WEIGHING ANCHORS

By Steve Wulf

One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news . When you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. --Edward R. Murrow

On June 1, 1993, Dan Rather and Connie Chung co-anchored the CBS Evening News for the first time, and the dust has never settled. Unfortunately for CBS, their ratings have: in third place among the U.S. networks, behind ABC's World News Tonight and the NBC Nightly News. But then, the news that Dan and Connie make is sometimes more interesting than the news they read.

The latest controversy arose after the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19. Rather was on vacation at the time, at a resort in Midland, Texas, but when he called CBS News executives shortly after the bombing to offer his services, he was told thanks, but no thanks. Chung, it seems, was already on her way from Sacramento, California, where she had been anchoring the Evening News. Never mind that field reporting is Rather's forte, that Oklahoma City was in his neck of the woods, or that the story was big enough for two anchors. There are egos to deal with, and believing they had to choose between upsetting Chung and upsetting Rather, CBS News execs chose the latter.

To make matters worse, Chung managed to offend some Oklahoma viewers with a few innocuous questions to the city's assistant fire chief about the community's ability to handle the crisis; cbs News was forced to reel her back to New York City after just three days. The only good thing to come out of her assignment was that the proceeds from T shirts asking WHO THE HELL IS CONNIE CHUNG? went to the disaster-relief efforts.

Beleaguered staff members at the Evening News found the whole episode to be a disturbing distraction. "This awful thing happened, and all these people are dead, and there's this bickering about who's going to read the lead-ins?" says a news-division staff member. "It's hard to imagine getting more off the mark about what's important."

While CBS News executives remained incommunicado last week, Chung insisted that all is well between her and Rather. "We talk to each other all the time," Chung told TIME. "But neither of us would be worth our mustard if we didn't want to cover all the stories that are on the map."

Still, in the words of a longtime staff member, there's a "palpable tension" in the CBS newsroom. From the executive suites to the cafeteria lines, the conversation at CBS News is about what to do with Connie and Dan. Dump her, keep him? Dump him, keep her? Dump them both and bring in Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes? The talk spilled over to Don Imus' nationally syndicated radio show two weeks ago, when professional curmudgeon Andy Rooney called the Rather-Chung teaming "the worst network-news mistake since ABC paired Barbara Walters with Harry Reasoner."

Rooney now says he regrets any hurt feelings. "I think they're both first-rate news people. It's the idea of co-anchors that's bad. It's unnatural. It forces on them the business of being actors when they have to respond to each other." CBS News president Eric Ober, for one, did not appreciate Rooney's remarks. According to Rooney, "I was in the cafeteria . . . Eric happened to be there, and I said, 'I'm sorry to have made your life more difficult,' which I meant. And he said, 'You did make my life more difficult.' "

Life for everybody at CBS News became more difficult when, in an effort to boost the newscast's ratings, CBS decided to team Rather, who had flown solo since 1981, with the highly popular but more lightweight Chung. From the start, their minimal patter has seemed forced, and critics never embraced the pairing. Lately, Chung has come under fire for her interview with U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich's mother (on her magazine show Eye to Eye), in which Chung coaxed her into saying that "Newty" referred to Hillary Clinton as a "bitch." Though CBS aggressively publicized the comment, the network was somewhat tepid in her defense. Rather himself didn't exactly jump to her aid. "Connie's intentions were the best," he said. "And I know she wants to do the right thing journalistically."

On Friday night Rather anchored the newscast from London in recognition of the 50th anniversary of V-E day. The show invoked the spirit of Murrow, whose own wartime reports from London set the standards for broadcast journalism. The newscast ended, as usual, with the motto "Experience. CBS News." It may be time for cbs to chalk up the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and Connie Chung as a Bad Experience. --Reported by William Tynan/New York

With reporting by William Tynan/New York