CBS News

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  CBS News went on the air on the 7th of December 1941, not as a planned broadcast but as an emergency. When Pearl Harbor was attacked that Sunday, the station WCBW in New York City was normally dark on weekends to give engineers a rest. But by 8:45 that evening, it was live, pulling radio announcers and military experts down to the Grand Central studios to explain what had just happened to the country. The broadcast lasted less than 90 minutes. CBS later described it to the Federal Communications Commission as "unquestionably the most stimulating challenge and marked the greatest advance of any single problem faced up to that time."

  That moment captures something essential about CBS News. For nearly a century, the organization built a reputation on showing up when the stakes were highest. It began as a handful of five-minute radio summaries in 1929, grew into a wartime news operation that Paul W. White used to counter Nazi propaganda across South America and Central America, and eventually put Walter Cronkite in front of a television camera that tens of millions of Americans trusted as a matter of habit. What comes next for this organization is a genuinely open question.

• 2. Radio's Early Foundations

  ›

  In December 1930, CBS chief William S. Paley hired journalist Paul W. White away from United Press, one of the three wire services that supplied newspapers with national and international news at the time. Paley's decision to poach White reflected a larger ambition: he wanted the radio network's news operation to rank alongside entertainment, and he gave White the authority to break into any program if events demanded it.

  The wire services fought back. They had imposed a breaking news embargo on radio networks, blocking broadcasters from using bulletins until the stories first appeared in print. CBS defied that arrangement in 1932 when it used live on-air reporting to break the story of the Lindbergh kidnapping before newspapers could. Radio networks also scooped print outlets with coverage of the 1932 presidential election.

  In March 1933, White was named vice president and general manager in charge of news. By 1935 he had hired Edward R. Murrow, and two years later he sent Murrow to London to run CBS Radio's European bureau. The staff White assembled around Murrow included Richard C. Hottelet, Charles Collingwood, William L. Shirer, Eric Sevareid, and several other correspondents who would define broadcast journalism for decades. Radio historian John Dunning later wrote: "CBS was getting its ducks in a row for the biggest news story in history, World War II."

• 3. Broadcasting Across the Americas

  ›

  In 1940, William S. Paley recruited Edmund A. Chester from his role as Bureau Chief for Latin America at the Associated Press. Chester's assignment was to build something entirely new: an international shortwave radio network called La Cadena de las Americas, or the Network of the Americas, which launched in 1942.

  The network operated in 20 nations across South America and Central America, broadcasting with support from the Department of State, the Office for Inter-American Affairs chaired by Nelson Rockefeller, and Voice of America. It was part of President Roosevelt's broader push for Pan-Americanism, and its explicit purpose was to provide an alternative to Nazi propaganda reaching the region.

  After the war, Chester moved from radio to television and by 1948 had become the television network's new Director of News Special Events and Sports. In 1949, he collaborated with Larry LeSueur, one of the original Murrow Boys, to produce United Nations in Action. Underwritten by Ford Motor Company as a public service, the series provided live coverage of the United Nations General Assembly from its interim headquarters in Lake Success, New York. The broadcasts won a George Foster Peabody Award for Television News in 1949.

• 4. Television Takes Shape

  ›

  On the 3rd of May 1948, Douglas Edwards began anchoring CBS Television News, a 15-minute nightly newscast that aired every weeknight at 7:30 p.m. on the CBS television network. It was the first regularly scheduled, network television news program to feature an anchor. NBC's equivalent offering at the time, NBC Television Newsreel, was simply film footage with voice narration rather than a presented newscast.

  In 1951, the program became the first news broadcast on either coast to air simultaneously, thanks to a new coaxial cable connection. Edwards marked the occasion with the greeting "Good evening everyone, coast to coast." In 1950, the program had been renamed Douglas Edwards with the News; twelve years later, it became the CBS Evening News when Walter Cronkite replaced Edwards in 1962.

