Connie Chung criticizes Dan Rather’s “prejudice against women” in her memoirs

Connie Chung accused her former CBS News co-anchor Dan Rather of having an “innate bias against women” and complained to colleagues that she was a “second-rate journalist,” according to her new tell-all book.

Chung – the first Asian American anchor of a major network news show – said Rather was condescending from the start after CBS executives paired the two together in 1993 when his ratings were plummeting.

“I'll be out there discussing the stories and you'll be reading the teleprompter,” Chung quoted him as saying in her memoir “Connie,” which was released Tuesday.

He also told the pioneering journalist, who had interviewed leading politicians and US lawmakers as host of the Sunday talk show “Face the Nation,” that she needed to “start reading the newspaper,” Chung said.

During their two turbulent years together at the CBS Evening News, Rather was “tense and had no sense of humor” and “an innate bias against women,” she writes.

“I guess even if they had used a dog, a cat or a plant” as his co-host, “it wouldn't have made a difference,” writes Chung, who is married to former talk show host Maury Povich.

“I happened to be the recipient of his fertilizer sprayed on me.”

Rather led a whisper campaign among television critics and fellow journalists to smear Chung's name, claiming her journalistic skills were inadequate, she wrote.

Chung, 78, cited correspondent Bernard Goldberg's earlier memoirs, which said Rather “spent hours and hours on the phone with television writers, berating Connie Chung as a second-rate journalist during her coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.”

Rather was on vacation at the time and fumed to the New York Times that her coverage of the devastating scene “looked like trying to swallow ball bearings wrapped in barbed wire,” Chung wrote.

Shortly after the terrorist attack, Rather gave CBS President Peter Lund an ultimatum and Chung was fired soon after, she claimed.

Rather denied having anything to do with her departure.

“No one has heard me make a critical comment about Connie” and her dismissal “came as a surprise to us,” he told the Washington Post at the time.

The Post has reached out to Rather for comment.

Chung, who has also worked at ABC, CNN and MSNBC in his decades-long career, claimed Rather's alleged sexist attitudes toward female journalists were widespread throughout the industry.

“Many men in television news, especially those who became anchors, fell ill with a disease: Big-Shot-itis,“ Chung wrote.

“It was characterized by swelling of the head, inability to stop talking, self-aggrandizing behavior, narcissistic tendencies, relentless hubris, delusions of grandeur, and fantasies about sexual prowess.”

Chung said she spent much of her career working with white men or being in spaces surrounded by them.

Sexism accompanied her throughout her career and critics were happy to point out any mistakes she made.

A 1995 interview with Newt Gingrich's mother – whose son was then the new Speaker of the House – ended in disaster due to a decision by the broadcaster, Chung wrote in her memoirs.

During the interview, Gingrich's mother told Chung that she could not say what her son thought about then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. Chung told her to whisper the answer in her ear.

Gingrich's mother whispered that her son called Clinton a bitch, and Chung's microphone caught it.

CBS aired the whisper as a standalone clip, creating the impression that Chung had tricked Gingrich's mother and sparking debate about whether Chung should have kept the quote confidential.

The scandal became known throughout the television industry as “B-tchgate.” Chung said she wished she had insisted that CBS support her at the time, but she didn't.

She faced sexual harassment from colleagues and subordinates throughout her career.

At age 25, she was assigned to cover Senator George McGovern's presidential campaign. McGovern tried to kiss her in a dark hallway, she told USA Today.

Former President Jimmy Carter once pressed his leg against hers at a dinner, “and then he looked at me and smiled,” she told USA Today.

Chung said she had to develop an “armor” to deal with her sexist colleagues.

“I decided I was going to be a man,” she told the “Today” show. “I was going to be spunky, I was going to have guts, I was going to have a cheeky mouth.”