WRECKING BALL

CBS Legend, 94, Eviscerates Trump’s ‘60 Minutes’ Destruction

Trump and his corrupt goons are turning the news into a “dangerous” tool, Dan Rather said.

Legendary CBS anchor Dan Rather has torn into President Donald Trump, 80, for reducing CBS News to “wreckage.”

Rather, 94, was a 60 Minutes correspondent from 1975 to 1981, when he took over CBS Evening News. He stepped down in 2005 after the Bush administration claimed he based a controversial report on inauthentic documents. However, the documents were never proved to be forgeries.

Since MAGA nepo baby David Ellison, 43, subsumed Paramount into his monster entertainment company, Skydance, Rather has watched his former journalistic home’s direction with alarm. Ratings for 60 Minutes have plummeted since Ellison appointed Bari Weiss, 42, as CBS News chief, and longtime icons like Scott Pelley and Sharyn Alfonsi have left the show over issues with Weiss’ cultivated MAGA skew.

“Donald Trump has expressed his extreme dislike for 60 Minutes, so now, he’s gotten his way,” Rather told Variety in a new interview. “He cleared the way for a consolidation of corporate power, which in turn cleared the way for doing what’s been done to 60 Minutes. The wreckage of CBS News is everywhere, and continues to this moment. I don’t see how to stop it.”

Rather was unfamiliar with Weiss’ work before she started “destroying” CBS, but he said her efforts to turn CBS News into a “more palatable” version of Fox News are turning what was “the best investigative journalism outfit anywhere in television in the world” into a breeding ground for censorship and corruption. He added that Trump and Ellison are using the press for their own gain, which is a “dangerous” threat to free speech, he said.

“It is in many ways a disaster,” Rather said. “Not just for the people who work at CBS News—and there’s still a lot of really good people working there. But this is a further example of big billionaire corporate power in bed with powerful people and the presidency to get control of these operations for their benefit.”

Under a different administration, Weiss’ Trumpy takeover wouldn’t have been possible. Rather said the way she’s hijacked the news to suck up to the president indicates a colossal, frightening paradigm shift.

“What’s happened to CBS News as a whole, and 60 Minutes in particular, would be almost unbelievable under the other circumstances,” he said.

Rather turns 95 on Saturday, days after the documentary about his life, Rather, began streaming for free on YouTube. The documentary follows his storied career and delves into the current state of journalism.

Rather said he hopes the film’s accessibility will help “underscore the importance of defending the First Amendment and freedom of the press—especially at this moment in our country’s history.”

“It’s just never been more important to remind ourselves that if freedom of the press dies, democracy dies,” Rather continued. “A truly independent press is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy. I don’t think we teach it quite enough that real news is something someone in power usually doesn’t want you to know.”

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Dana Herrnstadt Editorial Intern, Obsessed

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