FIRST PERSON

Dan Rather On The Days Of Gavel-To-Gavel Coverage

As Told To Lisa Caruso

Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008


First PersonBroadcast journalists remember the days when they covered the conventions live from gavel to gavel--and they had real news to report and big scoops to score.
• Bob Schieffer
• Dan Rather
• Cokie Roberts
• Ted Koppel

My first Republican convention was 1960, when they nominated Nixon in Chicago. I was working with a veteran cameraman named Bob Wolfe for Corinthian Broadcasting, and we were shooting the Goldwater protesters. He said to me, "If Nixon doesn't win [the general election], they'll be the ones in charge next time." I gave him a look like only a young reporter could, like "just shoot the scene and skip the analysis." And, of course, he was right. That was also the convention where I dressed up as a waiter to sneak into a reception for the vice president [Nixon]. My cameraman stood at the door of the kitchen. We ended up getting several long shots of Nixon greeting supporters, and Dan Rather looking ridiculous standing off to the side trying to find something useful to do. I have to admit it was not one of my better moments.

At the 1976 convention in Kansas City, President Ford originally wanted [William] Ruckelshaus [former head of EPA and the FBI] as his vice president because he thought he needed a Catholic on the ticket. Remember, we're covering the convention live all the way through, and it got to be 2, 2:30 in the morning, and he still hadn't chosen a vice president. Finally they announced, at 4:30 in the morning, that it was [Bob] Dole. It turns out that Ruckelshaus, who was working at the paper company Weyerhaeuser at the time, was on a camping trip out West and they couldn't reach him. But we didn't know that at the time. We were all sitting there outside the room looking at each other as if to say, "What the hell is going on in there?" The great New York Times political reporter Johnny Apple had a source on the inside--I think it might have been [former Defense Secretary] Melvin Laird, but I don't know for sure--who told him it was Ruckelshaus. And it was getting close to his deadline, so Apple went with it and it ended up as a banner headline on the front page of The New York Times the next day that Ford had picked Ruckelshaus. My God, was Apple mad. He was livid. He used words that even in my short career as a marine I had never heard before.

In 1992 in Houston, which is my hometown, I was anchoring the conventions by then, and I anchored from the floor rather than from the booth, which was the tradition. But I had some trouble from the very conservative element of the party, who were out there on the floor with signs that said "Rather Biased." The local [CBS] station, KHOU-TV, where I had been news director and anchor before going to CBS, quickly put some signs up that said "Rather Proud." I really appreciated it. It was a very kind thing of them to do.

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