The former president of CBS News didn’t hold back her thoughts on Bari Weiss’ MAGA-fication of the network she once presided over.
Wendy McMahon, who resigned as CEO and president of CBS News and Stations in May after its parent company made concessions to President Donald Trump, spoke bluntly during an interview when asked about her former network’s anti-woke editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.
When asked her thoughts on CBS’s new editorial direction under Weiss, the veteran news manager made a thinly veiled reference to Weiss’s lack of experience in the reporting field.
“What we can’t have is institutions collapse and, as a result, have newsgathering commitments—to international coverage, to local coverage, to investigative journalism—go away. So much of what we see in the opinion space is built off the reporting of institutions. So what happens when that reporting is not there?” said McMahon, who spent decades overseeing news stations and newsrooms across the country.
Under Weiss, a former New York Times columnist who founded the anti-woke outlet The Free Press, CBS has brought a controversial rotation of longevity, wellness, and MAGA-coded contributors in an attempt to redefine the network.
McMahon appeared to take aim at Weiss’ initiative, among others, adding: “So for me, independent journalism and the ascendance of it is not about replacing legacy news organizations, but about bringing in reinforcements and creating new pathways for credible journalism to survive…And ideally, to thrive.”
McMahon, 51, added that she’ll make her final judgment based on “what the work ultimately is.”
The work, however, has already come under fire several times during Weiss’s months-long tenure. Most prominently, the Columbia University graduate threw 60 Minutes’s credibility into question after temporarily pulling a segment in November that detailed the grisly conditions at an El Salvador megaprison where Venezuelan men deported by Trump were held.
Her decision to install MAGA-coded Tony Dokoupil as the anchor of CBS Evening News in an effort to widen the network’s appeal has also compounded into a ratings slump, with the program dropping below 4 million viewers earlier in March and trailing well behind rival networks.
McMahon departed from CBS months prior to Weiss’s arrival, when CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, was negotiating what would amount to a $16 million settlement in Trump’s lawsuit against the network over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” she wrote to staff in a memo obtained by the Daily Beast at the time. “It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership.”
McMahon told Marie Claire that departing from CBS—where she led the news division for four years—was “equal parts exhilarating and painful.”
“The company and I didn’t agree on the path forward. That is the reality,” she said. “As a leader, as a CEO within an organization, when you sense misalignment, when you believe your vision and your values are at odds with how the business is moving—that’s your cue, right?”
CBS’s parent company was in the midst of merging with Skydance Media, owned by David Ellison and backed by his father, Larry Ellison. In a move many saw as an effort to appease Trump, Ellison bought Weiss’ outlet for $150 million and installed her at the head of CBS News.
“Once I recognized that we weren’t aligned, then ultimately it became clear that I would end up resigning, which is what happened,” McMahon added.
The Daily Beast has reached out to CBS representatives for comment.
CBS representatives
