 80% that the Latino vote, so-called turns out in bigger numbers than it has before, not necessarily the old one, and it's greater for her. And that she wins the battle for basically suburban women who tend to be Caucasian women. That's her path. Right. We're going to open up the mics for a couple of questions momentarily. And I would ask you to queue up now while I ask Dan this next question. Dan, what is the most important story you've covered in your career? I know that's a hard one. And it's been a long and prosperous career, but as you look back, what in your view is the most important story? Well, you've covered my caveat. Because I've been around a long time and because I've been lucky, five or six stories jumped on my mind, but always at least at the top was covering Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in the fairly early stages, 1962, 1963, when that was virtually my full-time job to cover him. It changed me as a person. It changed me as a professional. It literally changed my life. And as an ongoing story, a still not completely story, if you will, I can make a case of that for a story of a compact period of time, the Kennedy assassination, I think partly because it happened when I was just past 30 years old in a young time. But anytime you cover a war, it has to be when somebody asks you what's the most important story you've covered. Anytime you've covered, especially if it's your fellow countrymen and women fighting the war, it leaves a deep and lasting impression on you. But I can make another list, but if you ask me one, I'd have to say, I guess Dr. Martin Luther King asked if it was. Yeah. Let's take questions from the audience. And we'll start over here to my left. Yes, ma'am. Yes, excuse me. I heard on NPR today that you have a movie, a documentary premiering on Mark Cuban Network. Is that true or did I? I think what they must have been referring to, I didn't hear that particular broadcast, that we have finished a documentary that has in fact, what's tonight? Tonight's Tuesday. Yes, it's playing tonight. This is a one hour program, a little more than an hour program, which is called America Divided, The Rise of Trump, Subheaded, Donald Trump, How, Why, and Why You Should Care. And that's what I think they must have been referring to. It'll be broadcast on AXS, that's AXS TV, which is cable and satellite television. At least be broadcast there several times tonight and repeated during the week. If we can find another venue for it, we will do so. But that in question is what they were referring to. All right, thank you. Next question, yes ma'am. Yes, I'm Ginger Welcher Mitchell, and big fan of yours and your work and your talk tonight. My question is two part, what one little or big thing, what one thing would you do differently in your career or change if you could? And the second one is, I'm interested to know what being a Texan means to you. Are, you know, the Texas state of mind, our heritage, has that influenced you or had an effect on yourself or your career over the years? First of all, thanks for your compliment. And in answer to your questions, number one, there's a long list of things that I would do differently in the career. If I had to pick one, it would probably be, I was not for a long time as sensitive about my family responsibilities as I should have been. That in my zeal to make of myself a good reporter, even a great reporter, things like the first time I went through the Vietnam War, I stayed the better part of a year. And left my wife, Jean, in London, where we had been transferred only shortly before I went to Vietnam, but I left Jean in London where she knew very few people with two young children, aged six and four and a half, and stayed in Vietnam, I would say, for the better part of a year. You know, you don't get to play them over, but your question is what would I change? That, you know, I've tried to be as good a father as good a husband as I could be, but I know that there were times when I spent too much time on the road, too much time chasing stories, and not enough time at home. Now, thanks to Jean, both the children turned out very well, but you asked me, you know, you asked me what I'd change. That's one thing I would change. When I first came to work at CBS News, I mentioned the civil rights movement. I was home, the first year I worked for CBS, over a 12-month period, I was home 31 days out of the year. The second year I was with them, I was home 42 days out of the year. You can say, well, boy, that's dedication to your craft, but it's a little too much, and looking back on it, what would I change? I'd be more, I'd give the family more time, particularly in the children's early years, even if it meant passing on a good story. Now, as for being a Texan, quickly done, that I was advised, particularly when I came into the anchorage here at Succeeding Walter Cronkite, that I should dial it back on being a Texan. No, there were people who'd taken a big chance on me in the series, but what I had already found as being a fuel correspondent for 20 years is that a sense of home, a sense of place, a sense of where I belonged in the end and where I was going to be buried, where I was born, where I was going to be buried, all those long and, yes, lonely nights, plane rides across the Pacific or across the Atlantic into the depths of Africa or some place I'd ever been in Southeast Asia, it was very important to have a sense of place. In Texas, always was that sense of place for me. And that sense has meant a tremendous amount to me because when you travel as much as I have, if you aren't careful, you lose what I call your center of gravity or your gyroscope. It's very hard to, in the end, when you say, who am I, what am I, and where did I belong? If you aren't careful when you're traveling away from home for a long time, it's easy to lose a sense of that and always having a sense of being not just from Texas, but of Texas has helped me insofar as I've been able to do it whole myself together. Thank you. We respect you, thank you. Yes ma'am. Last question, yes sir. Yes, you mentioned that we are now in this post-truth era. People of my age have always regarded truth as sort of one of the highest callings and qualities of a politician. We seem to have moved totally away from that. Why do you think that has happened? Well that pauses because I'm not sure why it has happened. Just as an observer of the scene in somebody covering politics for a long time, I think it has happened, it isn't a process happening. I think some of it has to do with modern means of communication, which is to say, we have 24 hour a day, seven day a week television. Last time I tuned in my satellite television, I think I had four or 500 at least television channels. So I think it has something to do with the number of media outlets one has. But I also think we have to blame ourselves, which is we, we the people, as Lincoln would speak of them, you know, we've gotten a little cavalier about, well, you know, he's lying, or she's lying, but you know what, they're entertaining. Or well, yes, he or she is lying, but the other person is lying more. And frankly, I think collectively in societal terms, we've gotten lazy. So you say, why has it happened? One, we have a new breed of politician who is willing to in effect say, I don't care if you prove that I'm lying, I'm gonna keep saying it, because if I keep saying often enough, there gonna be enough people believe it. But as with the audience has been too much of a tendency, I wouldn't say led by journalist in general. Your journalist up until a certain point in this campaign were really low to call anybody a liar, or to say a lie was a lie. They'd say, well, he's a little lazy with the truth or something. So, you know, a combination of those factors, a new breed of politician who is, if you want to call it that way, gutsy enough or unconscionable enough to say, I don't care if they prove what I'm saying is untrue, I'm gonna keep saying it because enough people will believe it. And a press too slow to say what they know and press home the point that when the thing is a lie, there's a dictionary definition for a lie, when it's a demonstrable, unquestionable lie to call it such and to call the candidates hand on it. And the third, we have to blame ourselves with people who say we've gotten fairly used to it. I wanna emphasize, I'm not sure that we're completely in to a post-truth political era, but what I'm raising is we're pretty far into it, and if we don't put a stop to it right away, we'll be completely into it by the next presidential cycle. Thanks. Thank you. I'm going to, Dan, I'm gonna quote our questioner over here and who paid you a very high compliment and one that's very well deserved. We respect you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mark.