An Emmy Award-winning CBS anchor claims the Tiffany network blindly pursued diversity hiring and fired him because he’s an older, white, heterosexual man, according to a massive lawsuit.
Jeff Vaughn, 58, who worked at CBS’ Los Angeles affiliate for eight years, claims in a $5 million discrimination lawsuit filed Monday in California federal court against CBS and parent company Paramount Global that he was replaced by a younger minority news anchor in 2022.
The complaint points to CBS’s goal of having half of its writers non-white by 2023, as well as efforts to require half of its reality show cast members to be minorities.
“CBS decided that it had too many white men at its company and acted accordingly; it needed to solve its ‘white problem’ by firing successful white men,” the lawsuit alleges.
CBS declined to comment.
Vaughn’s lawsuit follows a similar one filed in March by a white, heterosexual, male freelance writer who was fired from CBS’s “SEAL Team” series, who sued the network for “blatant” discrimination.
Earlier this year, a Washington Post investigation revealed that CBS News President Ingrid Cyprian Matthews had been accused by staff of unfairly marginalizing white journalists while promoting minorities, sparking a major internal personnel investigation in 2021.
The investigation was “shortened” and concluded the executive was simply a “bad manager” with limited resources, according to sources.
According to the lawsuit, Vaughn, who served as the evening anchor for KCBS’s 5 p.m. news and KCAL’s 8 p.m. news, was told by the general manager of CBS News Los Angeles that she would no longer be working for the network within six months and would be replaced.
The anchor, a four-time Emmy Award winner with more than 30 years of experience in broadcast journalism, claimed that his manager did not directly tell him the reason for his departure, only that it was “not a ratings issue.”
Before his firing, Vaughn had been excluded from several press and promotional events and had noticed himself becoming increasingly marginalized within the network, according to the lawsuit.
For example, during CBS News’ special coverage of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the anchor was “completely excluded and did not appear on the program,” the lawsuit said, calling this “highly odd” given that Vaughn was at Ground Zero in Manhattan to cover the terrorist attacks that day.
He was the only member of the on-air team who was at the World Trade Center, according to the lawsuit.
The situation becomes even muddier when the lawsuit states that management asked the team for story ideas.
Vaughn shared personal photos, videos and interviews he conducted at the Twin Towers sites with President George W. Bush, Senator Hillary Clinton and Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
When Vaughn was refused permission to speak on camera, he wasn’t given any reason why, only that it would be “offensive to others.”
The lawsuit also claims that Vaughn has been excluded from the company’s new promotional campaign for its fall 2022 evening programming, despite being CBS’s lead evening anchor.
“The billboard featured all of Ms. Vaughn’s co-anchors, all of whom were racial or gender minorities. Ms. Vaughn was the only anchor not featured on the billboard,” the lawsuit states.
According to the lawsuit, the discriminatory conduct occurred at a time when the company was making a greater push towards diversity in its hiring practices.
CBS, under the direction of George Cheeks, who is now co-CEO of Paramount and CEO of CBS, had set a series of diversity goals, including ensuring that 40% of the staff in the writers’ rooms for the network’s primetime series were BIPOC. [black, indigenous or people of color] In the 2021-22 season.
Cheeks said at the time that 17 of the 21 shows met or exceeded that goal.
In 2022, Tiffany Smith Anoa’i, Paramount’s executive vice president of entertainment diversity, equity and inclusion, said during a town hall meeting that the company’s “culture of belonging has doubled our representation of women and tripled our representation of people of color — and we’re just getting started.”
Vaughn maintains that the effort “hit the ground running” following the 2021 hiring of CBS News and Stations President Wendy McMahon.
“McMahon was publicly recognized for her work ‘to make the station group more diverse both in front of and behind the camera and in leadership positions,'” the lawsuit said, adding that the executive, who is now CEO of CBS News, replaced McMahon with Chauncey Glover, a 37-year-old African-American anchor from ABC’s Houston affiliate.
“The truth is that CBS News, at McMahon’s direction, implemented unlawful hiring, promotion or retention policies based on age, race, sexual orientation and sex,” Vaughn’s lawsuit alleges.
According to the lawsuit, on her final day, Vaughn’s manager publicly announced she was saying goodbye and told her “it was my decision to quit.”
The reporter refused, but after her last day of work on Sept. 22, 2023, the news team made a statement on live air that “implied” the reporter had “left of her own volition,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Friday was Jeff Vaughn’s final newscast with KCAL News,” the co-anchor read. “He didn’t want to make a fuss about leaving, but we wanted you to know. He’s been an integral part of the KCAL news team for eight years, and we’ve been proud to work alongside Jeff to bring the news to you all.”
