PR: RICK KAPLAN IS NAMED EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF THE “CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC”

RICK KAPLAN IS NAMED EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF THE “CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC”

Rick Kaplan, a multiple award-winning news producer and executive spanning a career in broadcast journalism of more than 35 years, has been named Executive Producer, CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC, it was announced by Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports. The appointment is effective immediately.

“Few broadcast journalists have a list of accomplishments and the history of success that Rick has had – the list is truly extraordinary,” said McManus. “I’m very much looking forward to working with Rick and having the benefit of his vast experience and knowledge as we continue to build the best evening news broadcast at CBS News.”

“Rick Kaplan is a big personality with big ideas,” said Couric, the broadcast’s anchor and managing editor. “Though I’ve never worked directly with him, I know Rick is an extraordinarily experienced producer who has exciting plans for our broadcast. I’m thrilled he has decided to come home to CBS News.”

“I spent the first 10 years of my career at CBS News, including three years working on the ‘CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite,’” said Kaplan, “so coming home to that broadcast, especially as executive producer, is particularly thrilling. Katie is an enormously talented journalist and broadcaster, and this is an extraordinary opportunity for us to grow the broadcast in every way.”

Most recently, Kaplan was president of MSNBC (2004-06), during which time the ratings for virtually every hour of the program day experienced significant double-digit growth. He developed new programs and worked to improve existing ones, including “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” which recorded the highest-ever ratings at that time. Kaplan also produced major news events including Election Night 2004.

He was a senior vice president for ABC News (2003-04), responsible for the division’s hard news programs—including “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings,” “Nightline” and “This Week,” among others—as well as the division’s political unit. Kaplan also oversaw the design and construction of ABC’s new newsroom and primary studio. Before moving into that position, he coordinated ABC News’ control room production and news coverage of the Iraq War.

For two years prior to that, Kaplan was a teaching fellow at the Shorenstein Center of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lectured there and at a number of prestigious universities across the country.

Kaplan was president of CNN-US (1997-2000), responsible for all news and programming, including a highly rated series of instant news specials and increased live coverage and analysis of both breaking news and ongoing news events. He also revamped the network’s programming schedule and increased the number of hours of hard news programming during the weekends. Kaplan produced all of CNN’s primetime coverage of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2000.

Before that, Kaplan held several high-level positions at ABC News over an 18-year career there. He was executive producer of “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” (1994-96), during which time the broadcast was the most watched evening news program in the country. Kaplan was the creator and executive producer of “Primetime Live” (1989-94). The news magazine became a top ten program and distinguished itself with award-winning investigative journalism and on-the-scene live coverage of major breaking news events, including the Persian Gulf War, the opening of the Berlin Wall, the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and the Los Angeles riots. At the same time, he was one of the producers and coordinators of ABC News’ coverage of the Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and was executive producer of the 1991 live special in which Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin appeared together from the Kremlin and took Americans’ questions. Kaplan was the executive producer of ABC News “Nightline” (1985-89), where he produced historic week-long series originating from Johannesburg and a critically acclaimed examination of Arab-Israeli conflicts, as well as an unprecedented four-hour town meeting on AIDS. He also was executive producer of “World News This Morning” and “Good Morning America” news. He joined ABC News in 1979 as a senior producer of “World News Tonight” (1979-84).

Kaplan’s broadcast journalism career began at CBS News, where he served as an associate producer of the “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” (1974-79) and an associate producer of the CBS MORNING NEWS (1971-74). He was a writer, assignment desk editor and producer at WBBM-TV, the CBS Owned station in Chicago (1969-71).

Kaplan is the recipient of scores of major journalism awards, including 34 Emmy Awards, four Overseas Press Club Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards and four Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards and two Gold Batons, among many others. He is an adjunct fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University (since 2003) and an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Illinois (since 1998), and he continues to lecture regularly at major universities across the country.

Kaplan was born in Chicago. He was graduated from the University of Illinois and received the institution’s honorary Doctor of Letters in 1999.

Rome Hartman, who helped to create and led the broadcast from January 2006, will move into a key new assignment at CBS News. Details will be announced soon.

“I can’t express strongly enough how important Rome was in stabilizing the CBS EVENING NEWS during the transition from Bob Schieffer to Katie and what a valuable partner he was in the planning and execution of the new broadcast,” continued McManus. “I look forward to his playing a very prominent role as we continue to build and further strengthen CBS News.

