Katie Couric shared her disappointment with Bari Weiss’ leadership at CBS News and her concerns for its legacy in a conversation with Kara Swisher on Wednesday.
The renowned journalist, who served as solo anchor of “CBS Evening News” from 2006 to 2011 (a first for a woman across the big three networks), spoke about the crumbling of trust in the network under Weiss’ guidance. Swisher specifically noted that Weiss lacks the news leadership knowledge to lead a company of that scale.
“They have so much money, they’re going to keep doing what they’re doing,” Couric said. “What I worry about, and I think, you know, it’s not brain surgery to say you have to diversify your portfolio and do podcasts and meet people — we were doing that 10 years ago. But I’m afraid the CBS News brand is going to be so eroded and really destroyed that no matter what they do, nobody’s going to trust their content.”
Most recently, Weiss came under scrutiny for fighting to keep medical contributor Dr. Peter Attia on staff after his personal relationship with Jeffery Epstein came to light this week. Attia’s name appeared more than 1,700 times in Friday’s release of the government’s files on the late sex offender, with some emails including crass exchanges between the pair. Swisher called Weiss’ desire to keep him on “idiotic.”
This is not the first time Couric has criticized her former employer. In November, she warned that the Trump administration’s apparent influence on Skydance’s Paramount merger flagged a “dangerous time for a free and independent press.”
Couric noted Wednesday that the problem inside CBS News may also be a systemic one that has existed since her days there. The former evening anchor said that during her tenure she made consistent efforts to include and promote digital, but executives were resistant.
“For a long time these traditional networks didn’t want to cannibalize their linear products,” Couric said. “The people who were in charge were hanging on by their fingernails to maintain viewership for this very expensive product, but nobody very smartly made — it would’ve been hard — the transition to more digital products.”
“The people who are leading them are near retirement age, so they’re like, ‘Why the f–k would I change the system?,” Couric added. “‘It’s working from me.’”
Watch Couric’s full sit-down with Swisher, which also covered Wednesday’s Washington Post layoffs, here:
