Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who was fired in 2006 for peddling fake documents about then-President George W. Bush, on Thursday condemned the network’s hiring of Free Press founder Bari Weiss and its parent company Paramount’s merger with Skydance.
Paramount’s decision to appoint Weiss as CBS editor in chief, and to merge with Skydance, marks “a dark day in the halls of CBS News, where the portraits of television news pioneers once hung,” Rather wrote on his Substack. The former CBS anchor claimed that the network is “no longer independent” and bowed to the Trump administration to secure federal approval for the merger.
Rather described Weiss as “one of the most polarizing figures in today’s American media landscape,” accusing the Free Press founder of “giving the fictitious illusion of fair and balanced coverage.” He wrote that “Weiss is unabashedly anti-woke, anti-DEI and pro-Israel, though she calls herself a ‘politically homeless’ moderate.”
While Rather now portrays himself as a defender of journalistic integrity, CBS ousted him in 2006 after he broadcast a fabricated report questioning Bush’s military service records. The segment, which aired weeks before the 2004 presidential election, relied on documents that CBS could not authenticate and were revealed to be forgeries. CBS later retracted the story.
Rather’s criticism of his former employer comes as Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has vowed to crack down on ideological bias at CBS. In a July meeting with FCC chairman Brendan Carr, Ellison emphasized his “commitment to unbiased journalism” and pledged to reflect “the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers” at the network.
Last month, Paramount announced that it hired Kenneth Weinstein, a former president of the conservative Hudson Institute, to serve as CBS’s ombudsman investigating any complaints about bias from employees and viewers. Ellison reportedly also plans to propose cuts to “right-size” the network, which is losing around $50 million a year.
Many CBS staffers, meanwhile, had a meltdown this week over the network’s hiring of Weiss. “A throwing up emoji is not enough of a reflection of the feelings in here,” a staffer told the Guardian. A second staffer shared with the Independent that “people are using words like depressing and doomsday,” while another noted that the changes “have everyone just kind of freaking out, like, literally freaking out.”
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