Former TV news anchor Connie Chung makes some bombshell claims in her memoir, including the alleged dismissive treatment she received from her colleague Dan Rather when the two worked together in the 1990s.
Chung was just the second woman after Barbara Walters and the first Asian American to be a network anchor when she started co-anchoring “CBS Evening News” with Rather in 1993 as an attempt to help the show’s flagging ratings.
“This wasn’t just a personal milestone but one for women and minorities, as I would be the first of both groups to coanchor the CBS News flagship broadcast,” Chung writes in “Connie.” “I felt incredibly lucky to be the one riding the crest.”
While her tenure broke some glass ceilings and she even referred to it as her “dream job,” Chung claimed her position didn’t protect her from some sexist comments from colleagues.
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Veteran journalist Connie Chung’s new memoir, “Connie.” (Fox News Digital/Cortney O’Brien)
“While Rather publicly welcomed Chung, he privately put her in her place, telling her: ‘Now you are going to have to start reading the newspaper,’” The Boston Globe reported of Chung’s new book, “Connie.”
“I swallowed hard,” she writes of the incident. “Was this his idea of how to start a partnership? I was forty-seven and had spent half my life in the news business – did he think I had been reading the comics? We were just out of the gate in what I hoped would be a long run. My response: Silence.”
Chung also wrote that Rather told her, “I’ll cover the stories out there in the field, and you read the teleprompter.” Her co-anchor, she added, was “wound tight and had no sense of humor” and held “an inherent bias regarding women.”
She went further to allege that Rather tried to undercut her and question her journalistic abilities among their colleagues.
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Journalist Dan Rather attends The Independent Filmmaker Project’s 25th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Rather would later step down from his role as CBS’ evening news anchor in 2005 and eventually leave the network the following year after reporting a discredited story about then-President George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the National Guard. Rather, who at 92 still maintains a sharply left-wing presence on social media, was interviewed by CBS earlier this year about his time at the network and his career in journalism.
Chung had additional revelations about the behavior of male anchors in TV news, including Bryant Gumbel.
“In her book, Chung writes about how so many men in TV news, especially the anchormen, suffer from a disease she calls ‘big shot-itis,’” the Globe reported. “For example, Bryant Gumbel had in his NBC contract that ‘Today Show’ co-anchor Jane Pauley could never say ‘Good morning’ first nor say ‘Have a good day’ at the end of the show.”
Chung described her firing from CBS in 2005 as “devastating,” but she never wanted any sympathy.
“That was not my attitude when I was working,” she said. “I never ran to the ladies room and cried, because I always believed that there was no crying in baseball.”
Rather denied having anything to do with her exit and reportedly told The Washington Post at the time, “Nobody has heard a critical comment from me about Connie” and her removal “came as a surprise to us.”
New York, NY – 1998: (L-R) Charles Gibson, Sam Donaldson, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, Connie Chung promotional photo for the ABC TV series “20/20.” (Photo by Michael O’Neill /Walt Disney Television via Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital has reached out to Chung, Rather and Gumbel for further comment.
Chung would later join ABC News as co-anchor and correspondent of the popular show “20/20,” joining Walters and Diane Sawyer.
Now, she says that several women have thanked her for breaking some glass ceilings and that some Asian-American parents had even named their daughters Connie after her.
Chung scored some major interviews during her career, including NBA star Magic Johnson after his HIV-positive diagnosis in 1991.
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Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
