Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 29, 1995                   TAG: 9505310013
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: TOM SHALES WASHINGTON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHUNG'S OUSTER AT CBS WAS POORLY HANDLED

Connie Chung, as all the world knows all too well, has been dropped from ``The CBS Evening News'' and Dan Rather is solo anchor again. Chung has said she wants to leave CBS now but at this writing, she's still an employee. She's on leave while negotiations continue over how much of CBS' money Chung will take with her when she goes, and whether she'll be able to go to work right away for some other outfit.

Now Chung sits on the phone all day talking with reporters and critics (yes, including this one) but keeping most of her remarks off the record and ``on background.'' When you read something in the press that's attributed to a close friend of Chung's or a source close to Chung, that's probably Connie herself talking, or else her agent, Alfred Geller.

Chung has also hired the pricey public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton to be her auxiliary spin patrol, although Chung says she's only paying the company to field the huge number of calls she's getting from the press.

Clearly, Connie Chung will not quietly tippy-toe out the back door of CBS but instead go kicking and screaming. And she has a right to be angry. CBS News executives have treated her shabbily, and have handled the whole matter with incredible clumsiness. When they decided to bump her off the ``Evening News,'' says one of those sources close to Chung, they didn't have the nerve or decency to tell her to her face. They summoned Geller, alone, and told him.

In fact, as of May 24, Chung said she had not been contacted directly by CBS News President Eric Ober or any of his fellow executives. Reached in Austin, Texas, on May 20, the day the story broke, Dan Rather said he hadn't heard from any CBS News officials, either. He only knew about Chung being bounced from the broadcast, he said, from reporters calling him up for comment.

Rather says also that he had no advance warning of the decision to drop Chung. ``This came as a surprise to us,'' he says. ``Both the fact and the timing were a surprise.''

Although Rather continues to take the high road and not bad-mouth Chung, she and her representatives are full of angry chatter. They say Chung was doomed from the beginning, that she had to fight to get serious assignments, that executives forced her to do tabloidy stories like Tonya Harding and O.J. Simpson and then stood back silently when Chung was criticized for going tabloid. The original plan for the anchor team, they say, was for Rather to be in Washington and Chung in New York, like David Brinkley and Chet Huntley were, but that this fell through.

Then CBS News bosses just asked Rather to move over and make room for Chung at the same anchor desk on the same set in the same city where he had been operating solo.

Chung appears to be backing off her charges that sexism had a role to play in her dethroning. But she says there is still a lesson to be learned from the Harry Reasoner-Barbara Walters debacle at ABC in the '70s. This was another dual anchor set-up that didn't work, but one difference is that Reasoner never wanted it to work and made no secret of his dislike for Walters.

When ABC News President Roone Arledge realized the gambit was bombing, say Chung sources, he dropped both anchors, Reasoner and Walters, and went on to another format. But by dropping Chung, executives make it look as though the low ratings for the ``Evening News'' were somehow her fault and that she is what's holding the program back. Chung resents this implication.

Rather says charges of sexism won't stick.

``Women perhaps don't get a fair shake anywhere, but CBS News and `The CBS Evening News' in particular have the best record with women,'' he says. ``We try to run a meritocracy here. When Connie signed on, she herself said she did not get the job because she was a woman but instead because she was the best person for the job.''

Reporters in print and TV keep fanning the flames of the Chung-Rather split, trying to pit one against the other. ``Nobody has heard a critical comment from me about Connie,'' Rather says. As for one tabloid's claim that Rather is out to ``derail'' Chung's career: ``Come on,'' Rather says. ``I hope she stays with us, but wherever she goes she'll be a success because she's smart and she works hard. Anybody who works that hard will succeed.''

- Washington Post Writers Group

Tom Shales is TV editor and chief TV critic for The Washington Post.