Just two days after revealing that a record number of people tuned in to watch Super Bowl 58, Paramount Global announced it was cutting 800 jobs from CBS, including that of a former Fox News star.
CNBC reported that the layoffs amount to about 3 percent of Paramount Global’s overall workforce, which stood at 24,500 at the end of 2022.
“These adjustments will help enable us to build on our momentum and execute our strategic vision for the year ahead, and I firmly believe we have much to be excited about,” Bob Bakish, Paramount’s top executive, told employees in a memo.
One of the now-former employees caught up in the mass layoffs was Catherine Herridge, a former Fox News national security correspondent. Some on social media accused Paramount Global of axing its more “conservative” reporters.
Paramount Global owns CBS, Paramount Pictures, Pluto TV, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, BET, and Comedy Central.
The New York Post added: “Catherine Herridge, an award-winning senior correspondent whose First Amendment case is being closely watched by journalists nationwide, was among the hundreds of employees at CBS parent Paramount who got pink slips on Tuesday, sources told The Post. The carnage provoked outrage from the rank-and-file at CBS, with some focusing their ire on Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish, who pulled down $32 million in total compensation last year despite the company’s ever-shrinking financial profile.”
“Everybody in the newsroom is pissed that Bob Bakish is making over $30 million, and he’s making these cuts,” one insider complained to The Post.
CBS just fired 800 of their ‘conservative’ reporters and staffers including Catherine Herridge.
Catherine Herridge is one of the best reporters around, really solid. This is just more evidence that CBS News is a propaganda arm of the DNC.
— PAMELA HENSLEY🇺🇸 (@PamelaHensley22) February 13, 2024
The outlet said that Herridge had argued with CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, a terse executive who was the subject of a 2021 investigation over allegations of favoritism and discriminatory hiring and management practices, as The Post reported at the time.
Sources told the outlet that CBS News’ Washington bureau, where Herridge’s beat was national security and intelligence reporting, was particularly hard-hit by the layoffs.
According to sources, CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues was among the casualties in Washington, where he was reportedly involved in HR investigations regarding his workplace conduct, which included an alleged incident where he dressed down a female colleague in a “20-minute rant.”
Insiders asserted that Ciprian-Matthews, who is black and had previously come under fire for unfairly favoring minorities while ignoring white journalists, attempted to place the “blame” on the female correspondent before promoting Pegues, who is also black, according to The Post’s investigation of the incident in 2021.
That is despite prior allegations that Pegues was “lashing out” and “bullying” younger female reporters who “outworked” him, according to a former CBS manager.
The Post added: “Herridge may soon be held in contempt of court for not divulging her source for an investigative piece she penned in 2017 when she worked for Fox News and be ordered to personally pay fines that could total as much as $5,000 a day.”
Herridge’s departure coincides with mounting pressure as she failed to adhere to the order of US District Judge Christopher Cooper to disclose her sources regarding her knowledge of a federal investigation into a Chinese American scientist running a graduate program in Virginia.
The scientist in question, Yanping Chen, had been under investigation for several years on suspicions of potential misrepresentation of immigration documents about her involvement in a Chinese astronaut program, as outlined in Herridge’s report.
Subsequently, Chen filed a lawsuit against the government, alleging that information about the investigation was disclosed to harm her reputation.
Last August, the judge ruled that Chen’s need for the evidence “overcomes Herridge’s qualified First Amendment privilege.” First Amendment groups have argued, however, that reporters can only do their jobs if they can protect confidential sources.
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