CBS News president stepping down for production deal: report

CBS News President Susan Zirinsky is leaving her job for a production deal with the company’s owner, ViacomCBS, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The hunt for her replacement has been underway for a while, the Journal reported, but nobody has been identified as a potential candidate.

CBS declined to comment about the news to The Hill and Zirinsky could not be reached for comment. Neither Zirinsky nor CBS offered comments to the Journal for its story.

In her deal with ViacomCBS, Zirinsky would be creating content for CBS News and ViacomCBS’s streaming service Paramount+, the Journal said referencing an anonymous source.

Zirinsky began her CBS career 40 years ago as a journalist. After being promoted to president two years ago, she kept the title of senior executive producer.

She was named to the role in 2019, becoming the first female head of CBS News, after David Rhodes announced he was stepping down from the position. In the months prior to Rhodes’s departure, CBS had seen multiple investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct.

After she started at CBS, she launched “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell” and moved the program to Washington, D.C., making it the only broadcast evening newscast based there.

Last November, Zirinsky was given the National Press Club’s 2020 Fourth Estate Award, that group’s highest honor for American journalists.