Connie Chung Revisits the Interview That Ended Her CBS News Career

“Suddenly, I found myself facing a firing squad of critics who denounced me as a ‘liar’ for having ‘betrayed’ Mrs. Gingrich’s trust and ‘deceived,'” Chung writes in his book on at the “B**** gate” and some CBS News executives and fellow journalists, including his friend and mentor Walter Cronkite– they moved in their defense, their voices could not change the tide of public opinion.

“It didn’t have any effect,” he says matter-of-factly now. “Nothing could stop the whirlwind of criticism. It seemed as if it had gone beyond the pale and there wasn’t much anyone, especially me, could do.

The beginning of the end

“B****gate” was just the beginning of what has been a difficult year for Chung. In April, the simmering tensions between her and Rather that occurred behind the scenes at the CBS Evening News burst into the public eye after their coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

As Chung recounts in his memoir, he was criticized by residents for what they perceived as an insensitive report, while Rather made it clear that he was not happy to miss the assignment. The following month, CBS announced that Chung would no longer be Rather’s co-anchor, and she and the network parted ways shortly thereafter. He went on to stints at ABC News, CNN and MSNBC before stepping away from the industry in 2006.

Flash-forward three decades later, and the 1995 controversy over “B****gate” seems almost quaint in retrospect. Of course, the speech of the political speech at the age of Donald Trump it was much noticedwith the president-elect also describes his former Democratic rivalVice President Kamala Harrisas a “s*** vice president” on the campaign trail last year.

However, Chung believes Kathleen Gingrich’s whisper could still make waves in 2025, if only because the insult was uttered by a member of a politician’s family as opposed to the politician himself.

“It’s rare to talk to politicians’ parents,” he notes, adding that politicians’ children are also generally off limits. “It’s out of respect for them. We know they can’t have a normal life, and journalists don’t want to contribute to the abnormality of it.”

Chung provides a happier kicker to the “B****gate” story in his memoir, recalling an encounter with Newt Gingrich on an Amtrak train in Washington, DC several years after he left Congress. At some point during the trip, he caught the ex-Speaker in a catnap.