Late Tuesday, word broke via Puck’s Dylan Byers that CBS Saturday Morning co-host, former CBS Evening News anchor, and longtime network mainstay Jeff Glor was being laid off as part of cost-cutting measures by parent company Paramount that aims to trim roughly 15 percent of its U.S. workforce.
Along with Glor, Deadline and others have shared that other on-air cuts include longtime consumer correspondent Anna Werner, climate correspondent Ben Tracy, and correspondent Roxana Saberi.
The Daily Mail, the New York Post, Deadline, and the Los Angeles Times to name a few have been on the case. The Post had this to say about why Glor was let go: “A source close to the situation speculated that Glor’s salary was ‘too high’ and that he largely kept to himself, opting not to play ‘office politics’ or stick his neck out much since being moved to weekend duty.”
To be honest, if you were shoved out the door of your network’s flagship newscast and moved to Saturday, would you dive head first into the razor-sharp claws or stormy seas of office politics, (which also recently befell another great in Catherine Herridge)?
The Post noted that Norah O’Donnell “convinced then-CBS News president Susan Zirinsky to give her Glor’s job and move the ratings-challenged broadcast from New York to Washington, DC”, but made matters worse with the CBS Evening News losing 25 percent of its ratings.
We wrote both during his tenure and prior to his ouster in May 2019, Glor was perhaps the fairest network news anchor Donald Trump could have asked for as his newscast was significantly less anti-Trump from both a tonal and statistical perspective than ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.
For example, a perusing of our archives would reveal headline after headline of our Nicholas Fondacaro that began with “ABC, NBC” followed by the bias. Hopefully Glor lands on his feet. NewsNation would be a fitting destination.
Tracy had been with CBS News since 2008 and had spent the last few years focused on climate change, such as cheering climate thugs blocking traffic and harassing conservatives, touting doomsday reports, and heralding the Biden White House’s electronic vehicle boondoggle.
Werner had been with CBS since 2011 after decades as local CBS stations. Our NewsBusters archives showed she had some real doozies, such as traditional defenses of abortion, fawning over the radical leftists behind Seattle’s infamous CHOP, and an ironic take nearly ten years ago in October 2014 warning about a “conservative” school board shaping curriculums
For Saberi, she definitely had some laughs, such as repeatedly hawking deranged climate activist Greta Thunberg (here and here) and gave the Iraqi president a platform in 2019 to attack the U.S., but she had some terrific moments too as a general correspondent.
In 2021, she was on the ground in Afghanistan covering the deadly and disastrous U.S. withdrawal, but was eventually forced to flee out of an abundance of caution for her own safety. The next year, she gave voice to Iranian women bravely standing up to the Islamist regime during major protests.
And, following the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Saberi has spent more time on the beat than perhaps any correspondent across the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
It culminated in CBS News Streaming Network giving her space to film an hour-long special about the fallout that continues to leave a community in economic, mental, and physical ruin.
