Catherine Herridge, a former CBS News investigative journalist, has accused the network of resisting orders from top executives, including CBS CEO George Cheeks and media heiress Shari Redstone, to prioritize investigating Hunter Biden's laptop scandal, raising questions about editorial independence, the New York Post reported.
Herridge has leveled serious allegations against her previous employer, claiming that network executives resisted directives from top leadership to investigate the Hunter Biden laptop scandal thoroughly.
In a video posted Tuesday on X, Herridge stated that Cheeks repeatedly emphasized that the investigation was a "high priority," an order that reportedly came directly from Redstone, the controlling shareholder of CBS parent company Paramount Global.
"George Cheeks said to me on multiple occasions that this was a story of the highest priority for the network and that it was a high priority for his boss, Shari Redstone," Herridge said. Despite this, she noted significant internal resistance to pursuing the story.
According to Herridge, the laptop's contents, which included emails and texts suggesting potential corruption involving President Joe Biden's son, sparked sharp divisions within the newsroom. While some colleagues supported the probe, others opposed it, citing concerns that transcended the factual findings. "It didn't matter what the facts of the case really were, and this bothered me as a journalist a lot," she said.
Herridge also disclosed that her direct supervisors, including Washington Bureau Chief Mark Lima and CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, hindered her reporting. She alleged that critical stories were shelved in the early stages of the laptop revelations. Among the suppressed material were details of a "million-dollar retainer from a Chinese energy firm" and other emails linked to Hunter Biden's business dealings.
These revelations came as social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter blocked coverage of the story, leaving the New York Post as the only mainstream outlet to report on the laptop's contents. Two years later, CBS eventually aired its own forensic analysis of the laptop data, but Herridge claimed the timing was politically motivated, as it came after the 2022 midterm elections.
"When we did the story, we did it after the midterms," Herridge explained. "I argued against that because it was ready before the midterms. My training is that you should always do the story when it's ready to go."
Herridge, an award-winning journalist known for her investigative work, was laid off earlier this year during staff reductions at CBS News' parent company, Paramount Global. She questioned the timing of her termination, which followed her reporting on special counsel Robert Hur's investigation into President Biden. Herridge noted that her termination letter was created a day after she aired a critical report.
CBS seized her reporting materials upon her dismissal but later returned them after union pressure.
"I did everything I could to put CBS first on a story that was not popular among a lot of people in that network," she said.
Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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