CBS News

Dan Rather was back in court Tuesday afternoon for another round in his $70 million lawsuit against CBS.

In the latest development, Mr. Rather's legal team introduced a motion asking the judge for permission to amend their complaint for the second time. Marty Gold, Mr. Rather's lead attorney, said the judge had previously dismissed his client’s fraud charges against CBS on the grounds that no specific damages had been listed in the earlier complaint. Mr. Gold said that this time around his team has prepared a more precise estimate of damages, based on the difference between Mr. Rather's former salary at CBS and his current salary at HDNet.  read more »

In case you missed it last night on the CBS Evening News, there was another jaw-dropping moment between Katie Couric and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

As part of the ongoing series called Vice Presidential Questions, Ms. Couric had just finished asking Ms. Palin why she disagreed with Roe v. Wade (she had asked the same question to vice presidential candidate Joe Biden earlier).

Here's what happenend next.  read more »

Tonight's CBS Evening News will feature more of the interview Katie Couric conducted yesterday in Ohio with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Over the past week, the ongoing series of Couric-Palin interviews has developed into one of the most fascinating, must-see sub-narratives of the 2008 campaign. Tonight's episode promises not to disappoint.

Courtesy of CBS News, the transcript:

Gov. Palin at Monday’s event in Columbus, OH: I do look forward to Thursday night and debating Senator Joe Biden. We are going to talk about those new ideas, new energy for America. I'm looking forward to meet him too. I've never met him before.  read more »

In the forthcoming October/November issue of Radar magazine, Lauren Sandler profiles Lara Logan, CBS News' alluring, aggressive war correspondent.

Over the course of several thousand words, Ms. Sandler chronicles Ms. Logan's blazing ascent from casual South African swimsuit model to swashbuckling war correspondent to tabloid sensation for her involvement in a series of war zone affairs, including with CNN's war correspondent Michael Ware.

"Ware and Logan became legendary for their blowout arguments," reports Ms. Sandler. "Some members of Iraq's press pack referred to them as 'the Sid and Nancy of Baghdad.'"

In short: It's a good read. (Though, as of this writing, not yet online.  read more »

Today, Katie Couric sat down with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for the third on-air interview with the elusive VP candidate since the Republican convention.

The interview will air tonight on the CBS Evening News. In the meantime, CBS producers have posted a brief clip from the interview on their Web Site.

First impressions: no scenic Alaskan backdrop (like with ABC's Charlie Gibson). And no letting down of her hair (like with Fox News' Sean Hannity). Also: much more pink clothing and increased chatter about another Great Depression.

On the afternoon of Monday, Sept. 22, Dan Rather and lawyers for CBS returned yet again to a court in Lower Manhattan for the latest ruling in Mr. Rather's ongoing $70 million civil lawsuit against his former employers.

There, New York Supreme Court Justice Ira Gammerman announced his ruling on CBS's motion to dismiss Mr. Rather's amended complaint against them.

In a decision that is giving the Media Mob a case of déjà vu, the Justice decided to allow the lawsuit to proceed, while also knocking down a portion of the amended complaint.

Afterward, both sides claimed victory.  read more »

Today Dan Rather will return to a courtroom in Lower Manhattan.

There, Justice Ira Gammerman is scheduled to make a ruling this afternoon on CBS's motion to dismiss Mr. Rather's amended complaint in his $70 million civil lawsuit against his former employers.

Expect updates as more news breaks.

This coming Sunday, CBS News' 60 Minutes will be celebrating its 40th Anniversary on the air. For the occassion, Steve Kroft will be interviewing Senator Barack Obama, and Scott Pelley will be interviewing Senator John McCain.

From today's release:

America's most-watched news program takes a hard look at the presidential candidates on its 40th anniversary broadcast much as it did when its very first edition on Sept. 24, 1968, featured Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Forty years later, however, 60 MINUTES will debut a vivid, new look thanks to digital technology that would have been science fiction in 1968.

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On Wednesday afternoon, a few short hours before Sarah Palin was to take the stage for her big speech, Jeff Greenfield, the senior political correspondent for CBS News, sized up the Alaskan Governor.

His mind turned to cinema. "I'm trying to think of all the cultural examples about feisty women from nowhere who show up and beat the guys," said Mr. Greenfield. He did a mental IMDB. There was Judy Holliday in "The Solid Gold Cadillac." Sally Field in "Norma Rae." Geena Davis in "Commander in Chief." Dolly Parton in "Nine to Five."

Ms. Palin was an archetype, thought Mr. Greenfield. She was the plucky American underdog.  read more »

Katie Couric will anchor the CBS Evening news from the Gulf coast on Monday night, CBS News announced today.

More from the CBS press release on the network's hurricane/convention coverage:

--CBS News Correspondents Cynthia Bowers, Randall Pinkston, Byron Pitts, Dave Price, Tracy Smith and Hari Sreenivasan will report from the area for all CBS News broadcasts.

