Legendary late-night host David Letterman tore into his former network home of CBS this week, accusing the broadcaster of letting “idiots” turn CBS News into a “wreck” under its new leadership.
“CBS News is a wreck,” Letterman said in a video posted Friday on his YouTube channel. “It’s just gone.”
Letterman accused CBS News, which recently installed conservative commentator Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief, of abandoning the legacy it built with well-regarded broadcasters like Edward Murrow.
“It was that mentality that drove the integrity of CBS News that has been trampled on, pissed on, and eviscerated by these idiots that have taken it over,” Letterman added.
“And I am at a point now where it really is hurting my feelings because I’m sick and tired of people saying, ‘Oh, wait until those midterms.’ Kids, we’re far downstream from the midterms having any effect on this.”
The Independent has contacted CBS for comment.
The network has been under scrutiny over the last year or so, thanks to a series of business moves that critics saw as undermining its editorial integrity to be more friendly to the Trump administration.
Last summer, CBS News’s then-parent company paid to settle a lawsuit from Donald Trump over the editing of a 60 Minutes episode, as the company’s pending merger with Skydance, which needed federal approval, was in the balance.
By August, Paramount’s merger officially closed with Skydance, a company headed by David Ellison, son of the billionaire Oracle co-founder and Trump supporter Larry Ellison.
The new leadership soon installed Weiss to lead CBS News, who lacked broadcast TV news experience and was previously known for founding The Free Press, a news site that often skewered the “woke” politics of the left.
Under Weiss, the network has made a number of controversial calls, prompting anger from newsroom staff, they have told The Independent.
Those included pulling a highly anticipated 60 Minutes segment shortly before airtime about the Trump administration’s summary deportation of hundreds of migrants to a brutal Salvadorian prison where they said they were tortured.
Under new CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, the broadcast has embraced a more flattering tone towards the administration, according to critics.
Staffers told The Independent that recent broadcasts, such as one where Dokoupil said he salutes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, resembled “state TV.”
