There's a Viper in the Nest at CBS
Tony Dokoupil, Call Your Agent!
One day we’re going to find out Norah O’Donnell did something truly unforgivable, like microwaving a trout filet in the CBS lunchroom. Until then, you can only marvel at the jihad being waged against her by network “insiders” through the pages of the NY Post. The latest pillory came last week: “Norah O’Donnell’s ‘desperate’ Trump passport tweet not up to CBS reporting standards: sources.”
You may know the background of this story: After the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, Trump claimed that agents had made off with his three passports (two expired). It turned out this was correct, marking perhaps the first time Trump had ever inadvertently stumbled on the truth while trying to sound like he was lying. But as the story was unfolding, O’Donnell tweeted out the following:
The tweet may have been technically correct — it no doubt accurately reported what a “DOJ official” said — but the information the source provided was not. This happens a lot, mainly because we are often being asked — and especially in the age of Twitter — to settle for the account of a single unnamed source so long as it’s made clear it is just the one person saying it. The news media made an important discovery in the last six years, which is that readers, depending on which political axe they wish to grind, will treat just about any information as valid so long as it conforms to their prejudices. And so you wind up with important sounding revelations issuing from an anonymous someone who may as well be your dry cleaner, like the Times reporting Monday that boxes that Trump turned over to the National Archives in January “included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said.”
(I’ll assume that very credible person was definitely not Congressman Adam Schiff.)
Obviously, it’s a dangerous game you’re playing when you allow yourself to rely on information passed along by a single unattributable source, but at least O’Donnell pinpointed where it came from, which is a higher standard than the one used by the Times. This was not good enough for those guardians of journalism’s sacred flame over at CBS, however:
[T]he anchor attributed the information to a single source — a big no-no at CBS News, which has a strict two-source protocol, angry CBS sources told The Post. They added that the tweets also made it sound like O’Donnell was calling the former president a “liar.”
“This is an embarrassment for CBS that the face of your network can’t even make a second call to a Justice Department rep,” one livid source said. “It’s Journalism 101.”
Savor for a moment the image of “angry CBS sources” phoning up a tabloid reporter to defend the honor of The Craft. That’s like calling a prostitute to fret about the decline of marriage. Honestly, I’m not sure which is more hilarious: that a journalist uses unattributable sources to write a hit piece alleging that another journalist does poor journalism, or that people pretending to care about journalism are calling a tabloid to air out a basic newsroom sourcing issue.
Who knew CBS News embarrasses this easily, anyway? This is the network that brought you the fraudulent Killian documents; got famously bamboozled by the primary source for a 2013 piece on the Benghazi attack; put unfortunate Florida Democrats in the queer position of having to defend Ron DeSantis on Covid policy; and, lest we forget, this:
Remind me again how many sources it takes to convince CBS to run with a story.
In any case, we’re now to believe Norah O’Donnell brought shame and dishonor upon the CBS News operation by quoting someone on background who turned out to be wrong (or lying). And that would seem instantly ridiculous, until you consider the crusade that’s been mounted against her in the pages of the Post for the better part of a year. These pieces have all appeared under the byline of Alexandra Steigrad, the Post’s media reporter.
By my reckoning, this all got underway last October, when the Post first reported that O’Donnell was being targeted for replacement at the network. Her salary is too high. She insists on living in DC, but CBS is headquartered in New York. People jump through hoops to please her. “She is a woman version of an outdated anchor,” one source told the Post. “They definitely want Norah out but have no clue how to replace her,” said another.
Sources told The Post that O’Donnell’s diva-like behavior wouldn’t be missed in the network’s corridors. They said she continues to be rude to hair, makeup and wardrobe staff — despite years of complaints that she is “divisive” and “toxic” with colleagues. She also has demanded new designer threads throughout the pandemic, a move that rubbed some the wrong way, as she reports on COVID deaths, political upheaval and unemployment.
Sackcloth is the appropriate wardrobe for reading the news during a plague. Anyway:
It’s a mess that [CBS president Neeraj] Khemlani inherited from [former CBS News president Susan] Zirinsky, who three years ago plucked O’Donnell to anchor the “Nightly News” from “CBS This Morning” (since rebranded “CBS Mornings”). At the time, sources told The Post that the move came amid friction between O’Donnell and King, who would not re-sign her contract without an anchor change.
