Note: On April 16, 2001, Dan Rather delivered a lecture at Brown University. The CBS news anchor answered questions after his speech regarding his views about large corporate ownership of news organizations, Deep Throat, partisan bias in the news, Election 2000, and media reporting on the private lives of politicians.

A. It is different at each place.... At CBS, we have an effective wall between the news division and the corporate entity. It has not been perfect. It has been by far the most effective of anybody's network news operation in keeping the corporate side of things separate from news. Honest people can differ on whether that broke down on the case of Brown-Williamson and the tobacco case. I am here to say that while it has been very good at CBS News and continues in my opinion to be good, it is not perfect. When there is a lot of money on the table, when the corporate ownership decides there is something overriding, usually a monetary reason, the danger grows that they will break what has been our tradition, our history, and say in this particular case, there needs to be an exception....You are right to raise the question because as the ownership gets larger and we move to an era where the ownership of any network has to think internationally, the danger of this wall that exists between the decision-making process for news and the decision-making process for the corporation, the danger of the wall being breached and even disappearing is great. I wouldn't kid you about that. Having said that, the entire time I have been at CBS News, which is now almost 40 years, there has been only one case on a story I covered myself in which I found out after the fact that there had been enormous pressure on the corporate side and that some of that pressure had seeped over the wall into the news. That was during the Watergate period, when our president Richard Nixon became what a grand jury said was an un-indicted co-conspirator in a widespread criminal conspiracy. That is the only occasion when there has been any seepage in the wall.

A. I have no idea.

A. Yes. If I did not make that clear in my earlier comments, let me make it exquisitely clear now. That goes through all of my prepared remarks. I am responsible. I am accountable. I am not an excuse-maker. I am not someone who minimizes my own mistakes and those of CBS News. Let me put it into two categories because you did. One is the blurring of the line between entertainment and news values. Yes, I have been guilty of that. I am very hard on myself. I want you to clearly understand that my answer on that is yes. I am guilty, I make my mistakes, I am accountable. Make of it what you will and if you reach the point where you really don't like it, there is a dial that you can twist. The second half of your question had to do with what you perceive as political bias. I have no argument, but I would argue with words such as taunt. You make your judgment. You saw it as a taunt. I saw it as an effort to crack through and to try and get the president of the United States in what he said, to reconcile differences between what President Nixon said and what the demonstrable record showed. I put that in the category of that is what reporters are supposed to do. As to President Bush, I saw my job as to ask questions that he did not want to be asked in hopes of getting answers that he had not yet given on the particular subject of Iran-Contra, still has not given. You have your views of where you think my politics are. You are entitled to your views. You are entitled as a viewer. I have made my mistakes. Now you mentioned one other thing, my showing up at a Democratic fundraiser for which I have taken justifiable criticism in recent days. That was a mistake. I have apologized for it. I will go on from there.

A. It is not my opinion that the way we cover election night affects the outcome of the election. This year, we made some serious mistakes. Unfortunately for us, the worst mistakes we made happened in the worst possible place, the state that turned out to be decisive. The mistakes that we made were not emphasizing enough what we know to be true, which is that we make estimates. When we say George Bush carries Louisiana, that is an estimate. No one knows until the votes are counted. We need to repeat that hour after hour, which we don't do. At CBS News, we have called something like 30,000 national races since exit polling came in during the 1960s. Our record is the best in the business. We don't have the best in the business record on everything, but on this, we do. I believe we have called them wrong 14 times out of 30,000. So statistically, we have been very good. That does not take away from the inaccuracy of this election night in this particular place. We had lulled ourselves into believing the statistics....The information we put out early in the evening was flawed. We should have caught it and we didn't. Whether it changed the outcome of the election or not, I would like to give a definite answer. But in all candor, I don't know. I have heard no persuasive evidence that has convinced me that it made any difference in the election whatsoever. But I respect those who have a different view.

A. That is a good question and a fair question. One of the important things I have learned is tolerance for other people's points of view. I didn't come into the world with great tolerance for other people's of view. Quite honestly, when I was younger, I didn't always have tolerance for other points of view. I can't emphasize too much that it is important to listen. I don't always listen and I don't always take seriously other people's points of view, but I am a lot better at it now than I used to be. The other area I have found is that a lot of problems with interpersonal relationships, whether they are friendships, romance, or professional relationships is that frequently difficulties are rooted in unexpressed expectations. When someone has expectations of you, you disappoint them even when they are not expressed. They become unexpressed and unmet expectations. So often in life, that happens. What happens if you say I never knew that, I never knew you expected that of me. You never expressed it. They say, well, I thought it. I thought it was obvious. For whatever it may be worth, the longer I go, the more I know that unexpressed and unmet expectations are a great tap root of difficulty in interpersonal relationships.

A. I'm not sure where we are going. It is impossible for me to believe it is going to continue to be as it is. There have been significant improvements in the number of women on the air. My personal opinion is that the problem for women and minorities is not breaking onto the air, but getting to the highest levels of decision-making. I think you are going to see differences in the future and a lot more diversity.

A. I have changed my opinion on this over the years. I don't think it should be nearly as much as it has been over the last 15 years, but I also don't think it is going to change. Those of us in the news have a lot to answer for. What has happened has been that entertainment values have overwhelmed news values. The concentration of celebrityhood is a big piece of it. When you report on celebrities, you need very personal stuff. Once you begin doing that, others do it too. I try to draw a line. In my nirvana, I would draw the line well below where it now stands. Let me give you a taste of what used to be taught in journalism school. I try to use an example other than sexual preferences or sexual life. If someone in U.S. Senate drinks a lot and you know he drinks a lot, should you report it. Should you tell his constituents that Jim Jones is an outstanding Senator, but he drinks a lot and most of his colleagues thinks he drinks too much. There was a time when the line was does it affect his work. If he appears in the well of the Senate and is obviously intoxicated, that affects his work and therefore should be reported. But if his drinking problem does not affect his work, then you don't report. Now that has changed. Now it is considered that you should report it. If he drinks a lot, you should report it and people should know that. These are the things that we struggle with ourselves. I have less appetite for the personal lives of people. I have far greater appetite for what they do in their work. But I do recognize that the line slides ever more in the direction of reporting it. As a consequence, I and the media do report it. I wish I could say to you that I thought this would pass. I suspect that it won't.