Mary Walsh, a veteran news producer at CBS for more than four decades, is exiting the company, claiming in an exit memo to employees that instructions to “target our reporting to a certain part of the political spectrum” are partly the reason for her departure.
“We’ve been reading a lot of farewell letters lately, and here I am heading out the door. It’s too soon, even after 46 years,” Mary Walsh wrote in a note sent Friday. The Guardian. “But maybe it’s for the best. We’ve been told to target our reporting to a certain part of the political spectrum. Frankly, I don’t know how to do that.”
The Guardian She also stated that CBS Evening News Executive Editor Kim Harvey sent a separate letter to staff in response to Walsh’s memo.
“We wish Mary Walsh well and thank her for her many years of service,” Harvey wrote, according to the outlet. “We have been told to direct our reports to a certain part of the political spectrum,” Mary wrote in her farewell note. “That is simply not true. Here in Evening newsWe value our editorial independence, and CBS News leadership has never asked us to steer our reporting in any political direction.
Walsh joined CBS News in September 1982, according to her LinkedIn. Her departure comes one day after Netflix withdrew from the bidding war for Warner Bros. Studios. Discovery, which Paramount eventually won. The latter company is led by David Ellison, and has undergone changes with Barry Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
numerous CBS Evening News The production staff resorted to takeovers, with the program shifting with Tony Dokoupil at the helm. like Hollywood Reporter It was previously reported on February 12 that 11 employees had accepted the buyout offer, including producer Alicia Hastie, who wrote in a departure note that she was “proud of the work accomplished during my time here.”
However, she added, “There is a new, comprehensive vision that prioritizes breaking away from traditional broadcasting standards to embrace what has been described as ‘heretical’ journalism.”
“The reality is that the obligation is to these people [in the stories Hastey cited] “And the stories they have to tell are becoming increasingly impossible,” Hastie continued. “Instead, stories may be evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations — a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid difficult narratives that might lead to backlash or unfavorable headlines.”
