A former CBS News producer accused the network of “race-based layoffs” after corporate parent Paramount Skydance introduced sweeping cuts, claiming in a viral TikTok that every producer laid off from his team was a person of color while white colleagues were reassigned.
Trey Sherman, who is black, served as an associate producer for “CBS Evening News+,” a streaming extension of the network’s flagship broadcast that was among the programs shuttered during the layoffs.
He also worked for CBS’s Race and Culture Unit, which was dissolved in the same round of cuts that affected about 100 staffers across the division.
Sherman said in a TikTok posted Wednesday: “I just got laid off from my job at CBS, and every producer on my team who got laid off is a person of color. Every person who gets to stay and will be relocated within the company is a white person.”
Sherman went on to describe a tense exchange with a CBS executive who informed him of the decision.
He said the executive claimed to have done everything he could to relocate affected staffers but later admitted that those who kept their jobs were people he had “worked with before.”
Sherman called that explanation “racist,” arguing that, regardless of intent, the outcome amounted to racial discrimination.
Sherman said he discovered the disparity after speaking individually with his former colleagues.
“I went one by one to my white colleagues — ‘Are you getting laid off?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you getting laid off?’ ‘No,’” he recounted.
He said he confronted the executive afterward, accusing him of lying about the layoffs being evenly distributed.
The former producer also alleged that the executive told him the layoffs were not based on merit but on familiarity — keeping employees he had previously worked with.
“I don’t care if you decided to keep people who have purple-colored hair,” Sherman said in his video.
“If the outcome of that decision is racist, then the action was racist. That s— is f—ed.”
A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment.
A network insider told The Post that the layoffs affected more than 100 employees across CBS News, touching nearly every show and division, including the show that employed Sherman.
The Johannesburg bureau has been shuttered, with coverage of Africa now shifting to London, the insider noted.
Two streaming programs — “CBS Mornings+” and “CBS Evening News+” — have been canceled, and the CBS Saturday Morning team has been folded into the weekday staff as the weekend program undergoes a full reformat.
Corporate parent Paramount Skydance’s overhaul of CBS News comes amid a broader corporate shift away from diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI) that CEO David Ellison reportedly promised to dismantle following the merger.
The network’s Race & Culture Unit — created in the wake of the 2020 rioting touched off by the death of George Floyd — was among the divisions eliminated in the latest round of cuts.
The move aligns with the views of new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who has long criticized DEI initiatives as “illiberal” and “anti-merit.”
In a 2023 op-ed, Weiss wrote that it was “time to end DEI for good,” rejecting what she described as “forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence.”
The CBS News network insider told The Post that planning for the cuts had been underway for months.
While Weiss officially began her role as editor-in-chief three weeks ago, the decisions on job cuts were made prior to her arrival, according to the insider.
One of the casualties of the mass layoffs at CBS News is a South Africa
The Post has sought comment from Sherman.
Sherman apparently isn’t the only fired CBS News employee who is nursing a grievance against the network.
Debora Patta, a veteran foreign correspondent based in South Africa, is considering taking legal action against CBS News after she was laid off, The Post learned earlier this week.
The British publication Independent reported that Weiss personally intervened to save the job of a male foreign correspondent who appealed directly to the editor-in-chief by noting that he was sympathetic to Israel.
The Post has learned that the male correspondent in question is Chris Livesay, the Rome-based reporter.
Instead of firing Livesay, Weiss instead put Patta’s name on the list of employees who are to be dismissed.
