CBS wouldn’t invite Dan Rather to remember the JFK assassination for its 2013 anniversary coverage. “No loss,” said former CBS producer Michael Rosenblum in a guest column at The Hollywood Reporter. Rosenblum was Robert Pierpoint’s producer at “Sunday Morning.”
“As Rather was not invited to participate in the 50th anniversary, Bob Pierpoint was not invited to participate in the 25th anniversary,” despite being at the center of the story that dark day in Dallas for CBS. Someone sitting in the anchor chair in 1988 was an egotistical jerk, brushing his colleague out of CBS history's frame.
Rosenblum recalled:
But never once, in any of that Special Broadcast, did Dan Rather even once have the courtesy to mention Bob Pierpoint's name.
So I will mention it here -- just to keep the record straight...
Twenty-five years ago, as CBS News broadcast its Dan Rather-dominated 25th anniversary special of the same event, I was in the home of Bob Pierpoint, CBS News' White House correspondent in Dallas the day JFK was killed. I was Pierpoint's producer at CBS' Sunday Morning. The veteran journalist told me what happened on Nov. 22, 1963.
Pierpoint had been assigned to follow the president, as he usually did, for CBS News. When the presidential party arrived in Dallas, Pierpoint said that they told him that the "local guy, someone named Rather," would be there to help out. And, as the motorcade made its way into Dealey Plaza,
Rather was sitting next to Pierpoint in their car, a bit behind the presidential limo.
As the shots were fired, the motorcade came to a halt. There was general pandemonium. Both Rather and Pierpoint bolted from the car. Pierpoint heard that shots had been fired and that Kennedy might have been hit. He said he looked for Rather, but "Dan had vanished." So Pierpoint commandeered a passing car.
"Take me to Parkland Hospital," Bob told the driver, and they sped off, leaving Dan behind.
At Parkland, Pierpoint, ever the reporter, made his way into the emergency room. There, he grabbed a nurse. She was sobbing.
"Tell me what happened," he said.
"He's dead," she cried.
"Are you sure?"
She nodded.
He confirmed it with someone else. Then, he raced for a phone and called the CBS newsroom in New York. "The president is dead," he reported. He broke the story.
In New York, Walter Cronkite reported the story to the world.
And Dan? "He had gone back to the Dallas CBS bureau, had them fire up the cameras and waited," so Bob said. "He really understood TV."
