CBS News head of standards quits just a week after Bari Weiss is named editor-in-chief

Claudia Milne, CBS News’ head of standards since 2021, announced on Thursday that she was leaving the network, marking the first senior news executive to depart since The Free Press founder Bari Weiss was named the newsroom’s editor-in-chief.

Milne’s departure also comes just weeks after the network named former Trump appointee and conservative think tank leader Kenneth Weinstein as an ombudsman dedicated to rooting out “complaints of bias” at CBS News, one of several moves by Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison that have sparked criticism within the network and among media critics.

According to sources on Thursday morning’s editorial call, Milne announced to staff that she had resigned. While giving thanks for her time at the network, Milne did not offer a reason for her exit. Sources added that Weiss was not part of the editorial meeting.

Variety was the first to report on Milne’s departure. A CBS News spokesperson confirmed to The Independent that Milne was leaving the network and did make the announcement during the morning meeting.

Milne, whose father worked as an editor in CBS News’ London Bureau for three decades, also sent out a staff-wide email on Thursday that revealed she was leaving. Throughout the letter, she urged her colleagues to “keep asking those tough questions,” while adding that it was a “privilege” to work for the same news organization that her father called home.

“Some of you know that my dad worked for CBS News for decades. He was an editor, and like all editors he toiled away in small dark rooms fixing mistakes and making our work better,” she wrote.

“He gave me a curiosity about the world and a belief in the importance of what you all do. When he was home, I learned a lot at the kitchen table,” Milne continued. “He never got to know that I came back to work at CBS. I think he would have been proud (and maybe a bit surprised!).”

Calling it a “privilege to work alongside all of you and hopefully sometimes help make your work a little better,” she stated that he was filled with “awe and pride” with the amount of attention and care the newsroom had taken in its reporting.

“We live in complicated times. For our company, for our industry and for our country. And it’s times like this that what we do matters most,” Milne declared. “I believe our role as journalists is to hold the powerful to account. We are here to question and challenge our political leaders on behalf of our audiences, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative.”

In conclusion, Milne encouraged CBS News journalists to “keep asking those tough questions, challenge those in authority and keep informing the audience.” At the same time, she said she had confidence they will “continue to do it in the fair, balanced and unbiased way that this organization always has and is the bedrock of good journalism.”

Prior to joining CBS News in 2019, Milne was the head of live TV at Bloomberg and a senior editor at ProPublica. She also spent a significant portion of her career at the BBC. Upon arriving at CBS, she became the managing editor of CBS This Morning before taking on additional responsibilities with the network the following year.

The Tiffany Network has been rocked by turmoil over the past year, particularly after Donald Trump sued CBS News last October over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.

That defamation lawsuit, which Trump claimed amounted to “election interference,” ended up sparking the resignations of several newsroom leaders as the former Paramount leadership negotiated a settlement with the president despite CBS News’ lawyers calling the complaint “without merit.”

Weeks before Paramount closed on its merger with Skydance, which needed the Trump administration’s approval, the company announced it had paid Trump $16 million to settle the lawsuit. That settlement, as well as other concessions Ellison made to the FCC and the administration prior to Skydance’s merger with Paramount, is currently being investigated by Democratic lawmakers for potential anti-bribery violations.

Ellison, who said upon the merger’s closure that he didn’t want to “politicize” the newsroom, has faced scrutiny over his decision impacting CBS News in recent weeks, prompting some news staffers to fume that he “lied” to them.

Additionally, the arrival of Weiss – who labels herself as a “radical centrist” and “Zionist fanatic” – as the top editor, along with Paramount purchasing her anti-woke and “heterodox” digital outlet The Free Press for $150 million, has yet to be fully embraced by the newsroom.

Even before last week’s announcement that she’d been brought on as editor-in-chief, the prospect of her taking over the newsroom prompted employees to start “literally freaking out” amid the wholesale changes Ellison had been implementing, which many perceived as pushing CBS News towards the right in an attempt to appease Trump.

While her first week on the job has been marked by staffers literally rolling their eyes at her Sorkinesque call to journalistic arms and confusion over her Elon Musk-style memo to the newsroom, much of the anxiety among staff centers on the anticipation of crippling layoffs.

Following the $8 billion merger’s closure, Ellison has made it clear that he is seeking to slash $2 billion of costs from Paramount Skydance, which would include the loss of thousands of jobs across the company. CBS News is therefore expecting a 10 percent reduction in its staff over the coming weeks.