It’s a war of the worlds at CBS News.
Ten people familiar with the workings of CBS News say the Paramount Skydance unit is veering toward dysfunction, with a management team led by Bari Weiss that doesn’t value the standards held by veteran journalists — and a staff that views its editor-in-chief and her hand-picked senior staff with great skepticism, owing to her lack of experience managing mainstream media assets.
These people suggest a cascade of recent errors at CBS News — rushing incoming “Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil into his job without a longer period to promote his arrival, airing a town hall with Erika Kirk without mainstream ad support, pulling a “60 Minutes’” segment after it had already been announced — have eroded CBS News’ value and credibility, and can only be fixed if producers and reporters challenge Weiss more regularly.
Such stuff augurs a quick-moving “degradation of CBS News,” says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, who fears the dynamic could lead to a “death spiral” that is “hard to reverse.”
By some accounts, Weiss is only getting started. She may be getting ready to focus on “CBS Mornings,” mindful that host Gayle King’s salary — valued at around $15 million a year, according to one person familiar with the network — is no longer viable in a weaker media economy. King is said to be considering various options, including a special correspondent role that would have her making appearances on CBS News properties but not being a regular host, or another that might keep her on the air for another year but at a lower salary, giving her 12 full months to bid farewell to viewers. There are also some expectations Weiss might overhaul the news division’s streaming service, potentially relying more on talk-heavy podcasts.
Weiss has been under a microscope since her arrival in October, after Paramount bought her conservative-opinion site The Free Press for $150 million. Since taking the reins, she has pressed programs such as “CBS Evening News” and “60 Minutes” to give more time to Trump administration officials and other leaders. The nascent tenure of Dokoupil on “CBS Evening News” has been marred by awkward segments such as one that celebrated U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio or others that downplayed the severity of changes in vaccine protocol, the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol and the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by an ICE agent.
These maneuvers have taken attention away from actual scoops and newsgathering, according to staffers, who had hoped Weiss might use her Free Press acumen to generate broader attention for CBS News’ digital properties. Her working style was formed in the culture of a startup business, and while she is known to work hard and with determination, her approach can grate. Staffers say she rides people intensely to execute on a directive, then is apt to change her mind at the last minute, all of which proves exhausting. Weiss “fiddles,” often without obvious reason, says one staffer. “It’s part of what fuels the frustration,” this person says. “We’re doing our damn jobs and doing them well.”
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To be sure, there have been signs that some people are ready to hold hands. They have to. Like its rivals, CBS News operates in an era when traditional TV viewers are getting their news in many ways, crimping regular cash flows. Weiss has been willing to take counsel from Tom Cibrowski, the TV veteran who joined CBS News as president last year. But he’s in no position to challenge Weiss in public, some of these people say, because she reports directly to Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison. Cibrowski reports to George Cheeks, who oversees TV operations. And that tips more control to Weiss.
CBS News declined declined to make executives available for comment.
The news division tried to move past one of its diving points over the weekend, with the airing of the report on “60 Minutes” that Weiss had initially ordered held after the CBS announced it would air on December 21. The story, by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, was built around on-screen accounts of Venezuelan men deported by the U.S. to a harsh prison in El Salvador, but Weiss at the time insisted that Trump officials appear in the report to comment on camera, even though Alfonsi’s team had made good-faith efforts to secure response ahead of filing the report for legal review.
On Sunday, the actual report seemed little changed from what had been prepared intially, and vetted. But Alfonsi in an on-air preamble and post-script introduced other information and statistics. The Trump administration declined to make someone available for an on-camera interview. Weiss has defended her decision to hold the piece. But she acknowledges her timing was inopportune, according to a person familiar with her thinking, and she recognizes that she inserted herself into “60 Minutes’” editing and vetting process at a late stage.
This may be the inevitable aftermath for a corporate asset that has cycled through a parade of top managers and shifts in business focus. Since 2019, CBS News has grappled with multiple changes in its senior executive ranks. There have been multiple senior editorial executives; four different presidents; and, since Scott Pelley’s departure from “CBS Evening News” in 2017, five different named anchors at that program’s helm. In contract, NBC News has changed anchors at “NBC Nightly News” just three times in four decades. David Muir, meanwhile, has anchored “World News Tonight” at ABC News since 2014.
“When you have that kind of chaos, what you see people do is they retreat to safety. They don’t want to rise. They don’t want to look as if they are identified as anybody’s person,” says Sonnenfeld. As a result, he adds, news staffers are less willing to “take a risk on behalf of viewers.”
Now CBS News’ internal struggles are becoming national jokes. Host Nikki Glaser raised laughs and eyebrows at the Golden Globes when she poked fun at the esteemed news division — on its own network, no less — with a monologue zinger calling CBS News “America’s newest place to see BS news.”
To journalists, Weiss is an outsider who is skilled at attracting digital attention but prone to traditional TV flubs. And she appears to take a dim view of her staff, releasing multiple statements about how America has lost trust in the mainstream media. And yet, if she and CBS News journalists want to win new audiences, they’ll all need to hold their noses and get along.
From Variety US