When Walter Cronkite retired in 1981, Rather was promoted the news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, Rather was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. Within a year of Brokaw\'s retirement and Jennings\' death, Rather also left the anchor desk following a controversy in which he presented forged documents during a news report on President George W. Bush\'s Vietnam-era service in the National Guard; Rather left CBS Evening News in 2005. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he left the network after 44 years.\n', '

Rather currently anchors a newscast called The News with Dan Rather at The Young Turks and was previously managing editor and anchor of the television news magazine Dan Rather Reports on the cable channel AXS TV. He also contributed to CBS\'s 60 Minutes.\n', '

Dan Irvin Rather, Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather, Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston, where Dan attended Love Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston. In 1953, he earned a bachelor\'s degree in journalism from Sam Houston State University where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. At Sam Houston, he was a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston, which would later award him an honorary Juris Doctor in 1990. In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego but was soon discharged because he omitted disclosing that he had rheumatic fever as a child.\n', '

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