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CBS Comings and Goings: Why in the World Is Bari Hiring This Guy?
CBS News remained in the headlines last week vis-à-vis comings and goings as editor-in-chief Bari Weiss further having a look under the proverbial hood. This time, we saw a date for the expected departure of CBS Evening News co-anchor Maurice DuBois and a reported desire to sign CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil to the PM chair, but most notable was a questionable decision to bring over longtime ABC correspondent Matt Gutman.
Yes, the same Gutman who said the texts between the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination and his transgender lover were “heartbreaking,” “intimate” and “touching” (which he was forced to offer a mea culpa one day later):
DISGUSTING: ABC’s Matt Gutman says he’s not sure “if we have seen an alleged murder with such specific text messages” that were “very touching, in a way, that I think many of us didn’t expect — a very intimate portrait into this relationship between the suspect’s roommate and the… pic.twitter.com/ulPcxoOwM3
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 16, 2025
Earlier this year, he whined about the actions of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) in California, defended Los Angeles rioters, and carried water for Harvard in its fight against the Trump administration.
Thus, it has to be asked: What in the world is Bari thinking?
Puck’s Dylan Byers broke the news in his Friday night newsletter, telling readers Weiss and CBS News president Tom Cibrowski signed Gutman to become what Byers described as “a high-profile correspondent” “after a protracted back-and-forth negotiation.”
Status’s Oliver Darcy revealed back on November 10 that Weiss “has shown particular interest in Matt Gutman” due to his “reputation for his reporting form the Middle East and his coverage of Israel”
Over at the Los Angeles Times, longtime media reporter Steve Battaglio said Gutman was Weiss’s “first significant on-air hire” since her October 6 arrival at CBS.
“Gutman’s contract was up at ABC News, which did not counter the offer from CBS, according to people familiar with the discussions,” he added, noting Gutman is leaving a network he’s been with since 2008.
Battaglio noted Gutman “won journalism awards for his work on the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas and the 2018 rescue mission of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand” and was in Israel “for 18 months after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023.”
Along with the deranged reaction to the evidence in the Kirk assassination, Battaglio said Gutman similarly drew negative headlines and “was suspended by ABC in early 2020 after he erroneously reported on-air that all four of Kobe Bryant’s daughters were on board the helicopter that crashed and killed the NBA icon[.]”
“Gutman apologized for the error and later attributed the mistake to a panic attack that occurred while on air. He wrote a book in 2023 about getting over his long struggle with anxiety and panic attacks,” he said.
We’ll reserve further judgment for how Gutman reports with CBS News, but the first read on this would leave us calling this a miss.
As for the CBS Evening News hoopla, DuBois announced on Thursday via Instagram he would leave the network on December 18 following 21 years at CBS News and its New York City affiliate, WCBS.
The New York Post’s Alexandria Steigrad quoted a source Thursday in describing DuBois’s announcement as having been “rogue” and earlier than expected, meaning CBS will “[speed] up the timeline” to find someone to replace DuBois and John Dickerson, who had shared on October 27 he would leave by year’s end.
Thus, Steigrad reported, CBS has been “scrambl[ing]...to sign” Dokoupil, who would be a fine hire and by far the best internal option to help achieve a newscast toward the center a la the Jeff Glor days (click “expand”):
CBS News scrambled Thursday to sign Tony Dokoupil to helm “CBS Evening News” — with a top exec denying claims that Maurice DuBois went “rogue” and surprised his bosses by revealing he was leaving the network, The Post has learned.
While sources cautioned the talks could fall through, “CBS Mornings” co-host Dokoupil has been a frontrunner for the job and a favorite of both Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, and Tom Cibrowski, its president, as The Post previously reported.
(....)
CBS News was expected to announce that Dokoupil will become the sole anchor of the show in the coming days, sources said.
(....)
The problem Weiss faces, of course, is a limited budget and the outside talent’s existing contract obligations.
That leaves Dokoupil, who makes a more modest salary than his co-hosts Gayle King and Nate Burleson, sources said.
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