“Real News wasn’t easy then, and it isn’t easy now,” CBS News president David Rhodes stated last night at the Paley Center For Media. “It requires investment, and intestinal fortitude. Our idea was left for dead by some critics when we launched it in 2012. But our chairman, Leslie Moonves, stood strongly by this concept, and by the extraordinary journalists you are about to meet…”
That concept is CBS This Morning, and those journalists are named Gayle King, Norah O’Donnell, and Charlie Rose. The trio, with CTM ep Ryan Kadro, participated in a discussion last night at the Paley Center. Moderated by THR’s Marisa Guthrie, it focused on the growth of their program, which launched in 2012, and the general news media landscape.
O’Donnell, Rose and King on chemistry:
“When I had the opportunity to join these two on set, it became one of those moments when you immediately click,” said O’Donnell. “Those moments are rare, whether in your personal or your professional relationships. I joined the show full-time in September 2012, and the show was not only built from the ground up to reflect the values of CBS News, but it also became to reflect our own values, which are really just a deep curiosity about the news and people. We just happen to share that as individuals, and when we met one another, we were reflecting one another’s values and interests, and that’s what makes this show unique.”
Rose’s thoughts? “One day, I had a legal pad in front of me, and I wrote on the legal pad with Norah sitting next to me, ‘Don’t you love live television?’ She wrote back: ‘This is the best job in television.”
“People always ask: ‘What’s the chemistry like?’ Well, I liken it to dating,” said King. “A guy might look really good on paper; he went to this school, he’s this tall, he has this job, he has all of his teeth, but once you meet him, it just doesn’t work. On paper, we look really good, but the chemistry truly works because we have mutual respect, we admire each other, and we have very like-minded philosophies. You can’t program that.”
“We also always have each other’s back,” added O’Donnell.
Kadro was asked about his past experience working on The Early Show, and how the shift to a newsier morning program like CTM came about:
“I think it was definitely a time to do something different, and we want to continue to do things differently,” said Kadro. ” The instruction from David [Rhodes] when we started the show was to do a show that was reflective of CBS News’s values, to cover news and tell good stories. Everyone internally has embraced that. There was also a shifting direction with the staff. We had to find the right people, and then drawing on the organization and getting them to believe in it too. Even inside CBS for years, people didn’t want to do the Early Show, guests and correspondents alike. Now, people are rushing to do CBS This Morning.”
On Megyn Kelly:
“It’s very tough to come from where she came from and have established traction,” said Rose. “Creating what you want to do is not easy. Time will tell.”
“They’re still figuring it out, and it’s very rare that you put something on the air and it works instantly,” said King. “You have to work out the kinks, and find the rhythm to figure out what works for you. I also think she has a lot of haters, and you have to figure out who you are and do the job that you want to do, stick to the core of what you believe, and either it will work or it won’t. But I do think there a lot of people who aren’t wishing her well, and I don’t necessarily think that’s fair or right.”
“We are all friends with Megyn,” O’Donnell added. “We want to see her succeed and are fans of her past work and hope she will continue to do well. I think the early move saying she wouldn’t cover politics was an odd choice to make. As a political journalist myself, I believe covering politics is important, and I don’t know how you can be a journalist and not cover politics. It’s at the heart of covering our democracy.”
On Pres. Trump:
“Well, this is a great story to cover,” said Rose. “You want to cover it as well as you can. You always want to make sure that you’re fair, and that you are reaching out so that you’re trying to understand all of the aspects of the story.”
“It’s no longer a 24-hour cycle, it’s now more like a five minute cycle,” added King. “It really is our job to report what’s going on so that the audience can really decide for themselves.”
“The president’s tweets are covered as news, but they’re more like press releases,” said O’Donnell. “Even three years ago, we didn’t usually cover press releases. I do think the current environment and the president’s innovative idea to use Twitter as a megaphone has placed a special responsibility on journalists to do more in-depth reporting. It’s an important time for journalists to try and understand policies, and it’s easy to get caught up in the theatrics of what’s going on, but it’s also really important to understand what else is going on in Washington.”
“Even when he uses the label ‘fake news,’ I never think he’s talking about us,” said King. “Now, I don’t mean that in an arrogant way, but I do stand behind everything that we report. His way of saying ‘fake news’ just seems to be news he doesn’t like, and unfortunately there are a lot of things he doesn’t like.”
