Connie Chung slams former CBS co-anchor Dan Rather’s ‘bias regarding women’ in tell-all memoir
Connie Chung accused her former CBS News co-anchor Dan Rather of having an “inherent bias regarding women” and of complaining to colleagues that she was a “second-rate journalist,” according to her new tell-all book.
Chung — the first Asian American woman to anchor a major network news broadcast — said Rather was condescending from the start after CBS brass paired them in 1993 as his ratings slumped.
“I’ll cover the stories out there in the field, and you read the teleprompter,” Chung quotes him as telling her in her memoir, “Connie,” which was released Tuesday.
He also told the trailblazing journalist, who had interviewed world leaders and US lawmakers as host of the Sunday talk show “Face the Nation,” that she would have to “start reading the newspaper,” Chung said.
During their tumultuous two years together on the “CBS Evening News,” Rather was “wound tight and had no sense of humor,” with “an inherent bias regarding women,” she writes.
“My guess is that even if they put a dog, a cat or a plant” as his co-anchor, “it wouldn’t have made any difference,” added Chung, who is married to former talk show host Maury Povich.
“I just happened to be the recipient of, uh, his fertilizer that was being sprayed all over me.”
Rather led a whisper campaign among TV critics and journalism colleagues to smear Chung’s name — saying her journalism abilities weren’t up to par, she wrote.
Chung, 78, cited an earlier memoir by correspondent Bernard Goldberg in which Rather “spent hours and hours on the phone with TV writers, blasting Connie Chung as a second-rate journalist” during her coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
Rather was on vacation at the time and seethed to the The New York Times that being on the sidelines as she reported from the scene “was like trying to swallow barbed-wire-wrapped ball bearings,” Chung wrote.
Shortly after the terror attack, Rather gave CBS president Peter Lund an ultimatum and Chung was ousted soon after, she claimed.
Rather denied having anything to do with her exit.
“Nobody has heard a critical comment from me about Connie” and her removal “came as a surprise to us,” he told the Washington Post at the time.
The Post reached out to Rather for comment.
Chung — whose decades-long career also included stops at ABC, CNN and MSNBC — claimed Rather’s alleged sexist attitude toward female journalists was rampant throughout the industry.
“Many men in television news, especially those who became anchormen, contracted a disease: big-shot-itis,” Chung wrote.
“It was characterized by a swelling of the head, an inability to stop talking, self-aggrandizing behavior, narcissistic tendencies, unrelenting hubris, delusions of grandeur and fantasies of sexual prowess.”
Chung said she spent much of her career working with white men, or in rooms surrounded by them.
Sexism followed her throughout her career and critics were eager to point out any mistakes.
A 1995 interview with Newt Gingrich’s mother — whose son was then the new House speaker — turned sour thanks to a network decision, Chung wrote in her memoir.
During the interview, Gingrich’s mother told Chung that she could not say what her son thought about then-first lady Hillary Clinton. Chung told her to whisper the answer in her ear.
Gingrich’s mother whispered that her son had called Clinton a b-tch, and Chung’s mic picked it up.
CBS aired that whisper as a standalone clip — which made it seem like Chung had tricked Gingrich’s mother and sparked debates over whether Chung should have left the quote off the record.
The scandal became known as “B-tchgate” throughout the television industry. Chung said she wished she had insisted CBS back her up then, but she did not.
She dealt with sexual harassment from colleagues and subjects throughout her career.
At 25, she was assigned to cover the presidential campaign of Sen. George McGovern, who tried to kiss her in a dark hallway, she told USA Today.
Former President Jimmy Carter once pressed his leg against hers at a dinner “and then he looked at me and smiled,” she told USA Today.
Chung said she had to develop “armor” to deal with her sexist colleagues.
“I decided I’d be a guy,” she told the “Today” show. “I would have bravado, I’d have moxie, I had a bad, sassy mouth.”
