Ex-CBS producer alleges ‘race-based layoffs’ after cuts hits news

Ex-CBS producer alleges ‘race-based layoffs’ after cuts hits news

A former CBS News producer accused the network of “race-based layoffs” after company father or mother Paramount Skydance launched sweeping cuts, claiming in a viral TikTok that every producer laid off from his team was an individual of colour while white colleagues had been reassigned.

Trey Sherman, who’s black, served as an affiliate producer for “CBS Evening News+,” a streaming extension of the network’s flagship broadcast that was among the applications shuttered during the layoffs.

He also labored for CBS’s Race and Culture Unit, which was dissolved in the same round of cuts that affected about 100 staffers across the division.

Trey Sherman, who’s black, served as an affiliate producer for “CBS Evening News+.” @treymous/TikTok

Sherman said in a TikTok posted Wednesday: “I just got laid off from my job at CBS, and every producer on my team who got laid off is a person of color. Every person who gets to stay and will be relocated within the company is a white person.”

Sherman went on to explain a tense trade with a CBS govt who informed him of the resolution.

He said the govt claimed to have achieved every thing he might to relocate affected staffers however later admitted that those who saved their jobs had been people he had “worked with before.”

Sherman called that rationalization “racist,” arguing that, no matter intent, the end result amounted to racial discrimination.

Sherman said he found the disparity after talking individually together with his former colleagues.

“I went one by one to my white colleagues — ‘Are you getting laid off?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you getting laid off?’ ‘No,’” he recounted.

He said he confronted the govt afterward, accusing him of mendacity about the layoffs being evenly distributed.

The former producer also alleged that the govt told him the layoffs weren’t based on benefit however on familiarity — retaining workers he had beforehand labored with.

“I don’t care if you decided to keep people who have purple-colored hair,” Sherman said in his video.

“If the outcome of that decision is racist, then the action was racist. That s— is f—ed.”

He also labored for CBS’s Race and Culture Unit, which was dissolved in the same round of cuts that affected about 100 staffers across the division. @treymous/TikTok

A CBS News spokesperson declined to remark.

A network insider told The Post that the layoffs affected more than 100 workers across CBS News, touching practically every present and division, including the present that employed Sherman.

The Johannesburg bureau has been shuttered, with coverage of Africa now shifting to London, the insider famous.

Two streaming applications — “CBS Mornings+” and “CBS Evening News+” — have been canceled, and the CBS Saturday Morning team has been folded into the weekday workers as the weekend program undergoes a full reformat.

Corporate father or mother Paramount Skydance’s overhaul of CBS News comes amid a broader company shift away from variety, fairness and inclusion applications (DEI) that CEO David Ellison reportedly promised to dismantle following the merger.

The network’s Race & Culture Unit — created in the wake of the 2020 rioting touched off by the loss of life of George Floyd — was among the divisions eradicated in the latest round of cuts.

The transfer aligns with the views of new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who has lengthy criticized DEI initiatives as “illiberal” and “anti-merit.”

In a 2023 op-ed, Weiss wrote that it was “time to end DEI for good,” rejecting what she described as “forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence.”

The CBS News network insider told The Post that planning for the cuts had been underway for months.

While Weiss formally started her position as editor-in-chief three weeks in the past, the selections on job cuts had been made previous to her arrival, according to the insider.

One of the casualties of the mass layoffs at CBS News is a South Africa

The Post has sought remark from Sherman.

Sherman apparently isn’t the only fired CBS News worker who’s nursing a grievance against the network.

Debora Patta, a veteran international correspondent based in South Africa, is contemplating taking authorized action against CBS News after she was laid off, The Post discovered earlier this week.

The British publication Independent reported that Weiss personally intervened to save lots of the job of a male international correspondent who appealed on to the editor-in-chief by noting that he was sympathetic to Israel.

The Post has discovered that the male correspondent in query is Chris Livesay, the Rome-based reporter.

Instead of firing Livesay, Weiss instead put Patta’s identify on the record of workers who’re to be dismissed.

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