--The Early Show's Harry Smith will anchor from the area beginning tomorrow morning (7:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT), along with Early Show Weather Anchor Price.

--CBS News' live Republican National Convention primetime specials-Monday, Sept. 1 through Thursday, Sept. 4 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET; check local listings) will include coverage of both the hurricane and the RNC.

 

Lara Logan, the comely war correspondent for CBS News who recently became the network's chief foreign affairs correspondent based in Washington D.C., recently sat down with Men's Vogue for an interview that appears in the magazine's September issue.

According to the style mag, Ms. Logan wore an "unabashedly feminine—and sheer—blouse and a black pencil skirt" to the wide-ranging interview, which took place at Washington's Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. Along the way, Ms. Logan reveals that she's not much of a life planner, believes that Iran's role in the war in Iraq is underreported, and that she'll spend the fifth month of her current pregnancy reporting for CBS from Afghanistan.

Dan Rather and his lawyers were back in a Lower Manhattan courthouse late Wednesday afternoon for yet another round in Mr. Rather's ongoing $70 million civil lawsuit against his former employers.

Over the course of a 45-minute hearing in front of Justice Ira Gammerman, tempers occasionally flared as the lawyers for both sides argued over a number of issues, ranging from the scheduling of depositions to the transparency of the discovery process.

On the latter issue, Mr. Rather and his lawyers petitioned the justice to release a number of key documents turned up in discovery.  read more »

During the prolonged political primary season this year, CBS News was the only major American commercial network news division not to successfully sponsor a single debate. But it looks like CBS execs are trying to get an early jump on the general election.

To wit: yesterday Veterans for Common Sense--a consortium of military and veteran nonprofit groups--announced that they are teaming up with CBS News to sponsor and produce a town hall forum, focusing on issues facing the military and veteran communities.

According to yesterday's release, CBS News and their partners have invited Senators Barack Obama and John McCain to participate in the event, which would take place at the Bell County Expo Center in Belton, Texas (near the Fort Hood military base), at 9 p.  read more »

As we noted recently, reporters and correspondents in Baghdad have had an increasingly difficult time in recent months getting their reports on air and their stories on the front pages of newspapers.

But this morning, seasoned war reporter Lara Logan of CBS News popped up on the front page of the New York Post—albeit for a bunch of allegations about her life in Baghdad that have nothing to do with her enterprising reporting on the region.

The allegations against her couldn't have come at a worse time for Ms. Logan. Yesterday, CBS News announced that Ms. Logan, considered a rising star within the network, will be assuming a new role for CBS, serving as "chief foreign affairs correspondent" out of Washington, D.C.

What does the long-term future hold for local television news business? Unclear. What does the short term promise?

Widgets.

On Wednesday, June 18, executives as WCBS, the CBS-owned and -operated station in New York City, unveiled a new online business venture in which they will supply “widgets with real-time news feeds” to a network of local blogs.

Reached on the phone recently, Dan Shelley, the director of digital media for the station, explained that WCBS was offering bloggers a variety of different widget packages to choose from, ranging from sports to entertainment to breaking news.

“We have a ‘water cooler’ section, which is a robust section full of weird news stories,” said Mr.  read more »

Roughly three months after the tumultuous exit of Shelley Ross, The Early Show on CBS has named Zev Shalev as the show's new executive producer. Rick Kaplan of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric had been filling in on an interim basis.

From the press release:

Shalev has been senior broadcast producer of the program since March.  read more »

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On Tuesday April, 22, Steve Krakauer of TV Newser was the first to report that CNN's suspender-wearing newsman Larry King had re-upped with the cable news network through June 2011.

   read more »

The North Carolina Democratic Party has just announced that the proposed April 27 presidential debate in North Carolina has been officially cancelled. The star-crossed debate would have been hosted by CBS News--and would have been Katie Couric's first opportunity to prove herself as a debate moderator on a national stage.

From the web site for the North Carolina Democratic Party:  read more »

On Friday, before he got sidetracked, Senator Barack Obama suggested that he might bow out of a proposed April 27 debate in North Carolina to be hosted by CBS News and moderated by Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer, reports the Charlotte Observer.

"In a telephone interview with the Observer to discuss his economic plan, Obama doubted whether a proposed April 27 debate at Raleigh's RBC Center would fit with his schedule," reports the Charlotte Observer.  read more »

Filling out the rumors floated in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, today the New York Times reports that a “wide-ranging discussion” about Katie Couric’s future took place among CBS executives back in February:

 read more »

The Wall Street Journal reports:

After two years of record-low ratings, both CBS News executives and people close to Katie Couric say that the "CBS Evening News" anchor is likely to leave the network well before her contract expires in 2011—possibly soon after the presidential inauguration early next year.  read more »

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Amid reports of a possible news-sharing partnership between CBS News and CNN and stories about layoffs at CBS stations around the country, today Matea Gold and Meg James of the L.A. Times write about the state of the local news gathering business.

