The CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes will interview President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden for next week’s edition. Correspondent Lesley Stahl announced the interviews at the end of the newscast Sunday, promising “revealing, provocative conversations with the two major party candidates for president.”
The set, at the ViacomCBS headquarters on Broadway, highlights modern wizardry like “augmented reality” 3D images and multiple data screens while offering enough roominess to protect staff members from being infected with COVID-19, the network said on Thursday. Norah O’Donnell will anchor her first presidential election night, joined on the set by Gayle King, Margaret Brennan, John Dickerson and Ed O’Keefe.
CBS News is promoting 11-year network veteran Len Tepper to executive director, CBS News Investigative Unit. Tepper is currently the investigative unit’s supervising senior producer.
President Donald Trump ended his press conference on Saturday after being pressed by Paula Reid of CBS News on the claim that his administration passed the Veterans Choice health care law.
CBS News is launching a Race and Culture Unit, and CBS News’s Alvin Patrick will lead it. Patrick, a senior producer at the network who has been working exclusively with CBS News special correspondent (and The NFL on CBS studio host) James Brown, will report to EVP of News Kimberly Godwin, effective immediately.
Exclusives
How ’60 Minutes’ Adjusted Its Production Process
The news magazine’s executive producer, Bill Owens, details his approach to calming the waters at 60 Minutes, guiding the show through the myriad challenges of COVID-19, launching a short-form sibling show on Quibi, and other topics.
As protests over George Floyd’s killing continue around the country, CBS News has set a special on racism and police brutality. Anchored by CBS This Morning‘s Gayle King, Justice for All airs at 10 p.m. Tuesday on CBS, BET and streamer CBSN.
The company, which underwent layoffs this week, has not yet docked executive pay, which has “upset” some network staffers. However, CBS News President Susan Zirinsky was asked by an employee during a staff Zoom call whether pay cuts were considered and said that cuts were discussed at the corporate level, though they have not been enacted.
Nationally-known reporters are among those affected by the CBSViacom layoffs, according to reports. A source with knowledge of the layoffs told TheWrap the cuts affected 300 people, of whom 75 were from the newsroom, “including some senior producers and reporters at top shows.” Journalist Yashar Ali named CBS News’ White House reporter Mark Knoller, Pentagon reporter Cami McCormick and correspondent Dean Reynolds in a series of tweets about the layoffs
During a six-decade career at CBS and NBC, Small supervised, guided and in some cases hired generations of some of the best-known reporters and anchors in television news, among them: Dan Rather, Eric Sevareid, Daniel Schorr, Connie Chung, Diane Sawyer, 60 Minutes correspondents Ed Bradley and Lesley Stahl and Face the Nation anchor Bob Schieffer.
Stacey Benson has been named the chief financial officer of CBS News, effective July 1. Benson joins CBS News from ViacomCBS’s global media operations division, where she was SVP of finance.
CBS’s Sunday morning news show Face the Nation is on a two-week winning streak and has seen a major boost in viewers amid coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. “It’s been heartening to see the choices that we’re making are resonating,” says host Margaret Brennan.
CBS Launches CBSN Dallas-Ft. Worth
The debut is the newest expansion of major market local news streaming services from CBS and features local news content produced by KTVT.
President Trump called 60 Minutes’ interview with whistleblower Rick Bright fake news, called CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell a third place anchor, and said the show was trying to demean the country to benefit the radical left. In a 60 Minutes interview Sunday night hosted by O’Donnell, Bright, formerly a top scientist with the Department of Health and Human Services, said the Trump Administration’s COVID-19 response had been slow, prioritized politics over science, pushed the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine, and ultimately cost lives.
Miss America in 1971, George joined Brent Musburger and Irv Cross in 1975 on The NFL Today. Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder later was added to the cast. She spent three seasons on the live pregame show, returned in 1980 and left in 1983, winning plaudits for her warmth of her interviews with star athletes. She also covered horse racing, hosted the entertainment show People and co-anchored the CBS Morning News. She was 70.
Charlie Pavlounis, who as chief financial officer and head of business development helped spur new lines of business at CBS News including a series of podcasts, is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities, CBS News President Susan Zirinsky told staffers in a memo Tuesday.
President Donald Trump abruptly ended his White House news conference Monday following combative exchanges with reporters Weijia Jiang of CBS News and Kaitlan Collins of CNN.
As the CBS Broadcast Center in New York remains closed due to the coronavirus, local affiliates continue to pitch in on the weekends. This weekend it will be Debby Knox and Bob Donaldson from WTTV in Indianapolis.
The CBS program’s longest-serving correspondent, Lesley Stahl, was hospitalized but recovered, others on the staff tested positive and — like many businesses — it has operated remotely for two months. At the same time, 60 Minutes has dove into a breaking news story in ways that it seldom has before.
CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl said Sunday she’s feeling well now, but was “really scared” after fighting pneumonia caused by the coronavirus for two weeks at home before going to the hospital for a week.
CBS Launches CBSN Chicago
The debut is the newest expansion of major market local news streaming services from CBS and features local news content produced WBBM.
Maria Mercader, a veteran CBS News staffer, died at age 54 Sunday from coronavirus complications after being on medical leave since February. Mercader battled cancer and other illnesses for two decades, and said that the treatments left her vulnerable to the virus.
Steve Hartman’s “On the Road” segments are a hallmark of the CBS Evening News and CBS Sunday Morning and are highly popular with classroom teachers, who use them as teaching tools. Now sidelined because of the coronavirus pandemic, he says, “It’s certainly going to be hard to get the emotional stories we seek, over Skype.”
The host, who joined Wednesday’s edition of the show from his Manhattan apartment, said he was “self-quarantining” after a family member displayed one of the possible coronavirus symptoms, a loss of taste and smell.
With CBS News’ home base in New York closed due to coronavirus, CBS owned stations are helping get the national newscasts out to viewers. The weekend of March 21-22, CBS Weekend News will be produced out of Dallas, with KTVT staffers filling key roles in the production.
Six people at CBS News have tested positive for coronavirus. ABC News said Monday that a journalist who worked on the network’s coverage team of the outbreak in Seattle had tested positive for coronavirus. Meanwhile, at NBC, an employee who worked on the Today show’s third hour tested positive, forcing the show’s anchors Craig Melvin and Al Roker and others who came into contact with the person to be ordered to isolate in their homes as a result.
The media’s job is to tell the story of a rapidly changing world in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, but it must do so under rapidly changing new rules. “This is the biggest story since 9/11,” said New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet, but it needs to be told with an abundance of caution by the scores of journalists now working from home, interviewing sources via Skype and doing all they can to stay personally out of harm’s way.
CBS News management, which said Wednesday that two New York-based employees have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, said in a memo Thursday that a third employee has now tested positive.
With a number of members of the media in America and around the globe already sequestered due to growing coronavirus fears, CBS News today saw two of its team test positive. In a memo sent to staff in the last hour, CBS News President Susan Zirinsky made the announcement and told NYC employees to “work remotely for the next two days while the buildings are cleaned and disinfected.”
CBS News Debate Performance Panned
Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell tried to manage seven presidential candidates fighting for their lives Tuesday, just a week before the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries. Particularly at the start, the journalists looked like substitute teachers in front of an unruly school class.
Charles Hobson, an Emmy Award-winning producer who helped shatter racial stereotypes by delivering a black perspective that had been missing from early television programming, died on Feb. 13. He was 83.
