Fox News anchor Bret Baier publicly addressed reports that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is eyeing him to take over the news network’s flagship evening broadcast, saying this week that while he’s “flattered” by the speculation, he is “very happy” with the conservative cable giant.
Baier distancing himself from jumping ship to a rival network comes as CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson recently announced that he was leaving not just the weeknight news broadcast but the network altogether.
Weiss, the “anti-woke” Free Press founder who was recently installed by Paramount chief David Ellison to run CBS News, has been looking to make a big splash during her first few weeks at the helm of the network. Besides floating out Baier’s name during internal conversations, Weiss has also expressed interest in poaching CNN star Anderson Cooper to helm the network’s flagship evening program.
During an appearance on Meghan McCain’s podcast Citizen McCain, Baier was asked about how he’d “unintentionally” made a lot of news lately because Weiss was “considering” him for the marquee CBS hosting gig.
McCain also pointed out that just before they began taping the episode, Dickerson revealed that he was departing CBS News and the evening show by the end of the year. “Is there any truth to that, and totally respectfully, I would be heartbroken if you left Fox News,” the conservative podcaster asked Baier.
Saying he “knew” McCain would ask that question, the Special Report anchor then sought to pour some cold water on the possibility of him leaving the network he’s called home for 27 years to immediately take over a broadcast news show.
“I’m flattered by all the press and everything like that, but I’m in a multi-year contract with Fox,” he said. “I don’t know where everything’s going. I’m signed onto Fox, very happy at Fox and we’ll see what happens at the end of that. But it’s interesting to see all the press about it.”
Indeed, Baier – who currently makes $14 million a year – is locked into a contract with Fox News that runs through 2028. The prospect of Fox News owners Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch letting one of their top on-air talents break his contract early to decamp for a rival media outlet would seem to be highly unlikely, at best.
“Official confirmation: Bret Baier is not taking over CBS Evening News, at least for now,” Citizen McCain co-host Miranda Wilkins chimed in, while McCain said she was “really happy” to hear that Baier isn’t leaving Fox. (McCain is married to right-wing pundit Ben Domenech, who is a Fox News contributor.)
Since Ellison’s takeover of Paramount this summer, the media mogul has faced criticism that he is restructuring CBS News to shift the network’s coverage to the right in an effort to further appeal to Donald Trump.
Besides hiring the “radically centrist” contrarian Weiss and purchasing her “heterodox” digital outlet The Free Press, Ellison has hired former Trump appointee Kenneth Weinstein to serve as CBS News’ ombudsman to root out “complaints of bias” at the network. He’s also ordered the newsroom to revamp Sunday show Face the Nation’s editing rules following complaints from the White House.
Meanwhile, speculation about Baier has prompted additional concerns among staffers about the editorial direction Weiss and Ellison have in store for CBS News. The pending departure of Dickerson, which was preceded by the network’s head of standards resigning, has only increased that scrutiny.
“It’s like they wanted him to fail,” one network source told The Independent about Dickerson’s exit. “This is a huge loss for CBS.”
At the same time, staff morale continues to plummet at CBS News as Paramount prepares to implement a new wave of brutal layoffs this week, which will likely hit the news division especially hard. The job cuts to the newsroom, which could impact up to ten percent of the staff as Paramount looks to slash $2 billion from the company’s ledger, come after Ellison spent $150 million to purchase Weiss’ site and the new editor-in-chief is openly courting high-priced on-air talent.
