Dan Rather is a legendary figure in journalism. He was on CBS Evening News for over two decades. He has also been on 60 Minutes and 48 Hours.
He has given his opinion on The Donald via a Facebook post. Trump actually called a press conference yesterday to bash the press. He called Tom Llamas from ABC News a “sleaze.” Here are some of his classically mean one-liners from the speech:
“I think the media is, frankly, made up of people [who] in many cases — not in all cases — are not good people.”
“The press is so dishonest and so unfair.”
He said these things to avoid questions about the veterans’ fund raiser incident.
Here is a taste of what Rather wrote about the incident:
“This is a dirty, nasty election. And it is only going to get worse. The reporters in the trenches need no lecture from me. They are walking through daily minefields, bracing themselves against the winds of discontent whose effects no one can predict.”
Rather gives his fellow journalists some encouraging words in the post as well. He said, “[the] pen is still mightier than the sword.” He also said good journalism requires reporters who will not, “back up, back down, back away or turn around.”
During Trump’s entire campaign, he has gotten lots of news coverage over banning Muslims, calling Mexicans rapists, building a wall, and many other wacky things.
Another longtime reporter, Al Sunshine, has also complained about the modern media. He worked over 40 years in the media. He said:
“In this day and age, many news departments are more interested in maintaining the status-quo of their sales teams than being known for aggressive, hard hitting political reporting.”
Rather is no stranger to “nasty” elections. In 1968, he was covering the Democratic Convention and got physically assaulted in the process. You can see in the video where Rather actually got punched in the stomach.
Featured image by Peabody Awards via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
