Early Thursday morning CBS News head Bari Weiss announced that she will be putting her “Honestly” podcast on “pause” for the foreseeable future.
Weiss, who has been off to a rough start since being hired to head the venerable news organization — despite having no background outside of opinion journalism — has been under intense scrutiny since she took the reins, which has only been heightened by her interference with the network's popular show “60 Minutes.”
The announcement comes just after Status reported that her revamped CBS Evening News ratings are in fast decline, dropping below 4 million viewers last Friday while competitor ABC News' "World News Tonight with David Muir" averaged 8.2 million total viewers and NBC News "Nightly News With Tom Llamas" averaged 6.7 million total viewers.
Thursday morning on her Free Press platform, Weiss said that taking on CBS News is a “huge responsibility,” before continuing, “So here is the news: ‘Honestly’ is taking a little bit of a pause. I know it is hard to hear that, it’s definitely hard for me to do that because I love doing this show. But I think and I hope that you will understand why.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not forever; we’ll be back in just a few short months,” she added.
Her announcement comes after Status reported Tuesday night that Weiss has been reaching out to reporters from other media outlets defending her “60 Minutes” actions that have roiled the network.
According to Oliver Darcy, “To be clear, it is rather unusual for a network boss to personally call reporters in the middle of such a controversy. That’s not to say it never happens, but it’s fairly rare. While television honchos will occasionally brief the press when rolling out a major initiative or project, reporters typically don’t hear them spin on their own behalf as they are actively embroiled in a major controversy. That task is typically left to the communications staff.”
Weis reportedly expressed her frustration to outside reporters with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who called her out over the report that was critical of Donald Trump’s immigration policies, which led Darcy to point out, “Sure, disputes with subordinates happen at virtually every organization. But strong leaders keep disagreements within the house. They don’t complain to the press about them—especially when the subordinate is barred from advocating in the press on her own behalf.”
