The Media Research Center has always hated the “CBS Evening News” for not being a a right-wing Fox News clone, and it particularly hated anchor Norah O’Donnell. When O’Donnell announced in July she’d be leaving she show, Curtis Houck served up more of that hate:
In an interview with Puck’s Dylan Byers on Tuesday afternoon, longtime CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell announced she’d be resigning from the CBS Evening News after the November presidential election in order “to focus on major cross-platform interview specials” in what he nauseatingly dubbed a “new, Barbara Walters-ish role” for CBS.
O’Donnell released an open letter around the same time, telling colleagues that “[a]fter this year’s election, I’ve decided I will be leaving my role as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News to take on a new position at the network.”
[…]O’Donnell was announced on May 6, 2019 as anchor after nearly seven years as co-host of CBS This Morning and a litany of bias. She took the job thanks to the firing of Jeff Glor, who made the show the closest thing to a respectable, un-biased newscast.
Having left CBS This Morning ten days later, O’Donnell took time off before starting the PM gig on July 15, 2019 following two months of fill-ins, but hasn’t been able to move out of third place behind ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.
Byers argued she “was also beset with no small amount of internal drama and more than a few anonymously sourced tabloid pieces that attacked her ratings and character and cast doubt on her future at the network.”
He never linked to them, so we’ll mention a few here. As our Nick Fondacaro wrote, her ratings floundered and, by October 2021, the New York Post said CBS suits considered dropping her. By March 2022, the Post claimed Norah was showing “toxic behavior” and a symbol of excess given her reported $65,000 a year wardrobe budget.
Indeed, the MRC published more attacks on O’Donnell over the past year:
- OF COURSE: CBS’s O’Donnell Asks ‘Progressive’ Pope Francis Obligatory Climate Question
- CBS’s O’Donnell Abets Pope Francis’s Leftist Takes On Migration, Climate
- CBS’s Norah O’Donnell TRASHES the Supreme Court in KBJ Interview
- UNBURDENED: CBS’s O’Donnell MAD About Trump’s Garbage Truck ‘Stunt’
- CHANNELING JOE: Norah O’Donnell Works Gratuitous Beau Biden Reference into Veterans Day Report
When O’Donnell signed off on Jan. 23, Geoffrey Dickens first hyped how “whenever a longtime left-leaning host departs their program or network — we like to show them the door with a reminder of their most biased moments,” followed by Houck returning to whine that people said nice things about her:
Thursday marked the final episode of the CBS Evening News in its Norah O’Donnell era following five and a half years in which she anchored the newscast during some of the more consequential times in our country’s history, but also oversaw CBS cementing itself in third-place for network news and plenty of liberal bias (such as these biased openings towards the end of the 2024 campaign).
Unsurprisingly, the final episode featured plenty of empty platitudes from O’Donnell about CBS’s importance and a cameo from billionaire Democratic Party surrogate and CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King’s best friend, Oprah Winfrey.
This, of course, was followed by immediately attacking the new anchors, John Dickerson, Maurice DuBois and Margaret Brennan; Dickens served up what he claimed were “just a few of the most obnoxious outbursts from Dickerson and Brennan over the years.” Houck then sneered:
Hours ahead of their debut as co-anchors for the revamped CBS Evening News, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois stopped by Monday’s CBS Mornings and CBS Mornings Plus to preview their outlook on what promises to be a different newscast that would cover fewer stories, but go more in depth on those they do highlight. The two promised to help viewers “understand” the news “in a clean and clear way” with “good, clean information” while “the world’s on fire.”
When it came time to actually review the performance of the new anchors, Jorge Bonilla whined that they weren’t interesting enough:
The new and revamped CBS Evening News emerged after much hype and a treacly send-off for its prior anchor, Norah O’Donnell. After watching its maiden broadcast one is left wondering: is it too late for Norah to come back?
Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson now anchor the newscast from a beautiful, warmly lit new set in New York. The focus has shifted in terms of the stories shown, so the newscast didn’t open with the usual political story out of Washington. In fact, there were NO stories out of Washington. In addition to no Norah, there was no Nancy Cordes, Weijia Jiang, Scott MacFarlane, Nikole Killion, Robert Costa or Caitlin Huey-Burns. In the words of George W. Bush, this is some weird ****.
The newscast opened with a report on the freakout over DeepSeek AI (with an appearance by Margaret Brennan), followed by a report on Chinese spies targeting current and former service members. After that, a brief roundup covering mudslides in Southern California, ICE arresting hundreds, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and 11 seconds (!) of Donald Trump: namely, his meeting with the House GOP conference in South Florida.
[…]The newscast closed out with a salute to firefighters. The format is a definite departure from newscasts as we know it. Way too weird for this reviewer’s tastes. We’ll wait to see how this space develops going forward. But this will definitely take getting some used to.
The MRC will never be happy with a network news broadcast until the anchors are replaced by right-wing activists — like the ones they’re used to watching on Fox News.