Rather Rips Moonves in Fox News Interview
Former CBS Anchor Defends Comments About Successor Katie Couric
By Steve Donohue -- Multichannel News, 6/12/2007 1:11:00 PM
Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather criticized CBS president Les Moonves Tuesday during an interview on Fox News Channel, saying he believes the lines between entertainment and news at CBS “have disappeared.”
“These days, [CBS leaders] don’t know what hard news is -- the top corporate leadership. They know about entertainment, but they don’t know about news.”
Rather’s interview on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto came one day after he criticized CBS of “dumbing it down, tarting it up” in reference to its evening-news program, now hosted by Katie Couric. Rather’s comments came during an interview on MSNBC.
Moonves shot back at Rather Tuesday, calling his comments “sexist.”
“She’s been on the air for nine months. Let’s give her a break,” Moonves said during an event hosted by Syracuse University in New York.
Rather defended his comments about CBS and Couric during the Fox News interview, insisting that Moonves was trying to “change the subject,” which Rather said was the blurring line between entertainment and news at CBS.
CBS and other news outlets spend too much time covering stories such as Paris Hilton’s jail sentence, Rather told Fox News host David Asman.
“I think that there is an audience for quality news of integrity, including on the evening news. And there is no empirical evidence that, by dumbing it down, by going with the Paris Hilton story, by softening things up, that it attracts younger audiences. There’s no evidence for that,” Rather said. “But the corporate leadership, people such as Les Moonves, believe that. And they put the pressure on down below. And that is -- the result is what we have now, which is not a good result.”
No related content found.
Featured Company
-
Telestream
Telestream products are used by the world's leading media and entertainment companies and corporations for transcoding and workflow automation. Telestream helps customers transform their media for multiplatform distribution to web, mobile, DVD, cable VOD, podcast and broadcast pl..more
VIEW ALL GALLERIES
