Connie Chung Calls Out ‘Sexist’ CBS Co-Host Dan Rather In Her New Memoir

Connie Chung, the first Asian American and second woman to anchor a major network news program, called out her former CBS News co-anchor, Dan Rather, for his “inherent bias against women” in her new book.

Chung’s memoir, Connie, was released Tuesday. In it, she recounts Rather’s direct quote when she started: “I’ll cover the stories out there in the field, and you read the teleprompter.” He also told Chung she would “have to start reading the newspaper” to stay caught up with CBS. 

Chung said that since the two were paired together in 1993, he has been condescending and hard to work with. He started a whisper campaign to discredit her among their colleagues. In the two years the pair spent together as co-hosts, Chung reported that Rather was “wound tight and had no sense of humor.”

Chung also referenced her 1995 coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing, in response to which Rather spent hours blasting her as a second-rate journalist. In the wake of the incident, Rather gave CBS an ultimatum, and Chung was fired shortly after. Rather claimed there was no connection.

Chung, who has worked at ABC, CNN and MSNBC, among many others, attested that Rather’s misogynistic behavior was normal across the industry. She wrote, “Many men in television news, especially those who became anchormen, contracted a disease: big-shot-itis.”

She continued with the diagnosis, “It was characterized by a swelling of the head, an inability to stop talking, self-aggrandizing behavior, narcissistic tendencies, unrelenting hubris, delusions of grandeur and fantasies of sexual prowess.”

Chung shared what drove her to write the memoir. “My parents were born in 1909 [and] in 1911, in old China, pre-communist China,” she noted. : Their marriage was arranged when she was only 12 and he was 14. They were married at 17 and 19. They had 10 — if you can believe it — children. I was the 10th, the only one born in the United States. They had nine children in China, five of whom died as infants. Three of those infants who died were boys…so they raised five very ballsy women. My father gave me this mission. He said, ‘Maybe you can carry on the name Chung. Tell everybody how we came to the United States.'”