  Edwards did not leave CBS. He stayed on, contributing to daytime television newscasts and radio broadcasts, until his retirement on the 1st of April 1988. Meanwhile, Face the Nation launched on the 7th of November 1954, and 60 Minutes premiered on the 24th of September 1968, eventually becoming one of the most recognized programs in American television. CBS News Sunday Morning launched on the 28th of January 1979, adding another long-running franchise to the operation.

• 5. Turbulence at the Top

  ›

  Susan Zirinsky became president of CBS News on the 1st of March 2019, replacing David Rhodes. Rhodes had stepped down amid falling ratings and fallout from a sexual misconduct investigation involving CBS News figures. Zirinsky was the first woman to hold the role of network news division president.

  She stepped down in April 2021, when CBS Television Stations and CBS News merged into a single entity named CBS News and Stations. The merger, completed on the 3rd of May 2021, installed Neeraj Khemlani, formerly of Hearst Newspapers, and Wendy McMahon, formerly of the ABC Owned Television Stations Group, as co-presidents. Khemlani announced his departure in August 2023, and McMahon became sole president and CEO on the 14th of August 2023.

  In 2022, CBS News hired former Trump administration official Mick Mulvaney as a paid on-air contributor. Khemlani told CBS morning show staff at the time that ensuring access "to both sides of the aisle" was a priority because Republicans were expected to take over in the midterms. Mulvaney's hiring provoked internal controversy given his public history of promoting false claims and attacking the press.

• 6. The $16 Million Settlement

  ›

  In October 2024, Donald Trump sued CBS News over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, claiming the network had engaged in election interference through deceptive editing. The lawsuit sought $10 billion in damages and argued CBS had aired two different edits of Harris's response to a question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, allegedly violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Legal experts widely described the suit as frivolous.

  CBS initially said it would "vigorously defend" against the action. By July 2025, however, Paramount Global had settled for $16 million, directing the funds to Trump's future presidential library and lawyer costs. Stephen Colbert called it "a big fat bribe." Colbert's show was cancelled shortly after.

  Paramount's pending merger with Skydance Media, which required government approval, was widely cited as the key reason the company chose to settle rather than fight. The Federal Communications Commission later required that CBS News appoint an ombudsman to monitor "bias" as a condition of approving the merger. FCC chair Brendan Carr said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that Paramount had told regulators they planned to "reorient" the news division and "get rid of bias," adding: "At the end of the day, that's what made the difference for us."

• 7. Editorial Overhaul Under Weiss

  ›

  Kenneth R. Weinstein, the former CEO of the Hudson Institute, a conservative foreign policy think tank, was appointed ombudsman of CBS News in September 2025. The following month, Bari Weiss was named editor-in-chief. Around 100 employees were laid off in October, including eight on-air hosts who were all women. Critics viewed the changes as a deliberate rightward shift under pressure from the Trump era. Trump himself praised Weiss's appointment.

  Also in October 2025, Paramount purchased The Free Press, the conservative digital publication Weiss had previously led, and incorporated it as an independent entity within Paramount. Weiss said the merger gave The Free Press a chance to help reshape CBS News "into a future that honors those great values that underpin The Free Press and the best of American journalism."

  In November 2025, Weiss drew criticism after describing a conversation between lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch as an example of the kind of "centrist" programming she envisioned. Journalists and CBS staff challenged the framing, with Glenn Greenwald noting the segment's low viewcount on YouTube. New CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil separately released a promo stating the broadcast would remain objective. The program's 38-page editorial standards handbook was reduced to "5 simple values," one of which was "we love America." Variety reported the pledge reinforced speculation that Weiss was appointed partly to attract MAGA supporters.

  By January 2026, Weiss had held an all-staff meeting outlining plans to hire around 18 paid commentators and indicating she expected significant newsroom cuts. In February 2026, reports emerged that a further round of layoffs could reach at least 15% of current staff. In March 2026, CBS announced it would shut down its radio news service on the 22nd of May 2026, after nearly 100 years of operation, citing changes in the media landscape and financial pressures.