CBS News is crumbling from the inside out…
CBS News president of editorial and newsgathering Adrienne Roark announced her departure from the network on Wednesday.
Roark is leaving the embattled network to join local news juggernaut TEGNA,
Fox News Digital has confirmed.
Roark’s exit was announced internally to CBS News staffers on Wednesday, according to an employee in attendance.
Roark, who was promoted to the position last August, “manages teams in the field and across all newsrooms, including correspondents, assignment desks, bureaus, booking teams, standards and practices, the Super Desk and CBS News Radio,” according to the network. She also “spearheads developing new newsgathering processes while managing all editorial aspects at CBS News.”
Roark has been named chief content officer at TEGNA.
“I’m thrilled to join TEGNA and look forward to working with the talented team to continue innovating and delivering high-quality, audience-driven stories for the tens of millions of community members who come to our platforms daily for their local news,” Roark said in a statement.
Former CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell left “CBS Evening News” last month and the network has seen a ratings dip as it continues to tinker with the program in her absence.
The news comes as the network is struggling with a looming merger and multiple controversies, including President Donald Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS and parent company Paramount Global over alleged election interference through deceptive editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. CBS News executives refused to release an unedited transcript until after the election, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) got involved.
The raw transcript showed CBS News had aired only the first half of her response to “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker’s question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not “listening” to the Biden administration in a preview clip that aired on “Face the Nation,” but aired only the second half of her response during the primetime special.
“But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening,” Whitaker said in the October 2024 interview. “The Wall Street Journal said that he — that your administration has repeatedly been blindsided by Netanyahu, and in fact, he has rebuffed just about all of your administration’s entreaties.”
“Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. And we’re not going to stop doing that. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end,” Harris responded.
President
Donald Trump‘s FCC
Brendan Carr ordered
CBS News to hand over the unedited transcript as part of its investigation into whether the network violated the FCC’s “news distortion” policy after a complaint was filed.