Zirinsky, who denied at the time that O’Donnell’s move had anything to do with King, “thought she could control” O’Donnell’s ego, but she couldn’t, according to one source close to the TV network.
“Nobody listened to Zirinsky,” said the source.
“One source noted it would be easy to slot someone like fresh-faced 40-year-old “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil, who makes around $2 million, for the gig,” the Post wrote.
This was followed in January with another piece speculating that O’Donnell was on her way out, the evidence being that the network had brought in Dokoupil — that name again — to anchor “anniversary” coverage of the Jan 6 riots. The move “set tongues wagging” at the network, apparently. “This is an example of Neeraj trying to prop Dokoupil up and grow him into the role,” a source told the Post.
Then in March: “‘Toxic behavior’: Norah O’Donnell’s attitude under fire at ‘CBS Evening News.’”
The 48-year-old anchor’s “The Devil Wears Prada” routine includes a full “dress rehearsal” of the “Evening News” half an hour before the show airs — an often tense ritual that has seen O’Donnell chewing out dressing room stylists over her hair and makeup, sources said.
“There was an incident last year in the studio where she ranted about how her bronzer was wrong,” one insider said, noting that her hair and makeup staff take the brunt of her tantrums and have been known to end up in tears.
“We are in the middle of a pandemic and people are dying.”
No complaining about your makeup, then. You can resume when no one is dying. And remember to wear sackcloth.
“She’s a news actress,” another insider said, noting that the dress rehearsals are “very unusual” for news broadcasts — especially for an anchor who’s three years into a job. A third added that the show’s producers use the quirky routine as a way to coach the “robotic” O’Donnell and “make her look more human,” by critiquing how she delivers the news and reads from the teleprompter.
“Speculation that her days are numbered has surged since the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war. O’Donnell is the only evening TV news anchor who isn’t in Eastern Europe, which has taken a toll on ratings,” the Post wrote.
Could there be a solution? “Meanwhile, “CBS Mornings” anchor Tony Dokoupil, rumored as a possible successor to O’Donnell, has been reporting from Poland and appearing on her show nightly.”
In April, the Post took a short break to report that O’Donnell’s contract had been renewed. A miracle.
But they were back at it in June. “Norah O’Donnell’s salary slashed by more than half at ‘CBS Evening News,’” went the headline. According to the article, she was given a “low-ball offer” of $3.8 million, which they expected her to reject. (Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the implication seems to be that they hoped she would walk … on nearly $4m/yr.? Someone isn’t playing this game right.)
“When she accepted it, some executives appeared surprised,” according to a Post source. In the meantime, the network had sounded out some possible replacements, including Brian Williams and Craig Melvin, “and, as reported by The Post, even mulled promoting Tony Dokoupil, her old co-anchor at “CBS Mornings,” to the role.”
Insiders said Dokoupil’s candidacy was particularly galling for O’Donnell, as Khemlani in January assigned the 41-year-old morning show host to anchor a special broadcast from Washington, DC, on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 capitol riots. And shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, CBS News again set tongues wagging by initially sending Dokoupil instead of O’Donnell to Poland to cover the unfolding war.
(“Initially” is doing a lot of work in that last sentence, but that’s the thing about tongues at CBS: never not wagging.)
And now we have O’Donnell’s supposed “embarrassment,” which was to pass along info, from someone she considered a reliable and well-placed source, that turned out to be wrong.
Fair enough; wouldn’t want it to happen to me. But I’m not sure she’s really the one who should be embarrassed here. (Full disclosure: Norah and I shared a newsroom in our early days as journalists, and I suppose I would consider her a friend, though we haven’t spoken in ages.) No, if I were going to look for candidates, I’d probably start with a reporter who let numerous bad sources tell her O’Donnell was about to get fired. Or I could start with CBS “insiders” who thought the way to deal with a minor reporting slip by the network’s news anchor was to shop it to the NY Post as further grist for a newsroom putsch.
Or maybe I’d start with whoever reps Tony Dokoupil but still wasn’t clever enough to get name-checked, not once, in a series of stories that crap all over the person he would replace. It’s a bad look. Probably a source of suspicion.
Journalism 101: You at least want a chance to say “no comment.”