Legendary journalist Dan Rather was honored with the Peabody Career Achievement Award for his six decades of journalism this morning in a video from country music legend Dolly Parton. Rather spent 25 years as the evening news anchor for CBS starting in 1981, and was selected by the Peabody Board of Jurors for his ability to translate the news in the U.S. and around the world, even its scariest, most tragic events, into a digestible format for the average viewer. He joins an exclusive list of winners, including Carol Burnett, Rita Moreno, Cicely Tyson, and Sam Pollard.
Rather is no stranger to the Peabody Awards, racking up a fair number of them over his career, along with a few Emmys. Before all that though, he came from humble beginnings, starting as a local reporter in Houston working on the radio and in print before being hired on as a member of the CBS affiliate in Houston, KHOU-TV, in 1960. It only took a year before he became a national name, as he helped save thousands of lives when Hurricane Carla by showing the first radar image of a hurricane overlaying a map, which convinced over 350,000 people to evacuate the area.
He’d go on to provide pivotal coverage of John F. Kennedy‘s assassination, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Watergate, the Cold War, and 9/11, helping Americans through some of the country’s most trying times. Over his storied career, he interviewed every president from Eisenhower onward. In more recent years, Rather would lead Dan Rather Reports for HDNet and The Big Interview on AXS TV before making the jump to production. As the head of News and Guts, he aims to keep producing high-quality, non-fiction content across all formats that maintain the same integrity he practiced throughout his career.
Jeffrey Jones, the executive director of the Peabody Awards, released a statement commemorating the occasion and celebrating the career of one of television’s most iconic journalists:
Dan Rather’s remarkable career—from local news reporter and international correspondent to network anchor—is a textbook example not just of what quality reporting looks like, but how journalists serve democracy well. Spanning over six decades, Rather helped viewers understand and interpret some of the most traumatic historical events in our nation’s history, from the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War to 9/11 and more. We are happy to call attention to and celebrate his life’s work.
While Rather was the main focus, the Russian news outlet TV Rain (known as Dozhd in Russia) was also honored with the Peabody Journalistic Integrity Award. The honor is given to outlets that maintain high journalistic standards and integrity despite the troubles surrounding them. For TV Rain, that meant standing as the last remaining independent television channel and journalistic critic to Vladimir Putin after more and more were shut down in favor of state-run media. Its final broadcast was an act of defiance in the face of the war with Ukraine, with all the staff walking off while anchors simply stated “no war.” Started in 2010 by Natalya Sindeyeva, the independent station had long been an ardent opponent of the president and faced numerous roadblocks from the Kremlin, but never sacrificed its criticism.
In keeping with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Board of Jurors also commended the journalists and filmmakers that risked and, for some, sacrificed their lives to capture the events of the war. A number of journalists have died in capturing the humanitarian crisis, including Peabody-winning documentarian Brent Renaud, The Insider correspondent Oksana Baulina, and Fox photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski and fixer Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, among many more. Jones spoke on these brave journalists, saying, “We honor these courageous storytellers killed in their line of duty to bring the truth to the world, not just in Ukraine, but in India, Mexico, the Philippines, and globally.”
The 82nd Annual Peabody Awards will take place over multiple days virtually, from June 6 to June 9. During the celebration, 30 separate winners will be named in a number of categories ranging from entertainment to news and integrity.
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