NCS star Anderson Cooper has reportedly made his feelings clear about working with CBS News boss Bari Weiss ahead of a corporate merger that will put the 2 media retailers beneath the identical possession.
Paramount, which owns CBS, is poised to accumulate NCS’s guardian firm, Warner Bros. Discovery, in an enormous $111 billion consolidation.
The merger would put David Ellison, the tech inheritor and Trump ally who controls Paramount, accountable for each the legacy broadcaster and the 24-hour cable community.
Ellison has not publicly revealed any particular editorial plans for NCS, however workers have reportedly raised issues over what its management would appear like beneath Weiss, whose tenure at CBS News has confirmed controversial.
The New York Times experiences that NCS’s largest star, Cooper, has advised colleagues there that he doesn’t wish to work for Weiss after solely simply leaving CBS News, in keeping with two of its sources. The Independent has contacted a spokesperson for Cooper.
The presenter overlapped with Weiss when he labored as a correspondent for the CBS flagship program 60 Minutes, however he left the present this spring after 20 years.
Weiss was appointed as CBS’s first-ever Editor-in-Chief in October 2025 following Paramount’s acquisition of its guardian firm.
Since Weiss took over the function, top producers have stop on ideological grounds, accusing Weiss of dragging CBS News’s editorial stance to the precise.
Scott Pelley, a long-serving presenter on CBS News’s 60 Minutes who was abruptly fired final month after 37 years with the community, reportedly trashed Weiss in a meeting, saying she was “murdering” this system, in keeping with experiences.
In an interview with The New York Times podcast The Interview, Pelley likened leaving this system to “like your spouse being murdered.”
“There’s some moments of the day I feel fine. There’s some moments of the day that I just, frankly, fall apart, when I least expect it,” he mentioned.
Other correspondents who have been fired have accused Weiss of editorial interference, which she has denied.
Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery will put Ellison’s firm accountable for NCS and HBO, amongst different entities.
Ellison’s relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump has raised alarms at NCS, in keeping with interviews with community correspondents and workers.
In April, Ellison hosted a dinner in Washington within the president’s honor across the time that the Trump administration was deciding whether or not to object to Ellison’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
He was additionally in attendance at Trump’s UFC spectacle at the White House earlier this month, on the day of the president’s eightieth birthday.
Last 12 months, Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle the president’s lawsuit over the modifying of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. The funds didn’t go on to the president, however have been earmarked for his authorized charges and his future presidential library.
The controversial settlement was labeled as an act of “bribery” by certain politicians, together with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).
Ellison just lately insisted in an interview with CNBC that NCS’s “editorial independence will absolutely be maintained” and has mentioned he desires his information networks to attraction to the center “70 percent” of Americans.
“NCS is an incredible brand with an incredible team, and we absolutely believe in the independence that needs to be maintained for those incredible journalists, and we want to support that going forward,” Ellison mentioned. “Editorial, independence will absolutely be maintained. It is maintained at CBS, it will be maintained at NCS.”