Barely three days after the death of President Reagan, Dan Rather was telling The Philadelphia Inquirer that "??¢â???¬ ¦life does go on. There is other news, like the reality of Iraq. It got very short shrift this weekend." He predicted that the funeral events would be "over-covered."
Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings were more cautious in commenting on the coverage, but neither was willing to let much time pass before unleashing the criticism of Reagan.
"The Reagan legacy has some scandals - Iran-contra, his failure to recognize early on the AIDS epidemic. He made some controversial appointments," Brokaw said.
Jennings justified the criticism, saying, "If we waited for the president to be buried before doing a critical analysis, the world would move on quite a bit."
