Tag Results for CBS News

How is it that not a single person in the audience, on the staff or on the crew of the "Late Show" with David Letterman thought to tip off the folks at the CBS News that the big guy was making news?

The "Late Show" was taped yesterday afternoon at 4:30. That's when Letterman notified his audience that he was the victim of a blackmail scam where someone was demanding two million dollars to keep quiet about "terrible things" he knew about Letterman. Those "creepy things" Letterman told his audience included sexual affairs with women on his staff.

"I didn't know anything about it - until I got a phone call at 5:30 this morning," Executive Producer Rick Kaplan of "CBS Evening News" told Beat The Press today. Had they known, Kaplan said "of course" they would have reported it.

Instead, all the newspapers and morning news shows had the story first. While Letterman did not name his blackmailer, a New York DA has - he is 51-year-old Robert Joel Halderman of the program "48 Hours," whom Kaplan describes as a "brilliant" producer.

Come to think of it this is a great tale for "48 Hours."

Dan Rather's $70 million fraud and breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS has been thrown out by a New York state appellate court, which rejected Rather's claims that the network improperly elbowed him off the air after a story about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

Los Angeles Times reports that the New York Supreme Court appellate division found that CBS did not violate Rather's contract because it did not require the network to actually put him on the air, only to pay him his $6 million annual salary on an accelerated basis if it didn't. Rather's claims that CBS's actions damaged his future earnings potential were dismissed as too speculative.

Rather had alleged that the network's former parent company, Viacom, pressured commissioned a "sham" investigation by former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh into the Bush story that was designed to appease the White House and its allies in Congress, not find the truth.

Rather was the lead reporter in a 2004 "60 Minutes" report about Bush's military service, which included four memos attributed to a former Texas Air National Guard Commander. Questions about the authenticity of the documents were raised, and CBS News ultimately said it could not prove that they were real and called the airing of the story a "mistake."

The Thornburgh report did not ultimately decide the authenticity of the documents either, but charged that the story violated CBS's responsibility to be fair and accurate. Four CBS staffers were either asked to resign or were fired, while Rather stepped down as anchor of "The CBS Evening News" a few months later.

David Carr’s report in the New York Times that Boston-based GlobalPost will partner with CBS News strikes me as a potentially significant development.

It’s unclear from Carr’s story exactly how much use CBS intends to make of GlobalPost’s journalism. But this could be just the boost that Phil Balboni, Charlie Sennott and company need to keep GlobalPost moving forward.

Particularly eye-catching were a couple of numbers. GlobalPost is reportedly attracting 400,000 unique visitors per month, which appears to impress Carr, but which strikes me as dangerously low — even if it’s as good as could be expected for a new project. (For purposes of comparison, the Boston Globe’s Web site, Boston.com, attracts between 4 million and 5 million unique visitors each month.)

Even worse, only a few hundred people have signed up for premium (paid) membership.

Anyone who’s perused the site, though, knows that GlobalPost’s journalism is both engaging and substantive. With network news divisions cutting their international reporting to the bone, GlobalPost has a real opportunity.

    Iconic CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite has died at the age of 92.
    New York Times writer Douglas Martin puts it nicely on the Times' web front, describing Cronkite as the man "who pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was called the most trusted man in America."
    At Beat the Press we're lucky to have some first-hand insight about Cronkite through our host Emily Rooney, whose father, Andy Rooney, was a longtime colleague of Cronkite's at CBS News.
    According to Emily, the pair eventually became close friends, especially over the last few decades, playing tennis and sailing together often on Cronkite's boat. Once they were in a bookstore on Martha's Vineyard when Andy Rooney asked the sales clerk: Got anything by Saul Bellow?
    "No, but that's Saul Bellow over there for Chrissakes!" Cronkite snorted. The Nobel-prizewinning author was over on the other side of the bookstore.
    Emily, who saw Cronkite regularly at social occasions, says the legendary newsman had no hidden, goofy side. Off-air, he was the same serious, dignified, and reassuring man that he was in front of the camera. He was also intensely and genuinely interested in other people's opinions on issues of the day.
    "You knew when he wanted to have a discussion, because he would lean in toward you and really listen to what you had to say," Emily says.
    As Cronkite got older, he remained bright and lucid. "He never lost his fastball," she says. But he did lose his hearing, which made it more difficult him later in life to participate in the serious conversations he loved so much.
    Cronkite died from complications of dementia, the Times has reported.