Longtime CBS Evening News anchor and regular 60 Minutes contributor Dan Rather does not like what he sees happening at — and to — his old employer.
Before David Ellison bought Paramount Global and merged it with his Skydance (forming Paramount Skydance), there were “several instances in which the previous owners … tried to sort of dictate what kind of news comes on — even on 60 Minutes,” Rather told Andy Cohen on Cohen’s SiriusXM radio show.
Inside of CBS News, 60 Minutes is considered a sacred vehicle for journalism. Or rather, it was considered that.
But then Shari Redstone, who previously controlled Paramount through her family’s National Amusements, began to apply pressure to the editorial slant inside of CBS News and its famed newsmagazine program. Basically, the program needed to back off Trump (and the network had to settle a lawsuit with him). In protest, Bill Owens resigned as executive producer of 60 Minutes, and Wendy McMahon exited as head of CBS News.
The Ellisons, both David and his Oracle CEO father Larry, who helped finance the $8 billion Skydance-Paramount merger, like Redstone, have shown support for Trump in the past; both parties needed the president to make the merger go through.
“It is a particularly tough time for anybody working at CBS News,” Rather said. “I still know many people there, and I’m not ashamed to say that my heart is still there and probably always will be in a way, but this is an extremely tough time for them, and it’ll be interesting to see how much, if any, pressure the new owners put on them to change the coverage to be more pro-Trump than to being independent news.”
Rather continued that he doesn’t want to be “unfair to the Ellisons,” but then he issued this warning: “I think if they were to buy CNN, it would change CNN forever and it might be another very serious wound to CBS News.”
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that David Ellison and his billionaire dad are preparing a bid for all of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.
“I do think … without preaching about it, but that we, all of us, all the Americans, have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets,” Rather said. “This is not healthy for the country, and it is something to worry about. … It’s pretty hard to be optimistic about the possibilities of the Ellisons buying CNN.”
Rather left CBS Evening News in 2005 amid a controversy surrounding his reportage of unauthenticated documents about George W. Bush’s Vietnam War-time service in the National Guard. He was let go from CBS the following year.
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