“We recognize that this is a difficult time for those who will be leaving CBS News.”
Tom Cibrowski and Bari Weiss, respectively president and executive editor, and editor-in-chief, of CBS News, have announced bad news in a joint statement
CBS News Radio will be abolished, effective May 22. Thus ends a history of nearly a century. Despite the revolutionary changes in media, the service has continued to provide radio coverage to nearly 700 affiliates around the United States.
Cibrowski and Weiss elaborated in a memorandum sent to employees, emphasizing that a radically changed market and business climate required the harsh move:
“A shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities, has made it impossible to continue the service. We are sharing this announcement now to fulfill our commitments to our radio partners and affiliates, which require advance notice of the service’s conclusion,”
They added that, “This is a tough message to receive at any time, and especially in the middle of an exceptionally intense news cycle,”
Bari Weiss has been remarkably successful in the financial dimensions of media. She was hired as editor-in-chief of CBS News by David Ellison, the chief executive officer of Paramount Skydance, in 2025 as part of a $150 million-dollar deal to purchase “The Free Press,” a media company she cofounded in 2021.
Here things become somewhat complicated. Ellison is an ally of President Donald Trump through his father, highly successful and visible Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
CBS, under current management, has been criticized as pro-Trump. Attention to recent programs, including a highly publicized “60 Minutes” episode initially pulled by Ms. Weiss, indicates inclusion of White House viewpoints and quotes from administration officials, not censorship.
That in turn introduces a fundamental point of this column: CBS News traditionally became respected – and successful – because of an unyielding commitment to presenting the facts, clearly and without partisanship.
CBS provided news you could trust. That was one important reason CBS was labelled “The Tiffany Network.”
“And that’s the way it is” was long-term news anchor Walter Cronkite’s signature signoff at the end of each news broadcast. Colleague Eric Sevareid provided editorial opinion in a separate, distinctive segment of the program.
Cronkite was known as “the most trusted man in America,” and CBS led rivals NBC and ABC in the ratings consistently from 1967 to 1981.
Cronkite was not completely neutral. His excitement concerning the U.S. space program was quite evident. After the communist Tet Offensive in South Vietnam early in 1968, he delivered a personal editorial urging withdrawal.
William S. Paley built CBS from a chain of family-owned radio stations into a corporate giant. He defended his people during political attack, notably Edward R. Murrow’s devastating evaluation of a demagogue, Senator Joseph McCarthy. Being able to make the point that corporate policy dictated he keep “hands off” the news division was no doubt helpful to him in some circumstances.
Today, a sustained revolution is occurring regarding news and media. Deregulation and the growth of first cable, then the internet, have transformed what had been a relatively stable, predictable environment for many years following World War II.
To a remarkable degree, CBS during the Paley era reflected the crucible of that war, as did so many other institutions. The men mentioned above served as war correspondents in Europe, including in London during heavy German bombing.
Their era sets the standard for evaluating current management.
Arthur I. Cyr is author of “After the Cold War – American Foreign Policy, Europe and Asia” (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan). Contact acyr@carthage.edu
