A CBS News producer who left the network after an almost half-century tenure issued a dire warning in a farewell memo.
“We’ve been reading a lot of goodbyes lately, and here I am headed out the door,” journalist Mary Walsh wrote Friday in a memo obtained by The Guardian, announcing she is leaving the network after 46 years.
“But maybe it’s for the best,” Walsh wrote, adding that journalists at CBS News have been told to aim their reporting “at a particular part of the political spectrum.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Walsh added.
The memo comes as CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance—owned by Trump-friendly billionaire David Ellison—emerged Thursday as the frontrunner in a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, sparking fears among CNN staff that their newsroom could be taken over just like CBS.
Since Ellison’s takeover of Paramount in August, CBS News has come under the control of Bari Weiss, who is widely criticized for steering the network into Trump-friendly territory as editor-in-chief.
Though Walsh’s statement does not specify the “particular part of the political spectrum” the network has directed journalists toward, Weiss’s tenure has been marked by a series of chaotic moments.
In December, Weiss came under fire for canceling a 60 Minutes segment at the last minute. The segment detailed the grisly conditions at an El Salvador megaprison where Venezuelan men deported by President Donald Trump were held—a move correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who reported the story, called “political.”
The following month, during an all-hands meeting across CBS News bureaus, she told staff to quit if they did not align with her vision and proposed buyouts to employees that same week.
Walsh is one of nearly a dozen producers to accept the buyout and is not the first to post a fiery farewell.
Producer Alicia Hastey, who also took a buyout and left, complained that journalists at the network were forced to “self-censor or avoid challenging narratives.”
The Guardian reported that Walsh, whose exit was described by one staffer as “pretty huge,” was honored in an emotional farewell from CBS News president Tom Cibrowski, alongside fellow veteran producer Kate Rydell, who is also leaving the network, during a staff-wide editorial call on Friday morning.
“Mary Walsh is a legend,” former CNN executive David Clinch posted on X, commenting on Walsh’s departure memo.
Meanwhile, the Ellison takeover has sent waves of anxiety through CNN, with insiders describing the panic among staffers as “off the charts” and some even claiming the network is “doomed.”
The situation could be particularly awkward for Anderson Cooper, who left CBS’s 60 Minutes in February, becoming one of the highest-profile departures under Weiss’s leadership, but remained an anchor at CNN.
“This will be messy and uncomfortable if Bari and Anderson are under the same roof again,” a media insider told NewsNation, adding, “Anderson really doesn’t like her or want to work for her—and he’s the face of the network. For now.”
The Daily Beast has contacted CBS News for comment.
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