CBS News is the news division of the American television broadcaster CBS headquartered in New York City. Along with ABC News and NBC News, it has long been among the big three broadcast news networks in the United States.
CBS News emerged as a radio news broadcast service in 1929. In 1933, Paul W. White was named head of the news division and saw it through World War II where it expanded into Latin America, providing an alternative to Nazi propaganda with assistance from the Department of State. Its first television broadcasts began in 1941 with WCBW in New York City. In 1962, Walter Cronkite became anchor of its flagship television news program, the newly renamed to CBS Evening News.
Following parent company Paramount's merger with Skydance Media, Kenneth R. Weinstein (the former CEO of the Hudson Institute, a conservative foreign policy think tank) was appointed as CBS News' ombudsman, while The Free Press founder and owner Bari Weiss was appointed its editor-in-chief. These moves were interpreted by critics as a sign the organization was shifting politically rightward.
CBS News television programs include CBS Evening News, CBS Mornings; news magazine programs CBS News Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes, and 48 Hours; and Sunday morning political affairs program Face the Nation.
It also oversees CBS News podcasts like The Takeout Podcast. CBS News also operates CBS News 24/7, a 24-hour digital streaming channel.
In 1929, the Columbia Broadcasting System began making regular radio news broadcasts, which were five-minute summaries taken from reports from United Press, one of the three wire services that supplied newspapers with national and international news. In December 1930, CBS chief William S. Paley hired journalist Paul W. White away from United Press as CBS's news editor. Paley put the radio network's news operation at the same level as entertainment, and authorized White to interrupt programming if events warranted. Along with other networks, CBS chafed at the breaking news embargo imposed upon radio by the wire services, which prevented them from using bulletins until they first appeared in print. CBS disregarded an embargo when it broke the story of the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932, using live on-the-air reporting. Radio networks scooped print outlets with news of the 1932 presidential election.
In March 1933, White was named vice president and general manager in charge of news at CBS. As the first head of CBS News, he began to build an organization that soon established a legendary reputation.
In 1935, White hired Edward R. Murrow, and sent him to London in 1937 to run CBS Radio's European operation. White led a staff that would come to include Richard C. Hottelet, Charles Collingwood, William L. Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Bill Downs, John Charles Daly, Joseph C. Harsch, Cecil Brown, Elmer Davis, Quincy Howe, H. V. Kaltenborn, Robert Trout, and Lewis Shollenberger.
"CBS was getting its ducks in a row for the biggest news story in history, World War II", wrote radio historian John Dunning.
In 1940, William S. Paley recruited Edmund A. Chester from his position as Bureau Chief for Latin America at the Associated Press to coordinate the development of the international shortwave radio Network of the Americas, called La Cadena de las Américas, in 1942. Broadcasting in concert with the assistance of the Department of State, the Office for Inter-American Affairs chaired by Nelson Rockefeller and Voice of America as part of President Roosevelt's support for Pan-Americanism, this CBS radio network provided vital news and cultural programming throughout South America and Central America during the World War II era.
Through its operations in 20 nations, it fostered benevolent diplomatic relations between the United States and other nations in the region while providing an alternative to Nazi propaganda.
After becoming commercial station WCBW (channel 2, later WCBS-TV) in 1941, the pioneer CBS television station in New York City broadcast two daily news programs, at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. weekdays, anchored by Richard Hubbell (journalist). Most of the newscasts featured Hubbell reading a script with only occasional cutaways to a map or still photograph. When Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, WCBW (which was usually off the air on Sunday to give the engineers a day off), took to the air at 8:45 p.m. with an extensive special report. The national emergency even broke down the unspoken wall between CBS radio and television. WCBW executives convinced radio announcers and experts such as George Fielding Elliot and Linton Wells to come down to the Grand Central studios during the evening and give information and commentary on the attack. The WCBW special report that night lasted less than 90 minutes. But that special broadcast pushed the limits of live television in 1941 and opened up new possibilities for future broadcasts. As CBS wrote in a special report to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the unscheduled live news broadcast on December 7 "was unquestionably the most stimulating challenge and marked the greatest advance of any single problem faced up to that time."
Additional newscasts were scheduled in the early days of the war. In May 1942, WCBW, like most television stations, sharply cut back its live program schedule and the newscasts were canceled, since the station temporarily suspended studio operations, resorting exclusively to the occasional broadcast of films. This was primarily because much of the staff had either joined the service or were redeployed to war related technical research, and to prolong the life of the early, unstable cameras which were now impossible to repair due to the wartime lack of parts.
In May 1944, as World War II began to turn in favor of the Allies, WCBW reopened the studios and the newscasts returned, briefly anchored by Ned Calmer, and then by Everett Holles. After the end of World War II, expanded news programs appeared on the WCBW schedule –(its call letters were changed to WCBS-TV in 1946) – first anchored by Milo Boulton, and later by Douglas Edwards. On May 3, 1948, Edwards began anchoring CBS Television News, a regular 15-minute nightly newscast on the CBS television network, including WCBS-TV. It aired every weeknight at 7:30 p.m., and was the first regularly scheduled, network television news program featuring an anchor (the nightly Lowell Thomas NBC radio network newscast was simulcast on television locally on NBC's WNBT, which became WNBC, for a time in the early 1940s, along with Richard Hubbell, Ned Calmer, Everett Holles, and Milo Boulton on WCBW in the early and mid-1940s, but these were local television broadcasts seen only in New York City). NBC's offering at the time, NBC Television Newsreel (which premiered in February 1948), was simply film footage with voice narration.
In 1948, CBS Radio journalist Edmund Chester emerged as the television network's new Director of News Special Events and Sports.
In 1949, Chester collaborated with one of CBS' original Murrow Boys, Larry LeSueur, to produce the innovative news series United Nations In Action. Underwritten by Ford Motor Company as a public service, the broadcasts endeavored to provide live coverage of the proceedings of the United Nations General Assembly from its interim headquarters in Lake Success, New York. They proved to be successful, and were honored with a George Foster Peabody Award for Television News in 1949.
In 1950, the name of the nightly newscast was changed to Douglas Edwards with the News, and the following year, it became the first news program to be broadcast on both coasts, thanks to a new coaxial cable connection, prompting Edwards to use the greeting "Good evening everyone, coast to coast." In 1962, the broadcast was renamed the CBS Evening News when Walter Cronkite replaced Edwards. Edwards remained with CBS News, contributing to various daytime television newscasts and radio news broadcasts until his retirement on April 1, 1988.