BEIJING, June 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather took a shot his former employer Monday morning and Tuesday CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves fired back saying Rather's characterization of the network "tarting" up its newscast with a female anchor was "sexist."

Rather said CBS made a mistake by taking the evening news broadcast and "dumbing it down, tarting it up," and playing up celebrity news over war coverage when speaking by phone onMSNBC's "Morning Joe" program with Joe Scarborough on Monday. The comments appeared later in blogs and in a story published Tuesday in the New York Daily News and the New York Post.

Rather saidhis successor, Katie Couric, was a "nice person," but "the mistake was to try to bring the Today’show ethos to the Evening News,’and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience."

Whenasked about the remarks at an appearance in New York sponsored by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Moonves called the remarks "sexist" and said he was surprised at the amount of negative coverage Couric was receiving. Couric, the first solo female news anchor, has been struggling in the ratings.

"She's been on the air for nine months," Moonves said. "Let's give her a break."

Couric started strong but is now a distant third in the evening news ratings race. Last month her "CBS Evening News" set a record for its least-watched broadcast for at least two decades, then broke it the very next week.

Rather left as "CBS Evening News" anchor in March 2005 after bungling a discredited story about President Bush's Vietnam-era military service. He severed ties to the network a year later.

Moonves said he "absolutely" had confidence in Couric and the direction that CBS's evening news was going, saying it was imperative to reach younger audiences. Evening news broadcasts couldn't continue to have audiences that are mainly over 60, Moonves said, otherwise "the evening news will die."

(Agencies)