CBS NEWS EMBROILED IN YET MORE SCANDAL AS TOP BOSS STEPS DOWN WITH VERY TENSE STATEMENT:
CBS News’ CEO Wendy McMahon has announced she’s quitting the network – with a tense statement hinting at her unhappiness at the newsroom’s current state.
McMahon, 50, made her departure known in a Monday memo to staffers – one that made clear she was taking a stand against Donald Trump and a lawsuit alleging CBS News exhibits bias.
The maneuver was first reported by The New York Times, three months after insiders first said McMahon was set to lose her job.
Both she and now-former 60 Minutes boss Owens opposed Paramount heiress Shari Redstone’s plans to settle a $20billion dollar suit being brought by the president that alleges an October 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris was deceptively edited.
A settlement appears to be the sticking point for the Skydance deal to go through – leaving Owens and and McMahon in higher-ups’ crosshairs.
‘It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,’ McMahon wrote Monday as a result.
‘It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership.’
‘Today, I am stepping down from my position as president and CEO of CBS News and Stations,’ McMahon told her team, calling the less than two-year stint plagued by poor ratings ‘one of the most meaningful chapters in [her] career.’
More details here: CBS News President Resigns amid Feud with Trump.
McMahon took over CBS News in August 2023 and oversaw numerous controversies during her brief time as head of the network. Redstone rebuked McMahon when CBS Mornings anchor Tony Dokoupil drew the ire of progressive staffers for lightly challenging author Ta-Nehisi Coates’s inflammatory claims about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Dokoupil was subject to ritualistic humiliation internally for the Coates interview and eventually succumbed to the pressure with an emotional apology.
Former CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge has criticized the network for censoring her attempts to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story and squashing a live interview with billionaire Elon Musk. CBS laid off Herridge last year and she now runs an independent newsletter.
Paramount is also seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its merger with Skydance Media, a blockbuster transaction the agency has spent months reviewing. The FCC and Paramount recently began discussions about the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, among other conditions for the FCC to allow the merger to take place.
As Bob Hoge writes at Red State, “another one bites the dust at CBS News. They thoroughly earned this ongoing humiliation, however, so I shed not a single tear for them.”