They begin by noting the layoffs last week of more than 160 employees at CBS-owned stations in 13 cities, including a number of top anchors and seasoned correspondents.  read more »

So now we know what Matt Drudge was talking about: Tim Arango at the Times is reporting that CBS "has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its newsgathering operations to CNN," a report sourced to "two executives briefed on the matter."

This is something CNN has talked about with other networks in the past, Mr. Arango points out in the article, but the talks with CBS have been "revived and lately intensified."  read more »

Last week, on Thursday March, 13, Ed O'Keefe of ABC News reported that Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton might debate at least twice more before the all-important Pennsylvania primary on April 22.

Both senators, ABC reported, had agreed to an ABC News debate in Philadelphia; and Mr. Obama had agreed to a CBS News debate in North Carolina at a time and place to be determined.

As NYTV had earlier reported, Katie Couric has yet to host a debate in this podium-rich primary season. The North Carolina gig would be her first chance at the big stage.

But will it happen?  read more »

On Feb. 5, during MSNBC’s Super Tuesday political coverage, anchor Keith Olbermann joked that during this long primary season, it sometimes seemed like everyone in the business had already anchored a debate. “I think most people at home have now moderated one as well,” said Mr. Olbermann.

If Katie Couric was watching at home, chances are she wasn’t laughing. Eight months and more than 20 debates into podium season, Ms. Couric has yet to get anywhere near the big stage.  read more »

According to the Associated Press, two journalists with CBS News are missing in the Iraqi city of Basra.

CBS has put out the following statement:

Two journalists working for CBS News in Basra are missing. All efforts are underway to find them and until we learn more details, CBS News requests that others do not speculate on the identities of those involved. CBS News has been in touch with the families and asks that their privacy be respected.

As we reported last week, Jim Stewart, the retired former Washington- based correspondent for CBS News, recently filed a motion in federal court, in which he continued to defy a federal judge's orders that he name his confidential government sources from a series of stories he produced in 2003 about the FBI's investigation into the scientist Steven J. Hatfill. At the time, Mr. Hatfill was suspected of being involved in the domestic anthrax attacks of 2001, and he is now suing members of the federal government, alleging that they violated the federal Privacy Act by talking about him to reporters.

On Friday, Mr. Hatfill's lawyer, Thomas Connolly, officially responded.  read more »

NASHUA, N.H.—The rushed primary schedule gives reporters only five days in New Hampshire, with virtually no sleep since they finished up in Iowa late last night. This morning in New Hampshire, they were feeling it.  read more »

TV Newser confirms that CBS News' PublicEye blog, once described as the "de facto ombudsman of CBS News," has been shuttered.

The former editor of the site, Matthew Felling, had been laid off last month as part of a round of job cuts at CBS Interactive -- though CBS had at the time insisted that the site would continue.

More bad news for Katie Couric and CBS: Evening News lost 1.1 million viewers over the last 12 months, according to ratings numbers for the third week of December reported by the New York Post.

By contrast, Brian Williams of NBC lost just 164,000 viewers, and ABC's Charlie Gibson gained 38,000 over the same period.

Somewhere, Dan Rather is smiling.

According to a source who's been talking to Usmagazine.com, Hannah Storm is set to leave her gig as an anchor on CBS' The Early Show after five years.  But she she'll stay at the network, and focus on longer-form reporting. 

The source says that Early Show producer Shelley Ross fought to have Ms. Storm stay, but network brass were insistent on making the move.

According to The Huffington Post, Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson have all announced that they'll skip a December 10th debate, to be hosted by CBS News in Los Angeles, unless the network can come to an agreement with its striking employees.

Note that all four candidates' statements refer to those on strike as "workers" (Hillary gets the word in three times in two sentences), which sounds better than saying you're supporting news media professionals.

Editor's Note: This post has been corrected from an earlier version. 

Sounds like Shelley Ross has really taken to heart her mandate to shake up CBS's The Early Show since being named the struggling show's executive producer in September.  So much so that, according to Page Six, eight staffers have left since she took over.  Another Page Six source says the remaining staff has an over-under pool on how long Ms. Ross herself will last.  read more »

Wanna see a clip of Katie Couric making fun of Dan Rather for trying to decide whether to wear his coat open or closed? Ok, so did we.  read more »

'Democracy cannot survive, much less thrive, with the level of big corporate and big government interference and intimidation in news.'  read more »

From The Times' Jacques Steinberg:

Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005.  read more »

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On Monday morning, Karl Rove stood next to President George W. Bush on the South Lawn of the White House and announced that he would be resigning from the administration at the end of the month. In front of the assembled D.C. press corp, he read a statement, and the President spoke. There was no formal opportunity for questions.

Towards the end of the appearance, as the President and his favorite pol were about to head in the direction of an awaiting helicopter, Bill Plante, CBS White House correspondent, broke the embargo.

“If he’s so smart,” said Mr. Plante, “how come you lost Congress?”  read more »