Connie Chung accused her former CBS News co-anchor Dan Rather of having an “inherent bias about women” and complaining to colleagues that she was a “second-rate journalist,” according to her new book “tell all”.
Chung — the first Asian-American woman to anchor a major network newscast — said Rather was grateful from the start after CBS brass paired them in 1993 after his ratings slumped.
“I’ll cover the stories out there on the ground, and you read the teleprompter,” Chung quotes her as saying in her memoir, “Connie,” which was released Tuesday.
He also told the trailblazing reporter, 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 paper,” Chung said.
During their two tumultuous years together at the CBS Evening News, Rather was “closely wound and had no sense of humor,” with “an inherent prejudice about women,” she writes.
“I think even if they put a dog or a cat or a plant” as his co-host, “it wouldn’t have made a difference,” added Chung, who is married to former talk show host Maury Povich.
“I just became the recipient of his manure being sprayed on me.”
Instead, it led a whispering campaign among TV critics and journalism colleagues to tarnish Chung’s name — saying her journalistic skills 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 television writers, dismissing Connie Chung as a second-rate reporter” during her coverage of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings.
Instead was on vacation at the time and told The New York Times that being on the sidelines while she reported from the scene “was like trying to swallow ball bearings wrapped in barbed wire,” Chung wrote.
Shortly after the terrorist attack, Rather issued an ultimatum to CBS president Peter Lund, and Chung was ousted soon after, she claimed.
On the contrary, he denied having anything to do with her exit.
“No one 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 was directed 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 anchors, got 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, incessant arrogance, delusions of grandeur, and fantasies of sexual prowess.”
Chung said she spent most of her career working with white men, or in rooms surrounded by them.
Sexism dogged 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 incoming speaker of the House — went sour thanks to a network decision, Chung wrote in her memoir.
During the interview, Gingrich’s mother told Chung that she couldn’t say what her son thought of then-first lady Hillary Clinton. Chung told her to whisper the answer in his ear.
Gingrich’s mother whispered that her son had called Clinton a b-tch, and Chung’s microphone picked it up.
CBS aired that whisper as a stand-alone clip — which made it look like Chung had misled Gingrich’s mother and sparked debate 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 that CBS back her then, but she didn’t.
She faced sexual harassment from colleagues and subjects throughout her career.
At age 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 her at a dinner party “and then he looked at me and smiled,” she told USA Today.
Chung said she had to develop “armour” to deal with her sexist colleagues.
“I decided I was going to be a boy,” she said on the “Today” show. “I’d have bravado, I’d have moxie, I’d have a foul mouth and a tough one.”
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