A veteran CBS News producer who is leaving the network after 46 years has suggested that political bias is influencing editorial decisions at the American broadcaster. Mary Walsh, who departs amid a wave of buyouts, wrote in a farewell memo to colleagues that staff had been instructed to target a particular part of the political spectrum.
“We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that,” Walsh wrote in the internal message, obtained by the Guardian. The send-off comes as CBS News owner Paramount Skydance emerged as the likely winner in a takeover battle for Warner Bros Discovery, which owns CNN. CBS is now headed by Bari Weiss, a conservative commentator turned media entrepreneur whose appointment was seen as favourable to the Trump administration.
CBS News executives rejected the allegation. Kim Harvey, executive producer of the Evening News, wrote to staff that Walsh’s claim was “simply not true” and that CBS News leadership had never asked for reporting to be aimed in any political direction. The network also paid tribute to Walsh on a staff-wide call, with president Tom Cibrowski praising her career alongside another departing producer, Kate Rydell.
Walsh is one of nearly a dozen employees on the Evening News to take a buyout. Another departing producer, Alicia Hastey, recently voiced similar concerns about the network’s direction under Weiss and Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison, saying stories might be evaluated on whether they conform to “a shifting set of ideological expectations”. At a town-hall event last month, an Evening News staffer said colleagues were “afraid for their jobs” and that there was a “chilling effect” in the newsroom.
In her memo, Walsh reflected on her long career, recalling work with CBS legends including Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer. She said legacy was “not about technology” but about “standing on the shoulders of the great journalists of CBS News”. Schieffer, the former Face the Nation anchor, had recently sent her a message, she noted.
