Fear at CBS News as New Owner ‘Plans Brutal, 10 Percent Layoffs’ Just as It Pays $150 Million for Pro-Israel Publication and Its Editor

More than 10 percent of the staff at CBS News could be on the chopping block as its new owners look to clean up the troubled broadcast news network.The layoffs have been rumored since Skydance took over Paramount. Harsh layoffs across Paramount have long been expected as a result of the acquisition. Now the depth of the planned cuts as they affect beleaguered CBS News — which unlike CBS’s successful sports and entertainment programming is believed to lose money, about $35 million a year, according to “Puck” — are becoming clearer. Managers have been compiling lists of jobs to be eliminated and, in some cases, are being told to find more cuts, media site Breaker reports.The job cuts are expected to touch all corners of the news division — even “60 Minutes,” which considers itself untouchable.“60 Minutes” was the most-watched non-sports show on TV last week. Its correspondents and producers fiercely guarded their fiefdom. Paramount left it alone because the show was successful and stayed out of the headlines. But that has all changed in the last year.The long-time Sunday evening show has been accused of airing anti-Israeli segments. In January, “60 Minutes” aired a piece on Department of State dissidents who opposed U.S. support for Israel that the American Jewish Committee called “biased and misguided.” Later in the year, the program was criticized for an interview with a freed Israeli-American hostage during which “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl asked him if his captors starved him because they themselves were low on food.Paramount said on July 1 that it agreed to pay $16 million to President Trump’s future presidential library to settle his lawsuit which claimed that producers at “60 Minutes” improperly edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her sound coherent. The settlement did not include an apology and was for far less than the $20 billion the president was seeking.During the period when Paramount was negotiating the settlement, “60 Minutes” defiantly ran weekly anti-Trump segments that enraged the president, including a sympathetic interview with a Clinton operative, Marc Elias, who’s believe to be behind the commissioning of the Steele Dossier.But allegations of bias spread much further than “60 Minutes.” On October 7, 2024, the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, CBS News’s then executive editor reprimanded — during the news division’s morning meeting — “CBS Mornings” host Tony Dokoupil for challenging the virulently anti-Israel writer Ta-Nehisi Coates on air. A recording of that reprimand was leaked to the Free Press, as was internal CBS News standards guidance not to refer to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to be careful about referring to Hamas as a terrorist organization.The cuts come as Paramount spends a reported $150 million to acquire the Free Press and bring its founder — pro-Israel editor Bari Weiss — to reform CBS News. As editor-in-chief, Ms. Weiss is expected to try to rein in liberal and anti-Israel ideology at the tarnished network.The purchase as layoffs loom is drawing complaints.“The fact that we don’t have money to pay journalists, but we have money to pay Bari Weiss between $100 and $200 million is indicative of what the Ellisons’ true goal here is,” one staffer told the Independent.“Hiring Bari Weiss is the quickest way to destroy the news division of the network,” one BlueSky commentator lamented.Dylan Byers of “Puck” reported recently that CBS News has been losing $35 million a year but the news division has denied that to the Sun, claiming it is profitable. Mr. Byers has not backed off his reporting and says CBS News teams will become smaller and have to work on smaller budgets.CBS News has been shedding high talent salaries. The ouster of Norah O’Donnell from the “CBS Evening News” has left Gayle King as the only CBS News employee believed to be making eight figures. The remainder of CBS’s talent roster is believed to be making vastly less. Ratings for the already low-rated evening news plummeted after Ms. O’Donnell left and executives from “60 Minutes” swooped in and changed the historic program’s format to de-emphasize news in favor of earnest feature stories about issues like education.Paramount has signaled it is looking to slash $2 billion in costs across the entire company meaning it is also unlikely that CBS News will be getting any major investments.Paramount has not publicly confirmed the layoffs and there is no timetable for them to take place.

Fear at CBS News as New Owner ‘Plans Brutal, 10 Percent Layoffs’ Just as It Pays $150 Million for Pro-Israel Publication and Its Editor

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