Below, most of the text from Mr. Steinberg's New York Times piece about the changing of the guard at CBS news.  OrMag's item by item comments are in italics.

President of CBS News to Step Down 
By JACQUES STEINBERG for the New York Times

October 26, 2005 -- The chairman of CBS, Leslie Moonves, announced today that he was replacing the longtime president of CBS News, Andrew Heyward, with the longtime president of the network's sports division, Sean McManus. 

In a conscious nod to Roone Arledge, who oversaw both the news and sports divisions at ABC for more than a decade, Mr. McManus, 50, will similarly serve in both capacities at CBS. But Mr. McManus will face challenges that simply did not exist in Mr. Arledge's time, as CBS - and
other television news divisions, to say nothing of newspapers - struggle to find new ways to captivate viewers who are increasingly defecting to newer outlets like Fox News and Yahoo, and increasingly skeptical of journalists as a whole.

"Defecting to newer outlets," if the words are an accurate description of the situation, means CBS is losing audience.  The numbers are falling. The "challenges that simply did not exist in Mr. Arledge's time" are not only FOX, but also the Washington Times, conservative radio and the vast right wing conspiracy (magazines, personal blogs, forums) on the internet.  The growth of these new media outlets is directly related to the failure of CBS to recognize that since WWII they have been a propaganda arm for the Left.  People eventually become tired of having pap shoveled down their throats, and look elsewhere for information.

Mr. McManus's most immediate challenge will be to develop the next incarnation of the "CBS Evening News," which has been led on camera, since April, by Bob Schieffer, whose tenure has always been characterized as temporary. It has been nearly a year since Mr. Moonves said he was seeking to blow up what he has described as the "voice of God" single-anchor format for the nightly news in favor of something more innovative - a quest that has thus far proved elusive.

This smacks of the widely-expressed liberal belief that the success of Rush Limbaugh is due to his "star qualities."  For years American liberals have searched for "stars" who could outperform Limbaugh.  Each one tried has failed.  In fact, the entire Hot Air America talk network has failed.  The reason for this line of failures has escaped the experts at CBS, but I will tell you what it is.  The secret Limbaugh ingredient is content.  If Kermit the Frog had been put on a syndicated show with the same content, he would be numero uno on radio, today. 

And, what is the secret to this "content?"  Opinion backed by facts and subject to the form of testing known as experience in the real world.  CBS blames Bush because Mayor Nagin didn't use New Orleans school busses to evacuate a flooding city, and most Americans who work for a living are not fooled.  They know that when they need emergency medical help they don't call the White House.  They know that when their home catches on fire, they don't call the White House.  They also know the difference between the description of what the hurricane was going to do, and what actually happened. 

Mr. McManus' first move should be to tell his entire news organization to stop attempting to shape the news so as to control who is in congress and the White House.  Then, after telling his staff and field people what to stop doing, he should tell them what to start doing,which is to concentrate on accurately reporting what happens -- regardless of which political party benefits from the truth. 

In succeeding Mr. Heyward, whose contract expires at the end of the year, Mr. McManus inherits a once-vaunted news division - symbolized by Edward R. Murrow, whose legacy is celebrated in the current George Clooney movie "Good Night, and Good Luck" - that is now reeling on several fronts.

The "voice of God" format was invented by CBS.  It came out of WWII radio broadcasts from Europe.  The Voice was Edward R. Murrow.  George Clooney is a flaming Hollywood leftist.  Does this last piece of information tell you what you need to know about the politics of Edward R. Murrow and CBS? 

Last fall, the news division was upended by the fallout from a report, first broadcast on the weeknight edition of "60 Minutes," that purported to present new details about the Vietnam-era National Guard service of President Bush but was later discredited after the network acknowledged it could not vouch for the documents on which it was based.

The documents were created in a way that they would not have been done, back then.  In part, a typeface then not in use in military offices exposed the fraud. The typeface may be found today on machines in the vicinity of Travis County, Texas -- the home of the Democrat prosecutor who recently found a Grand Jury which would indict Republican congressman Tom Delay for violating a law which didn't exist at the time the crime is supposed to have been committed. Mr. Moonves should have been fired by the board of directors for hiring the people who have created the journalistic abortion he is now handing to McManus.

Mr. Heyward - who, at least initially, fiercely defended the report and the documents, despite fundamental questions raised immediately about their authenticity - managed to hold on to his job in the months afterward. But few others involved in the production of the report did. Dan Rather, the correspondent on the report and the anchor of the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter century, stepped down as anchor in the spring, a year earlier than he had planned.

Dan Rather and the Mary Mapes mentioned just below have subsequently received journalism honors.  So much for some awards. There are so few decent ones, in fact, that if you notice that some newspaper or broadcast station has received one, until you know who is handing out the award and why, assume it is an indication of bad, not good journalism. This caveat includes the Pulitzers, which are often handed out for newspaper series which feed the paper's readers a liberal line of crap.  That has happened right here in Oregon, in recent years.

Meanwhile, after an outside panel concluded that the disputed report had been rushed onto the air under competitive pressure and never should have been broadcast, Mr. Moonves fired the segment producer, Mary Mapes, and demanded the resignations of three other top journalists, including Betsy West, a senior vice president, who was one of Mr. Heyward's chief deputies.

While Mr. Heyward, president of CBS News for nearly a decade, survived that period, he has failed, in recent months, to meet Mr. Moonves's mandate of developing a successor to the broadcast led by Mr. Rather and now Mr. Schieffer.

If the statement above is correct, then Moonves doesn't understand the reason his network has been (though you couldn't tell it from their promotional spots) losing audience.

"Clearly there's a need for a different vision for CBS News," Mr. Moonves said today in a telephone interview. "Obviously the evening news is one issue that has sort of been on hold for a while."

"This has been a very difficult year for CBS News, for Andrew, for other people in CBS News," Mr. Moonves added, a moment later. "I think it was a mutual decision. Andrew's been head of CBS News for a long time, longer than anyone else in many years. It was just time."

And, Mr. Moonves added, "we had another extremely talented executive right down the hall."

Mr. McManus, who has been president of CBS sports since 1996, is the son of the legendary ABC sportscaster Jim McKay, whose legal name is McManus. 

Big networks are like Hollywood -- sinecures for relatives.  Cronies abound, the children of famous liberal politicians have the short ladders to climb.  It's a bucket of worms the way they slime over each other.

In an interview today, Mr. McManus said he faced a steep "learning curve," but said that there were many similarities between sports and news, not least the necessity of enlisting good story-tellers capable of working on deadline pressure and often live.

Mr. McManus apparently is wrong for the job.  Story-tellers are the problem at CBS, not the solution. They put out quite enough fiction from their news section, already.  What the network needs is journalists who tell the truth.

While saying he and Mr. Moonves had already begun to discuss ideas for the next "CBS Evening News," he said he was not prepared to share any details of what that format might be.

"One of the things we're going to look at very closely is putting together the best ensemble," he said. "Whether that involves having an anchor or not having an anchor, it's way too premature."

So, they're just going to put fresh makeup on the same old pig.  The long slide toward has-been status continues at CBS.

(LL)

Oriinal article text © 2005 The New York Times