It’s been a few days since we last checked in on CBS News under Bari Weiss, and they were only threatened with one lawsuit (that we know of!) from the Trump administration. The New York Times reported on Saturday that after Tony Dokoupil’s interview with President Trump last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt threatened, before cameras stopped rolling, that Trump would sue CBS (again) if the interview was cut or edited at all. CBS News told NYT that it made an “independent decision” to do just that.
But because this is CBS News in 2026, plenty has happened since. A new story published today in Variety details more of the internal friction between the CBS staff that has come to define the Weiss era. Of particular interest are the reported options for longtime CBS employee Gayle King, whose future at the network has been the subject of speculation basically since she and Katy Perry came back to Earth last year. Variety reports King is believed to earn around $15 million per year from the network, and that figure is no longer affordable. There are multiple ways this could go, according to the trade. King could stay on for another year at a lower salary, or could step into a correspondent role, appearing on CBS less regularly. This comes amid speculation that Weiss could “overhaul the news division’s streaming service, potentially relying more on talk-heavy podcasts,” according to the reporting of Brian Steinberg.
We have to imagine that the constant threat of lawsuits, plus the Ellisons spending $150 million on Weiss’ The Free Press, plus the tens of billions they’re putting up in an attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, have tightened belts around CBS. Indeed, many other, less famous people than Gayle King have already lost their jobs since David Ellison took over the company last year. Advertisers have also been somewhat hesitant to throw their money behind things like Weiss’ townhall with Erika Kirk—a format which she plans to have more of in the future. Also on the radar at CBS and Paramount, as affirmed by a long profile of Weiss’ career published this week in The New Yorker, are more layoffs.
