The head of CBS News’ standards and practices unit — who presided over some of the network’s recent controversial, woke reporting — is out as new boss Bari Weiss looks to bring more balance to the left-leaning network.
Claudia Milne, who ran the division responsible for the moral, ethical and legal implications of CBS programming, is the first senior executive to leave the network since Weiss arrived as editor in chief earlier this month.
Although Milne’s job had been “slowly phased out,” a CBS source called her departure “significant.”
“She was part of the woke mob at CBS News. It shows an editorial shift in how CBS will operate,” the person said, speculating that “this is Bari’s first scalp.”
“We live in complicated times. For our company, for our industry and for our country. And it’s times like this that what we do matters most,” Milne said Thursday in a farewell note to colleagues, which was first reported by Variety. “I believe our role as journalists is to hold the powerful to account.”
Milne, who oversaw her unit since 2021, played a pivotal role in a host of eyebrow-raising decisions. Those ranged from coverage of the transgender Nashville, Tenn., shooter and spiking an Elon Musk interview to the network’s recent reporting on the Israel-Hamas conflict, among other issues.
CBS declined to comment.
As previously reported by The Post, in 2023, Milne and then-news division president Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews banned staffers from using the word “transgender” when reporting on the Nashville shooter.
The decision sparked outrage at the network because police working the case had identified the killer, Audrey Hale, as a transgender woman. Sources said Ciprian-Matthews and Milne spent 15 minutes telling staffers not to report Hale’s identity because it may not be relevant to the shooter’s motive.
“This is absurd because the police identified Hale as transgender,” a CBS insider said at the time “If the cops didn’t address it, maybe you could avoid it, but withholding information is not journalism.”
Milne was also one of the executives who blocked former CBS News correspondent Catherine Herridge from interviewing Musk in 2023, The Post has learned. Herridge declined to comment.
Herridge said on X that she’d had the rare opportunity to interview Musk after his high-profile purchase of the social media platform. He was in the news in late 2022 for his release of the “Twitter Files” to a handful of tech and media journalists.
But the interview opportunity landed with a thud, Herridge recounted on X, because Musk wanted to do it live. CBS execs said they would rather pass on the session than hold it live because they were worried about what Musk was going to say, according to the former investigative reporter.
“I’m thinking, ‘Isn’t that the point of journalism?’ You don’t know what the person’s going to say,” an exasperated Herridge said.
Another surprising moment in which Milne played a part was last year’s criticism of “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil after he grilled author Ta-Nehisi Coates over his one-sided polemic against Israel, which the writer compared to an “apartheid” state.
Then-news division President Wendy McMahon and her number two Adrienne Roark said Dokoupil’s interview did not meet the “editorial standards” of the network during a staff meeting last year, citing a lack of neutrality and objectivity.
Shari Redstone, then the owner of CBS, ripped top brass and said Dokoupil “did a great job.” Redstone has also been vocal about the slanted coverage at “60 Minutes” over its reporting on the Israel-Hamas war.
Milne’s exit comes as new owner David Ellison, whose Skydance merged with CBS-parent Paramount in August, is looking to assuage the Federal Communications Commission’s concerns about liberal bias after the network settled a lawsuit with President Trump over “60 Minutes’” Kamala Harris sitdown.
In recent weeks, Ellison hired Weiss, acquired her right-of-center news site, The Free Press, and installed former Trump adviser Keneth Weinstein as an ombudsman.
While those moves undermined the authority of the standards unit, Milne had already been losing her grip over the network.
In 2025, Susan Zirinsky, a veteran CBS exec, was tapped to lead the standards department on an interim basis amid concerns of bias. Al Ortiz, a former CBS News standards exec, was later brought on to oversee “60 Minutes” stories.
