RATHER HITS LAYOFF OF CBS NEWS STAFFERS : Anchor, in Challenge to Network Chief, Vows to Fight Slide From ‘Murrow to Mediocrity’

A day after his brief but symbolic appearance in a picket line of striking CBS news writers, anchorman Dan Rather on Tuesday chided CBS chief Laurence A. Tisch for cutbacks that Rather said may hurt the quality of CBS News.

Evoking the CBS News heritage of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and others, Rather, in a column for the New York Times, lamented last Friday’s layoff of more than 200 CBS News employees. The cutback was approved by Tisch, who took charge of CBS after a top-level shake-up last fall.

“We are determined that our new corporate management not lead us into a tragic transformation from Murrow to mediocrity,” Rather said in his column. “We take our public trust very seriously.”

Rather recalled that when Tisch first became acting chief executive of CBS in September, he told CBS News staffers “that he wanted us to be the best. We wanted nothing more than to fulfill that mandate.

“Ironically, he has now made the task seem something between difficult and impossible.”

A spokeswoman for Tisch, who became CBS’ permanent chief executive on Jan. 14, said he had no comment on Rather’s remarks.

Rather was not immediately available for comment, but a CBS News spokeswoman said the anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News” had not received any reaction from Tisch.

The column, published a day before the scheduled monthly meeting of the CBS board here, was described as “topic A” of talk at CBS News headquarters by one source who said that rank-and-file reaction to it “was nothing but praise--although plenty think it should have been stronger.”

The remark was indicative of strong feelings that have been expressed against Tisch since the layoffs and a $30-million reduction in the news division’s annual budget became known last Thursday.

The cuts were part of retrenchments that NBC and ABC also have been undergoing in the face of what all three networks say are flat advertising revenues, smaller audiences and larger competition from cable TV and independent stations.

Ironically, Tisch, a professed hard-news fan who unsuccessfully tried to get correspondent Bill Moyers to stay at CBS News, initially was hailed as a savior of the troubled news division when he joined CBS.

Few feel that way now, one insider said after last week’s cutbacks--”We thought we were getting a white knight, and instead we got Darth Vader.”

During Monday’s walk with striking newswriters by Rather and other top CBS News correspondents, Rather said he was on the picket line because “I want people to know I care. I care about every person who works for CBS News.”

As a squad of reporters and TV cameramen surrounded him on the line outside the CBS Broadcast Center here, Rather was asked if he had seen any drop in the quality of CBS News since the layoffs

“No,” he replied, “but I have said before and I say now, you cannot have a $30-billion budget cut. . . .” He paused, grinned and corrected himself. “I mean $30 million, although it may seem like $30 billion.”

In any event, he said, CBS News can’t take a 10% bite out of its $300-million budget this year and lose 200 “good professionals” and still expect to be the same organization it was.

In an interview later Monday, the anchorman said he hadn’t been thinking of or talking about resigning in protest, and added: “I don’t think we’re sinking. We need to work hard. Whatever the circumstance, I intend to fight until she (CBS News) sinks.”