A chief correspondent at CBS News has been accused of making sexual comments on the job.
Matt Gutman, who joined the network in January as the first on-air hire by the MAGA-curious CBS News boss Bari Weiss, is being sued by a former ABC News field producer, Samira Said.
Said named Gutman, 48, in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed in Los Angeles and alleged that he created a hostile work environment by making inappropriate sexual remarks to her.
Before joining CBS, Gutman spent nearly 20 years at ABC News, where he was twice suspended for separate incidents—once for making false statements on-air after the death of Kobe Bryant, and then for violating the company’s COVID-19 safety policy.
Said’s lawsuit describes two incidents in which Gutman allegedly made inappropriate remarks while they worked together.
The first incident allegedly occurred while Said and several male colleagues were waiting in a public line during an assignment. The suit claims that Said was placed on a “male-only team” that included Gutman, who allegedly “initiated a discussion rating a female correspondent’s appearance and reducing her professional standing to a numerical score based on her physical attributes.”
The other men allegedly joined in and asked Said for her input, which she declined.
Neither CBS News nor ABC News responded to requests for comment from the Daily Beast.
The second incident allegedly took place during a press day related to a film release. After Said expressed that she thought the team should leave the site, Gutman allegedly responded with a “sexual insinuation” that she “must have an after-hours date in the city and that this is why she did not want to relocate” in front of her co-workers.
Said’s legal team argued that the comment “demeaned [her] and reduced her professional judgment to a sexualized stereotype.”
The former field producer, who worked at ABC for four years, also named her former employer and its parent company, The Walt Disney Company, as defendants. She claims that she was wrongfully terminated in 2025 after grappling with mental health struggles.
The allegations against Gutman come as he has gained even more visibility at his current network, CBS News, where he recently filled in for CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, 45, while Dokoupil was on vacation.
During Gutman’s first week behind the anchor desk in July, he averaged 4.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings data obtained by Status, making it the program’s best-rated week in 17 weeks. By comparison, Dokoupil has not topped 4 million viewers since the week of March 30, when he averaged 4.2 million.
Gutman also serves as a fill-in anchor for the network’s flagship broadcasts, reports for CBS Mornings and CBS Evening News, and also serves as a lead correspondent for 48 Hours and contributes to 60 Minutes.
In announcing Gutman’s hire, Weiss described him as a journalist who ticks all the boxes for the qualities she looks for, namely “fearlessness, energy and relentlessness.” CBS News President and Executive Editor Tom Cibrowski added, “I have worked with Matt for decades, and I have seen his innate ability to take viewers into a story.”
Gutman, meanwhile, said he was “thrilled” to join the team with Weiss and Cibrowski “at the helm.” He said part of his mission at the network would be to “give a voice to those who might otherwise not be heard, and to tell it straight.”
