Rachel Maddow: Fox News 'Slimeballs,' CNN 'Not Really Trying' (VIDEO)

Rachel Maddow had harsh words for her cable news competitors Tuesday night on CBS's "Late Show."

When asked by David Letterman why CNN was going out of business, Maddow said it's because the network is "not really trying."

"It's not that they don't have opinions," she said. "I think they have opinions, but they think they are doing something qualitatively different than what Fox is doing and what we are doing. I don't think they are, and I think the fact that they judge it to be different is their excuse for not really trying."

Maddow explained that "cable news is about analysis...so when you tune in to cable news you're tuning into a specific person, usually whom the show is named after -- it's just not a newsreader -- and you want to get their point of view. If you then make your hosts afraid to give their point of view, you've removed the reason for people to turn on that station."

Maddow did praise CNN later in the interview for their responsible handling of the Shirley Sherrod story, setting the record straight by interviewing Sherrod and playing the full video that Andrew Breitbart had excerpted.

As for Breitbart — who Letterman called an "asshole" — Maddow called him a "political hack job." She would go on to describe both Breitbart and Fox News as "slimeballs."