About now if he was still alive, Andy Rooney would be saying something that would make the executives at CBS News want to fire him. 
  I wouldn’t presume to put words in his mouth, but I spent a lot of time with Andy Rooney at the other end of the dinner table. He was blunt at home and more so in the office, standing up for his work and journalism at the risk of his job. 
 He would look an executive in the eye and say, “No, I won’t change it.” And he might follow that with, “Remember, I have more experience at being bossed than you have at bossing.”
  CBS knew that the same blunt honesty and independence made my father beloved to millions of Americans who watched “60 Minutes,” the most successful broadcast in the history of television news.
  He’s say, “If you’re afraid to say it, that means it needs to be said.” That’s journalism.
  The current executives at CBS have hacked into their premier show with the Silicon Valley mantra of “disruption.” They say that if you don’t disrupt yourself it’s coming anyway. But that’s a slogan for new technology, not for ideas and information. If the future means of delivery is a problem, why attack the product?
  What’s really happened is that the CBS executives, the editorial boss Bari Weiss and President Tom Cibrowski, can’t stand that “60 Minutes” was independent from the rest of the news division, fighting off attempts at editorial control. 
  Paramount owner David Ellison recently called correspondent Leslie Stahl and promised to preserve the show’s editorial independence … after a staff massacre. The editorial interference is already in the house with a new executive producer appointed by Weiss who has no experience with television news. 
  The problems at CBS News are not at the weekly “60 Minutes,” which even gained 9 percent more viewers in the past season.  The flaws of CBS are on the air every morning and night. 
  Tony Dokoupil opens the Evening News with “Breaking news, right now.” If everything is breaking news, nothing is breaking news.
  The correspondents all have phony titles; “Chief Correspondent,” “National Correspondent,” “Chief Technology Correspondent,” “Senior Foreign Correspondent.” 
  Morning News anchor Gayle King walks the red carpets at celebrity events as if she was herself a movie star, and Nate Burrows also hosts a game show … this at the network of Murrow and Cronkite. 
  Violent material is introduced with a trigger warning and sometimes blurred. If CBS covered the Vietnam war that way we’d still be fighting it.
  CBS has abandoned verbs. Everything is delivered in the breathless and verbless present tense: “Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Qatar today, shaking hands on the tarmac, hoping for progress.” It’s as if everything is too urgent to complete a sentence.
  On days when President Trump threatens our democracy, CBS News leads with a tornado in Nebraska. And every Evening News broadcast now includes a warm and fuzzy  animal story and a “feel good” ending.
  You can’t return to the age of Cronkite. It would be unwatchable today.  The problem at CBS News now is that they are chasing an audience with hype rather than attracting one with news worth watching. 
  CBS fired “60 Minutes” correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi because they defended their work against Bari Weiss, the editorial chief  installed  to please Donald Trump. The new executives cannot tolerate the kind of internal disagreements that made “60 Minutes” great.
  My father’s “Few Minutes” carried the “60 Minutes” audience to the end of the show, which then passed viewers to the entertainment lineup on Sunday night. “60 Minutes” still serves that function for the network, and if the news show collapses, it will be disaster for CBS.
  My father was a disrupter, an irascible and difficult man. Right now Andy Rooney would be in the boss’s face about what’s happening at CBS and publicly daring them to fire him. In a demonstration of how little they know about what they’re doing, I think they would.