CBS News chief Andy Heyward, OUT!
By Mark Kilmer Posted in User Blogs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Embattled and disgraced CBS News Chief Andy Heyward is quitting after a decade, Bloomberg reports. He will be replaced on November 7 by CBS sports division head Sean McManus.
Heyward was under pressure to revive the news department, which trailed ABC and NBC for the past decade and was criticized for a ``60 Minutes Wednesday'' report on President George W. Bush that was later discredited. The evening news broadcast has lost 5 percent of its viewers in the past year. CBS canceled ``60 Minutes Wednesday,'' a show created by Heyward, in May.
Class B shares of Viacom, the No. 3 U.S. media company, fell 6 cents to $30.99 at 10:10 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have declined 15 percent this year.
CBS's early evening news program lags behind Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and General Electric Co.'s NBC.The ``60 Minutes Wednesday'' show, a spinoff of the Sunday ``60 Minutes,'' aired a program based on documents that said Bush received preferential treatment when he was in the National Guard. CBS later said it couldn't verify the information.
The program prompted the early departure of CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather. CBS fired four news employees after an independent panel found errors [fake docs] in the report, which aired on Sept. 8 last year.
Michael Petrelis at Petrelis Files has done some sleuthing and uncovered McManus's recent political donations. He gave $1,000 to Pat Leahy of Vermont in 2003, and he slipped Bush/Cheney '04 $250 last year. (Mike also looks into the more nefarious donations of The New Yorker's George Packer.)
The Petrelis argument is that news organizations, "in the name of media transparency, should post information about the donations from McManus and Packer, and all other editorial employees, on their respective web sites." I agree, and it would extend that policy to all news reporters. In order to give a news story an objective reading, we should be told the bias of he or she who wrote it.