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Under Bari Weiss, CBS News dismantled its climate team and retreated from climate reporting
Climate coverage on CBS Evening News fell 81% in January–September 2026 compared with the same months in 2025. The network also aired segments that discounted scientific warnings and downplayed the consequences of climate policy.
*Special* ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Evlondo Cooper
Published 10/20/26
Since Bari Weiss became CBS News editor-in-chief in October 2025, the network has dismantled the dedicated climate reporting team that helped make it a multi-year leader in broadcast coverage of climate change, eliminating most of the team last fall and laying off its last dedicated climate correspondent in spring 2026. As its climate coverage contracted, the network also aired segments that discounted scientific warnings and downplayed the consequences of federal climate policy.
A Media Matters analysis found that CBS aired 87 minutes of climate coverage across 35 segments from January 1 through September 30, 2026, a 61% decline from the 222 minutes it aired during the first nine months of 2025. Coverage on CBS Evening News fell 81%. Across the network, fewer climate segments discussed solutions, the Trump administration’s federal climate actions, or fossil fuels.
The decline in volume began before Weiss arrived, but through the first nine months of 2025, CBS continued to produce substantive climate reporting that explained how global warming affected people’s lives and scrutinized the policies and industries shaping the crisis. In 2026, CBS sharply reduced that coverage while eliminating its last dedicated climate correspondent’s position.
Topline findings
CBS’ climate coverage declined 61%. The network aired 87 minutes across 35 climate segments, down from 222 minutes across 78 segments in 2025.
Climate coverage on CBS Evening News fell 81%. The network’s flagship nightly newscast aired just 15 minutes across 10 climate segments, compared with 79 minutes across 35 segments in 2025.
Fewer climate segments addressed solutions, federal actions, or fossil fuels. Climate solutions appeared in 7 segments, down from 12 in 2025. Trump administration federal climate actions appeared in 3 segments, down from 11, while fossil fuels were mentioned in 3 segments, down from 10.
CBS dismantled the climate operation that helped make it a leader in broadcast coverage
Shortly after Weiss became editor-in-chief in October 2025, CBS dismissed most of its dedicated climate team. In a memo announcing the companywide layoffs, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison described the cuts as “phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities.” National environmental correspondent David Schechter remained for a time, but without a dedicated producer. By spring 2026, CBS had eliminated his position as well.
- CBS’ climate coverage contracted in Weiss’ opening months, with the network airing just 20 minutes of climate coverage across 7 segments from October through December 2025, down from the same period in 2024. A December 29 segment aired on CBS Evening News also marked an early departure from the network’s previous climate reporting, focusing on young people’s climate anxiety and decisions about having children. It represented a shift away from attention to climate impacts and accountability to whether individuals were giving climate concerns too much weight.
- That framing echoed the approach of The Free Press, the publication Weiss founded. Under her leadership, The Free Press has elevated contrarian and conservative voices such as Steven Koonin, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Epstein, who have downplayed the climate crisis, disparaged renewable energy, and/or promoted fossil fuel use.
As its climate reporting declined, CBS amplified claims that downplay global warming
- CBS still produced some informative climate reporting in 2026, but under Weiss, its broadcasts also discounted scientific warnings and downplayed the consequences of the Trump administration’s federal climate rollbacks.
- For example, CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil cast doubt on climate scientists, using findings about one polar bear population to question broader scientific warnings and concluding that “the experts have been wrong before.”
- Dokoupil also framed the consequences of federal climate rollbacks as competing political claims. In a September 14 headline report on the repeal of greenhouse gas limits for coal and natural gas power plants, he relayed the Environmental Protection Agency’s promised savings for industry while attributing concerns about the resulting health and climate consequences only to “environmentalists.” He presented those dangers as an opposing claim without independently examining them.
- CBS’ retreat under Weiss weakens a major source of broadcast climate journalism
- For years, CBS helped sustain corporate broadcast climate reporting through the volume of its coverage and the substance of its journalism, even as broadcast news devoted little attention to the crisis overall.
- At The Free Press, Weiss framed climate change as a distraction from everyday concerns. In a November 2023 introduction to her podcast Honestly, published under her byline, she included climate change among the “more elitist topics” that had supposedly overshadowed “kitchen table issues like the economy and public safety.” CBS’ reporting had previously demonstrated how closely those subjects were connected.
- This work depended on producers and correspondents across CBS. Senior coordinating producer Tracy Wholf and climate producer Chris Spinder developed and coordinated coverage with correspondents Ben Tracy, David Schechter, and Dave Malkoff, alongside journalists across the network and its local stations. Wholf helped reporters incorporate climate science into daily coverage, circulating scientific context during extreme weather events and supporting local CBS stations, as well as the network’s television, streaming, and radio reporting.
- By eliminating its dedicated climate operation, CBS weakened the support available throughout the newsroom for testing official claims against established research on climate change and incorporating scientific explanations into breaking news. It also reduced the network’s capacity to examine how climate change affects people’s lives and scrutinize the decisions that leave them exposed to harm.
- CBS’ retreat also leaves more room for reporting that treats climate-driven weather disasters as isolated events and reduces climate policy to competing political claims. Coverage that separates those decisions from their consequences weakens scrutiny of the industries driving global warming and the officials eroding those protections. Under Weiss, CBS dismantled an operation that showed why climate change belongs among the everyday concerns she claimed it displaced.
Methodology
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