Gilberto Tadday/TED
CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss is reportedly kicking off the reboot of the CBS Evening News with a 10-city tour, on which she will accompany the program’s staff and bring her five-person armed security detail.
On Friday, The Independent published a revelatory piece by Justin Baragona about the internal turmoil at CBS News, which Weiss was tapped to lead by Skydance CEO David Ellison after the media mogul bought Weiss’s Free Press for $150 million in October. Last month, Weiss named Tony Dokoupil as the new anchor of CBS Evening News.
In a video posted by CBS on Thursday, Dokoupil pledged he would not be beholden to the network’s corporate overlords.
“As long as I sit in this chair, you come first,” he said. “Not advertisers. Not politicians. Not corporate interests. And, yes, that does include the corporate owners of CBS. I report for you.”
Dokoupil’s first show is on Monday, and over the next two weeks, The Independent reported that the program will broadcast from 10 cities across the U.S., including Miami, Dallas, Detroit, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. Weiss is reportedly chartering a private jet to each location:
According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, Weiss is planning on chartering a private plane to fly to each location for the “Live From America” tour this month. Besides taking Dokoupil and CBS Evening News executive producer Kim Harvey on the flights, Weiss’ personal security detail of five armed bodyguards will also be on board.
The increased involvement from Weiss on the CBS Evening News reboot in recent days has raised eyebrows over her desire to be on location for each telecast.
One CBS News staffer told The Independent, “Nothing says ‘meeting Americans where they are’ by flying around the country on a private jet costing millions of dollars.” The remark was an apparent allusion to Weiss’s critique of the network, which Dokoupil said had been overreliant on “elites” to offer expertise at the expense of the views of “the average American.”
“And if her security detail is such a huge concern, why is she going? She could watch from the control room or on an actual TV like everyone else,” the staffer added. “Instead CBS News has to foot the bill for her five security guards, private jet, and more guards with heavy weapons. Does she not understand how much journalism could be made with the money we’re instead spending on perks for her?”
Network employees told The Independent that “morale is really bad” at CBS Evening News. CBS News and Weiss did not respond to the publication’s requests for comment.
“This really feels like the end of CBS Evening News,” one staffer said. ”Honestly, it’s so depressing.”
The Independent obtained a call sheet showing that among the segments pitched for Monday’s show in Miami were an interview with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis about the state’s ban on phones in schools, people’s “loss of trust” in the press, and Miami’s Venezuelan community souring on President Donald Trump over deportations.
Baragona further reported that the program is planning light-hearted segments called “bon bons”:
In a dizzying array of options, Dokoupil will either play soccer with Inter Miami CF co-owner David Beckham; ask locals if they call it the “Gulf of America” or “Gulf of Mexico,” after the Trump administration’s name change; party at one of the city’s exclusive nightclubs (either Club Space or LIV) or join a boat party that will see the anchor jet skiing with rapper DJ Khaled.
Another move that raised eyebrows was the network posting a video of Dokoupil at New York’s Grand Central Station, where he asked random travelers if they knew how to pronounce his name.
“Quite the humiliating ritual,” a CBS News employee told The Independent. “This is just embarrassing. Bari went from wanting Anderson Cooper to sending her handpicked Evening News anchor — who has no name recognition — to do man-on-the-street interviews about the fact that he has no name recognition? Make it make sense.”
The latest internal uproar at CBS News comes after Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes segment about the Trump administration’s deportations of more than 250 Venezuelans to a torture camp in El Salvador.
The post ‘Feels Like the End of CBS Evening News’: Staffers Reportedly Up in Arms Amid Bari Weiss’s Reboot of Legendary News Program first appeared on Mediaite.