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Founder of Status and veteran media journalist Olivier Darcy joins its editor-in-chief Jon Passantino on their Power lines podcast Friday to review the bombshell audio leaked during a highly controversial CBS News editorial meeting earlier in the week.
Darcy reported on Tuesday evening’s meeting, in which CBS News foreign editor Shayndi Raice strips his staff and warns that failing to follow his directions is “called insubordination” and “is legal grounds for termination.”
The meeting was called following internal backlash following changes to 60 minutes corresponding Lesley Stahl segment on Israeli settler violence and handling of CBS News correspondent’s report Holly Williams, in which Williams’ mention of the death toll in Gaza was suppressed by superiors.
“Oliver, we have exclusively obtained this audio of this meeting. You got it after doing incredible reporting on it this week. What do we have here?” Passantino started in podcasting.
“What will we hear?” he added.
“So we have the whole meeting. There’s a lot of audio here, so we’re going to go through it piece by piece. The first piece of audio that we want to play is, you know, it’s in chronological order. This is where Shayndi Raice talks about the idea that she’s editorially interfering with the reporting that’s happening at CBS News,” Darcy explains. We then hear Raice fuming:
The idea that an editor should have no opinion on editorial content is completely contrary to everything I know about how a newsroom works. And I’m not just talking about Bari Weiss and his editorial interference here. Speaking of mine.
I’m not here to be a logistician. I’m not here to take you from one place to another. That’s not what I was hired for.
And honestly, that’s not what I want to do. What I’m here to do is discuss stories, give my opinion on stories, help you and push you to be better. And that’s another thing that I really don’t understand and I have a really hard time understanding this.
But like this idea that someone writes a screenplay and someone comes up with a story idea, writes a screenplay and no one above them is allowed to comment on it. This is not journalism. I’m sorry.
Journalism is a process in which you are challenged, you are pushed to dig deeper, to do more, to try harder, not only to be fair, but to be smarter, right? And like, look, at the Wall Street Journal, we had many, many, many levels of editing to the point where it was kind of like a joke, you know? But I can tell you that 95% of the time, each level of editing made a story stronger and smarter.
And that’s why their journalism is, I think, the best that’s being produced by a major news organization in America today. All right? And, you know, I understand that I come from the print world and this is television and I’m here to learn from all of you, but you can also learn from me.
I have experience, I have knowledge, I have editing skills, and I have editorial judgment that I can bring to the table. And you’ll get a lot out of your work if you work and collaborate with me, hear my opinions, take my feedback, let me push you because I’m not pushing you for any reason other than wanting journalism to be the best it can be. I want it to be the smartest, I want it to be the sharpest and I don’t want any excuses.
We only have a minute and a half left. And it’s your job to make it smart in a minute and a half. You can be smart. All right?
“Okay,” Darcy responded as Passantino added, “Wow. Yeah, that was a lot. The tone is what strikes me first.”
“Oliver, again, just to set the stage, here’s the foreign editor based in London, talking to all the foreign journalists, correspondents, editors, everyone involved in the production of CBS News. She’s excited here following our report on Status about the reporting that Holly Williams did for CBS Evening Newsin which parts of the report have been removed from this package. We’re going to hear from Holly in a moment, her response to all of this, but she’s the one who really lays down the law as the boss,” Passantino continued, adding:
I have to be honest, I’ve been an editor in a newsroom for a long time, and that’s a pretty harsh tone to use with your team there. Certainly, mom speaks to the children saying: I know better than you. I don’t intervene if I intervene, which is weird that she calls it her opinion, by the way, but she uses that word.
Their opinion must be taken into account in the report. I can only imagine how people were reacting in real time to this.
Darcy agreed: “Yeah, they thought it was deeply disrespectful the way she was lecturing them. These are accomplished journalists she’s talking to, and she doesn’t even understand the process because she says she’s putting on the straw man that it’s not journalism to just write a script and have it air. Well, that’s not how it works at CBS News.” He added:
This is not how it works on any network. These journalists work with producers. They are finishing the script.
Then there is a review of standards. It could be examined by lawyers. Then the executive producer and lead producer of the show that will be broadcast review it and give their opinion.
From what I understand, sometimes there are dozens of people working on or watching a story. So the idea that a correspondent simply concocts a story and it ends up on the air is not the way things work. Maybe she doesn’t understand that because she’s so new there, but that’s not how things work.
Later in the discussion, Darcy and Passantino discuss Williams’ editing: “What’s going on here is, I think, pretty obvious, which is they’re trying to sow doubt on this number and say that maybe it’s not as bad as they make it out to be. After defending meddling in Israel’s history in the October 7 story and laying down the law, Shayndi then makes it very clear that those who don’t fall in line could not lose their job.
Raice is then heard saying:
And you can’t decide about me, or anyone else, or Bill, or Pete, or Bari Weiss, or Tom Cibrowski. You do not decide what will be published on this network. This is not your publishing platform.
This is a company that we all work for and there is a hierarchy in place. And ultimately you have to respond to that hierarchy. You cannot respond to this hierarchy.
And you don’t listen to what we say. This is called insubordination! And this is a legal reason for dismissal.
Watch the full clip above via Status.
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