This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science. It’s, on its best day, is a crude art. We make mistakes I make mistakes. With more than 50 years as a journalist, I have at least had the opportunity to blow more stories, make more mistakes than maybe anybody in television.

Rather frames journalism as an imperfect, human craft rather than a laboratory-grade discipline. By calling it a “crude art,” he emphasizes judgment, narrative shaping, and the inevitability of error under deadline pressure and incomplete information. His repeated admission—“I make mistakes”—functions as both accountability and a critique of unrealistic expectations that journalists can be flawlessly “objective” or always correct. The reference to a half-century in television underscores that experience does not eliminate fallibility; it merely increases the number of decisions made in public view. The quote ultimately argues for humility, transparency, and continual correction as core professional virtues.