Dan Rather Slams CBS News Over Appointment of New Boss Bari Weiss
Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather has shared another ominous warning for the future of CBS News following Paramount CEO David Ellison’s hiring of Bari Weiss as the network’s new editor in chief.
Taking to his Substack page on Thursday (October 9), Rather wrote that it’s “a dark day in the halls of CBS News,” criticizing Ellison’s decision to hire Weiss, whom he said was “not a reporter” and “has never worked in television news.”
Weiss is known for founding The Free Press with her spouse, Nellie Bowles. The publication started life as a newsletter in 2021 before growing into an associated media company in 2022. Paramount Skydance acquired the site on Monday (October 6) and named Weiss as the new editor in chief of CBS News.
Rather, who previously slammed Paramount as bowing to pressure from the Trump administration in an effort to push its merger with Skydance through (which required FCC approval), said “That deal and the hiring of Weiss signals to everyone, especially to the man in the Oval Office, that CBS is no longer independent, but under the tutelage of a conservative billionaire who is putting more than his thumb on the scale.”
The veteran journalist shared his sympathies for reporters working at CBS News, saying they will “now have to be concerned about how their pitches, their stories, and their scripts will be received by someone with a clear political agenda. They will be dogged by worry that anything they do, any question they ask, will be scrutinized to ensure that it suits the political powers.”
He said “anything that runs afoul of Trump’s agenda” is unlikely to be aired “unaltered,” if aired at all. “No journalist or their work can remain unaffected by toiling in such an environment,” Rather added.
Summing up his thoughts, Rather, who worked for CBS News for over 44 years, predicted that the “American people will pay the price for this move, as will the journalists of CBS News who can no longer credibly serve as watchdogs because the ones they are meant to hold to account are signing their paychecks and hobnobbing with the president.”
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Leave it to Dan Rather to be a voice of TRUTH!!
He’s hit the nail right on the head!!
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Dan Rather was good in the early days. Went too far left.
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Danny is still alive???
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This is a business move, plain and simple: when a center-left journalist leaves the New York Times (with one of the single best written resignation letters in human history) and starts a completely new news hub and ONLY 5-6 YEARS LATER sells it for $150M (while MSM hubs both online and on cable can barely keep the lights on), it's clear that there is a market for what Weiss & co. at the Free Press are up to. Maybe Weiss is just catering to a certain market; maybe she's just a "sellout" to a certain sort of reader--you know, one of "those people." Fair enough. But maybe that market is predominantly characterized by people for whom the MSM has ever so sadly lost significant credibility (not an opinion, a statistical fact), people who, God forbid, aren't completely mindless sheep but who enjoy SIGNIFICANT diversity of opinion (a weird concept, I know), people who think that we humans have bonds that run deeper than politics and therefore aren't in the least afraid (and perhaps even eager) to be part of a conversation with "different" people who seriously yet civilly disagree with them (also, sadly, a weird concept).
Imho, Mr. Rather could've more fruitfully directed his critique elsewhere--namely, at the all-important journalistic institutions in America that have lost so much credibility, to the point where many Americans read what they say and simply assume that the opposite is probably the real truth, who see the vitriol against Trump and conclude he's doing a good job.
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They’ve lost credibility among a segment of the population because of a decades long campaign by the right to take away their power to present the truth. I’m old enough to have watched it happen. The refrain of calling the moderate, nonpartisan press “liberal”, as if covering both sides was wrong has been going on for a long time. Then Fox News (who always says they’re an entertainment channel when they’re sued for lying) comes along and is unabashedly partisan. But that’s ok??? The hypocrisy of the right never ends. Take off Fox News, and then I will believe that the issue is the media is too partisan. Otherwise, it’s plain to see that the critics of the main stream press want it to be more right leaning, and not upset that they think it’s picked a side. They just don’t like the side it picked. Do we really need more Fox Newses?
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Where was Rather's angst when CBS was in bed with the Biden administration, as well as previous Democrat administrations?
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Dan Rather did the news when I was in high school and when he disappeared, I didn't notice or care. Someone mentioned that he had made a bizarre comment recently. Since I thought he was dead, I looked him up and found that he was not what I remembered. Apparently the 1980's was where he left his integrity, honesty and unbiased reporting - otherwise known as journalistic professionalism - to take up bad political activism and being a vile human being to all that came in contact with him. I will pray for the soul of his wife.
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