CBS News President Tom Cibrowski reportedly directed CBS Mornings to ignore Stephen Colbert's Late Show finale last week, and the petty corporate dysfunction behind it tells you everything you need to know about why legacy media can't get out of its own way.
According to reporting by Puck's Matthew Belloni, the decision stemmed from lingering resentment over a Colbert segment that mocked anchor Tony Dokoupil and Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. During his final weeks on air, Colbert performed a bit ridiculing Dokoupil's inability to secure a Chinese visa for coverage of then-President Trump, depicting him with his head stuck in a pumpkin while Weiss tried to help him escape.
Network executives viewed the segment as "unprofessional and unprovoked," with sources telling Puck that Colbert had "kicked colleagues when they were down." The argument, apparently, is that CBS News previously supported Colbert after his show was cancelled and during his FCC disputes, and he failed to reciprocate that loyalty.
Let's pause here. CBS couldn't celebrate Stephen Colbert—who hosted their network's late-night show for over a decade, who won multiple Emmys, who defined political satire for a generation—because he made fun of an anchor's visa problems. That's the story.
Never mind that mockery is Colbert's entire job. Never mind that late-night hosts have been making fun of their own networks since David Letterman invented the format. Never mind that the pumpkin bit sounds genuinely funny. CBS News decided the appropriate response to a comedy segment was to pretend their own network's late-night finale didn't happen.