“Rome Hartman is one of the finest people with whom I’ve had the privilege of working,” said Couric, “He is tireless, dedicated and incredibly gifted, and he was a wonderful guiding force for me at CBS News. While I’ll very much miss working with him on a daily basis, I know we will remain close colleagues and friends.

By 1997, after Kaplan moved to Cable News Network as one of its chieftains, with evidence of campaign fundraising improprieties threatening to submerge Bill Clinton, CNN unleashed a Kaplan-produced special. U.S. News & World Report found that Kaplan had ordered CNN reporters to “limit the use of the word ‘scandal’ in reporting on Clinton’s campaign fundraising.” The message to CNN reporters was clear: go easy on the boss’s friends in the White House.

As the Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998, wrote Graham, “Kaplan leapt into action at CNN with two-hour specials attacking any and all Clinton critics. The programs included ‘Media Madness,’ which asked ‘what the hell are you people doing’ probing Bill Clinton’s sex life?; and ‘Investigating the Investigator,’ which described Ken Starr as ‘suspect’ over his ‘religious and Republican roots.’ In May, Kaplan devoted an hour to demonizing Rep. Dan Burton, who was compared by reporter Bruce Morton to English despot Oliver Cromwell.”

Kaplan saw to it that CNN gave softball coverage to the Clintons and threw hardballs at their enemies. Under his watch, CNN came to be known as the Clinton News Network for its pro-Bill&Hill bias. As Bill O’Reilly of rival Fox News Channel has noted, “financial reporter Lou Dobbs quit CNN because Kaplan was cutting into ‘Moneyline’ to give Mr. Clinton some marginal coverage.”

(CNN also came to be called the Castro News Network for its coverage unwaveringly favorable to the Cuban Marxist dictator. Kaplan and Castro have been good friends since at least 1978, Margolick reported, and during a Castro United Nations visit to New York while they were dining together, Kaplan invited Fidel to come with him to a private dinner with President Clinton, deputy White House Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, and Susan Thomases. “Castro paused, for what seemed like an hour, before declining,” wrote Margolick. “He didn’t want to embarrass Clinton, he explained.”)

In 1998 CNN President Kaplan also oversaw production of the first documentary for his new show NewsStand. The documentary called “Tailwind,” narrated by hyper-Leftist journalist Peter Arnett, alleged that during the Vietnam War the United States had used poison gas against women and children in Laos. Challenged for proof by other journalists and the Pentagon, CNN’s documentary fell apart like the tissue of lies it was. But that did not stop its use around the world as a tool of Marxist anti-American propaganda.

Kaplan’s Leftist love did not end with the Clintons. “The November 20, 2000, Newsweek reported Kaplan had helped Al Gore prepare for a debate against Bill Bradley,” wrote Graham. “At a rehearsal for a California debate on March 1, former CNN President Rick Kaplan joked, ‘Let’s do the debate now.’” But as Graham notes, Kaplan “was still CNN president in March,” while acting openly as a Gore partisan and enabler.

“I keep looking for what I should be ashamed of, long and hard,” Kaplan told Margolick of those who question his Clinton sycophancy and lack of journalistic distance from those he covers, “and I just can’t find anything.” He dismisses his critics such as Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media and Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center as “liars.”

And now, trailing clouds of glory, Rick Kaplan reportedly will be taking control of the helm at MSNBC.

The problem this poses for MSNBC is that nobody familiar with Kaplan’s past can trust anything reported on a network under his control. And without viewer trust in its integrity, a news network dies. This is why CNN’s credibility and ratings collapsed during Kaplan’s reign of blatant bias. MSNBC could scarcely have found a worse President anywhere than this poster boy for Left-wing media bias.

Among the first things Kaplan installs in a new office, wrote Margolick, is what he calls ‘”my favorite picture in life.’ It was a 1986 Vladimir Sichov photograph of a homeless man, who holds a sign declaring ‘I’m hungry. Please help’; copies of [betrayer of President Ronald Reagan] David Stockman’s The Triumph of Politics are visible in a bookstore window behind him. ‘That’s trickle-down economics,’ Kaplan said” of the crude Leftist agitprop photo.

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