Overview
- A Guardian-detailed Nov. 6 email from a prominent CBS correspondent urged colleagues to avoid adopting terminology from the Trans Journalists Association’s style guide, prompting a reply-all defense from a producer.
- Bari Weiss said newsroom debates over wording are routine and stated that CBS aims to speak plainly, adding there is no need to put the term “biological sex” in quotation marks.
- The Trans Journalists Association guide advises against terms such as “biological sex,” “biological men,” and “biological women” outside medical contexts, recommending alternatives like “assigned sex at birth.”
- Under Weiss, a 60 Minutes report on alleged abuses at El Salvador’s CECOT prison was held the day before its Dec. 21 airing for editorial reasons, later surfacing briefly on Canada’s Global TV app and drawing internal protest.
- Nearly 200 former CBS News journalists reportedly drafted a letter urging Paramount Skydance to change course that was subsequently shelved, and separate reporting has identified the email’s author as Jan Crawford, which CBS has not confirmed.