Tributes won't tell all of Rather's story

I miss Dan Rather already.
Now that his departure from CBS is not only official, but imminent, the broadcast journalist with 44 years at CBS News is getting his final perfunctory network salutes: a brief tribute on Tuesday night's "CBS Evening News" and a scheduled retrospective special this fall.
Those belated, perhaps even grudging, tips of the hat are not likely, however, to tell the whole story.
Sure, any decent summary of Rather's career as a news reporter, correspondent and anchor will cover certain obvious historical touchstones.
Looking back
There's Rather the radio reporter in 1963, scrambling to be the first to confirm reports of the death of President John F. Kennedy. Rather the TV reporter at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, jostled so much by local authorities on the convention floor that anchor Walter Cronkite exclaimed, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."
There are the fiery moments of unforgettable confrontation: Rather standing up to President Richard Nixon at a 1974 press conference. Rather interviewing Saddam Hussein before each of two wars involving Iraq, and, less effectively but no less memorably, questioning then-Vice President George H.W. Bush live on "The CBS Evening News" in 1988. Most bravely and brilliantly, there was Rather in China in 1989, fighting to stay on the air while reporting about Tiananmen Square.
Those career watermarks will be recorded, no doubt, along with "Gunga Dan" reporting from Afghanistan in 1980, earlier expose-the-scam-artist pieces on "60 Minutes" and, later, lengthy anchor stints during the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters.
The discredited 2004 report about George W. Bush's Air National Guard service, presented by Rather, was a low point that can't be ignored. Conversely, his stalwart anchor duty as the horrors of 9/11 unfolded, like those of ABC's Peter Jennings and NBC's Tom Brokaw, was a career-high triumph.
Moving on
But Jennings is dead, Brokaw is retired, and now Rather is gone, too, prematurely leaving the network that wants him out of the way so a younger anchor, Katie Couric, can spread her wings. It's a karma-laced, cyclical finish for Rather, whose hiring crowded out Cronkite from doing much for CBS once Rather succeeded him on "The CBS Evening News."
Rather had the power and disposition, during his tenure, to rail against both the reduction and misuse of resources at CBS News. Those were the fights, battling for high journalistic standards and to protect his turf when paired briefly with Connie Chung, that any CBS tribute is unlikely to mention.
But, like Rather himself, they should not soon be forgotten.
David Bianculli writes for the New York Daily News.