A CBS News correspondent behind a controversial interview with the American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is reportedly considering legal action after she was laid off on Wednesday.As sweeping layoffs roiled CBS News, Debora Patta claims in her lawsuit that she had been told by company representatives that she was safe. After she got the bad news, she found out that she was being let go instead of a Rome-based correspondent, Chris Livesay, who was originally supposed to be let go but asked to be reassigned as an Israel correspondent. Ms. Patta interviewed Mr. Huckabee in August and asked him about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and about whether he is “deeply troubled by images of starving children.”In the version of the interview that aired on TV, Mr. Huckabee responded, “I’m moved when the photos are verified.” He also stated, “I think there are certainly people suffering in Gaza.”After the interview aired, Mr. Huckabee called out CBS News and Ms. Patta for the editing of the interview, which left out portions of his answers that provided more context. In the full interview, Mr. Huckabee stated, “I’m moved when the photos are verified. I mean, we’re all moved when you see someone, especially a child who’s starving. But The New York Times published a picture on the front page of what was purported to be a starving child. Turns out the child had a birth defect and had not been starving.” He also noted that pallets of food were being stolen by Hamas before they could be distributed to people. Those comments were removed from the interview that aired. At the end of the interview, Mr. Huckabee said, “If Israel is attempting genocide, they’re really, really bad at it. They could have had genocide on October the 8th.”In the full transcript, he added, “They could have dropped a few bombs and have annihilated all Gazans, it’s not that big an area. They certainly had the capacity to do it, and saw that in the 12-day war with Iran. It is the most ridiculous thing in the world to say that Israel is committing genocide. That’s absurd. On its face, it’s absurd. If they were trying to commit genocide, it would not have taken them 22 months.”Ms. Patta is considering suing the network, according to the New York Post, after it was reported that she was originally not on a list of employees to be laid off.Mr. Livesay, who was on a list of staffers slated to be laid off, reportedly reached out to CBS News’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, who is a strong supporter of Israel, and asked to be reassigned as an Israel correspondent. Ms. Weiss reportedly then took Mr. Livesay’s name off a list of staffers set to be laid off and chose to lay off Ms. Patta instead. Ms. Patta had recently signed a three-year contract with CBS News, and her colleagues told the Independent that her reporting is “fearless and fair.” But the editing of her interview with Mr. Huckabee came at a time when CBS News’s new owner, David Ellison, has signaled that he wants to address allegations of a left-wing, anti-Israel bias at the network. “She is probably looking to sue over her Middle East coverage,” one source told the Post.It was unclear whether CBS News planned to pay out the remainder of her contract. The former nonexecutive chairwoman of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, Shari Redstone, told the New York Times that she was frustrated by what she felt was an anti-Israel bias and said that the network needed “more balance.” She conceded that she had been unable to shift the network’s editorial voice.Since taking over CBS News, Mr. Ellison has tried to implement some reforms, such as bringing on Ms. Weiss, who has become known as a pro-Israel, anti-woke journalist, and hiring the former head of the right-leaning Hudson Institute, Kenneth Weinstein, to serve as an ombudsman and evaluate complaints of bias at the network. Mr. Ellison and his management team have also signaled that they want to cut around $2 billion in costs across all of Paramount’s divisions. And on Wednesday, the company laid off roughly 1,000 employees. CBS News laid off around 100 staffers in what one employee described to the Guardian as a “bloodbath.”Most of the reported layoffs at CBS News seemed to be the kind of cuts that are standard at broadcast TV networks, which are in decline, and not due to efforts to address allegations of bias. Mr. Ellison told staffers in a memo that the layoffs were aimed at “addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization” and “phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities.”At CBS News, the company canceled its weekend show, “CBS Saturday Morning,” and other streaming programs. Such cuts are typical for broadcast networks, which often opt to cut positions that are not central to their main money-makers. The network reportedly “gutted” its Race and Culture unit, which was established in 2020 to review the “tone, content, and intention” of stories related to race.” The unit faced criticism last year after it was reported that it played a key role in the network’s decision to reprimand one of its morning show hosts, Tony Dokoupil, for his line of questioning during an interview with the bestselling anti-Israel author, Ta-Nehisi Coates.CBS News did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.
