It's Now Just a Dumpster Fire

It didn't take long, did it?

Ever since Trump-friendly billionaire David Ellison handed the keys of the storied news division to Bari Weiss last October, staffers have been bracing for impact. Well, the crash has happened, and CBS News is officially a raging, out-of-control dumpster fire.

Network insiders are in open revolt, describing the place as a "rudderless ship" after a disastrous Fourth of July primetime special collapsed into what staffers are calling "amateur hour."

Here is how the latest trainwreck went down:

Tony Dokoupil was stationed at the National Mall for a three-hour Independence Day special. When severe storms rolled in, Dokoupil and co-anchor Nischelle Turner were literally left standing in the pouring rain for an hour. Why? Because Weiss and executive editor Tom Cibrowski couldn't—or wouldn't—make a decision on what to do.

"Nobody did anything," a network source tells FTVLive. "It was complete paralysis."

While the main anchors were stranded in the deluge, a backup anchor scrambled to fill time from the D.C. studio while a weatherman cut in from New York. By the time leadership finally allowed Dokoupil and Turner to give up on the Mall, nearly two hours of the three-hour special had already burned away.

Nearly 100 staffers worked their asses off preparing for the broadcast, only to watch it turn into a total embarrassment. But the best part? Cibrowski actually sent out a congratulatory "great job" email afterward.

The response from the newsroom? “It would have been better if they said nothing. We knew it was shit.”

Naturally, the network has since scrubbed the special from Paramount+ and CBS platforms. If you're looking for it, good luck. They are completely mortified.

But the Fourth of July fiasco is just the latest symptom of a much bigger, deeply broken system under current management.

Just days before the holiday meltdown, CBS Evening News managed to air a photo of Kanye West during a report about Sean Combs and a potential Trump pardon. How does that happen at a major network?

Insiders say the newsroom is stretched dangerously thin due to budget cuts, a severe shortage of producers, and a total lack of quality control.

"They are drinking from a fire hose," a source says. "Where is the leadership?"

It turns out that running a legendary news division requires actual news management experience—not just political ideology. Ellison handed a Ferrari to a MAGA-coded leadership team, and the people who actually do the work are now forced to watch it get wrapped around a tree in real time.

Stay tuned.

H/T NY Post