CBS News executive out after just seven months following huge on-air scandal that infuriated network owner

A top CBS News executive is set to leave the network for a less prestigious role after just seven scandal-plagued months. 

Adrienne Roark, the network’s president of editorial and news gathering, notably reprimanded one of her anchors for a fiery interview with pro-Palestinian writer Ta-Nehsi Coates that aired on CBS Mornings in October.

The resignation was announced by Roark herself and was made to staffers Thursday. She’ll leave CBS by the end of this month.

She’s now set to take on a role at Tegna – a TV station group comprised of 68 local-level stations, fifteen of which are affiliated with CBS.

It comes ahead of an anticipated merger between CBS parent Paramount Global and Skydance Media, after the latter offered the former’s board of directors a total of $8billion late last month to go through with the deal.

Set to make a pretty penny as a result is Shari Redstone, the billionaire daughter of the late Sumner Redstone and Paramount’s controlling shareholder.

Late last month, multiple insiders familiar with the matter reportedly revealed the heiress was looking to settle a Donald Trump filed lawsuit surrounding an allegedly bias 60 Minutes interview to not jeopardize the deal.

Redstone was amongst those to rebuke Roark for her dressing down of CBS Mornings’ Tony Dokoupil after his interview with Coates. C-suite staffers were said to have slammed his ‘bias’ at the time, after he tore into his guest’s opinions.

‘Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?’ Dokoupil, who is Jewish, asked Coates at the time, in one of many questions later deemed combative by higher-ups.

‘Why not detail anything of the First and the Second Intifada, the café bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits?’ he went on.

‘And is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?’

The rest of the sitdown carried a similar tone, and spawned a wartime conference call between angry execs the following Monday.

On the call were figures like Roark and Jan Crawford, CBS News’ chief legal correspondent, who had been one of the few to express confusion as to why Dokoupil’s line of questioning had not met Roark’s editorial standards.

‘I appreciate you bringing this up,’ Roark replied at the time, then just weeks into the position left behind by her predecessor, Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews. ‘I know this is a lot for everybody to process.’ 

Matthews, meanwhile, abruptly stepped down in August – a move that itself raised eyebrows due to it coming in the midst of an election and a month after Skydance said it had identified at least $2billion worth of waste to be cut ahead of any merger.

She was investigated in 2021 over favoritism and discriminatory hiring and management practices, as revealed by The New York Post. 

On the call held October 7 – just hours after the Coates interview – Roark told those on the line, ‘After a review of our coverage, including the interview, it’s clear that there are times we have not met our editorial standards.’ 

‘This has been addressed, and it will continue to be in the future,’ she added – forcing Dokoupil to meet for an hour with members of the CBS News standards and practices team, as well as an in-house Race and Culture Unit, the Times reported

Dokoupil, who joined CBS News in 2016 before snagging a spot on Mornings three years later, adhered, leading Redstone, a day later, to weigh in.

‘I think we made a mistake,’ said Redstone at an event in New York City that was part of Advertising Week at the time. ‘I think we made a bad mistake this week.’

Within weeks, Trump would win the election, after which he filed the suit that named both Paramount and asset CBS as defendants

The filing surrounds a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris that also aired in October, and that included an edit Trump claimed was favorable to Harris’s since settled campaign.

In the excerpt, the candidate was asked a question about the Israeli-Hamas conflict, and gave a lengthy answer – one different than the one that aired on Margaret Brennan’s Face the Nation.

Trump’s team went on to accuse the program of selecting a more coherent quote from Harris to help her candidacy, paving the way for reports from publications like the Times and Status indicating that Redstone is looking to make the lawsuit go away.

Seemingly looking to avoid any prospective government pushback, the heiress was part of settlement talks started as early as late last month, three people with ‘knowledge of the talks’ told the Times. 

Roark’s exit, meanwhile, is as only the latest casualty for CBS, which just weeks ago launched a revamped version of CBS Evening News with two anchors  a more magazine-style format, more akin to that of ratings crown jewel 60 Minutes.

CBS CEO Wendy McMahon – who declined to name a new executive to lead the national newsgathering division in the wake of Roark’s exit announcement Thursday – is behind that push, and was amongst those to rebuke Dokoupil for his interview.

She assumed the position after for years holding Roark’s role alongside Neeraj Khemlani, after replacing Susan Zirinsky, a veteran producer who rose through the the ranks after joining the CBS News Washington Bureau in 1972.

This too was the case with Roark, who began her career in her native Ohio at WBNS-TV, the CBS affiliate in Columbus, more than 20 years ago.

Despite boasting experience with local station management, she had little experience tried running national TV news programs as Zirinsky, Khemlani, and McMahon had done before.

At Tegna – where she is set to obtain a senior position – a total 22 of the company’s stations are affiliated with NBC,  12 are affiliated with ABC, and six are linked to Fox.