CBS News staff clashed over transgender language in internal email blow-up

A CBS News correspondent sparked an internal clash after circulating a staff-wide email urging colleagues to avoid language recommended by a trans journalists’ group when writing about transgender people, according to reports.

The dispute erupted Nov. 6, when staffers received an email from a prominent correspondent saying the network “should refrain from adopting terminology advocated by the [Trans Journalists Association],” the Guardian reported.

The message took aim at guidance from the Trans Journalists Association stylebook, which advises reporters and editors on how to “improve news coverage of trans people and the stories that affect them.”

A CBS producer fired back in a reply-all message viewed by the Guardian, writing: “It’s a TJA style ‘guide’ — that’s what I’m trying to do. Guide us to better coverage.”

CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss said the exchanges were nothing out of the ordinary.

“Let’s start with something that should be obvious: Journalists deal in words, so it is perfectly normal for a newsroom to discuss, debate and, yes, even disagree about language,” she said in a Tuesday statement to The Post. “Happens all the time.”

Weiss added that CBS News is “a news organization that speaks plainly and clearly to its audience.”

“Our audience is well aware of what biological sex is. There is no need to put it in quotation marks as if it’s an alien dialect or an obscure technicality,” she concluded.

The Trans Journalists Association style guide lays out a set of “editorial best practices,” urging journalists to “center” transgender people in stories about their lives and to rely on self-identification for names, pronouns and gender.

It also flags terms such as “biological sex,” “biological men” and “biological women” as especially fraught outside medical contexts, recommending alternatives like “assigned sex at birth” and cautioning that some language has become politicized.

“This guide is meant to provide a foundation for covering trans people with accuracy and nuance, and it addresses many common language and reporting difficulties,” the stylebook states.

“But it is by no means comprehensive: The English lexicon of gender, sex, and sexuality is dynamic and constantly contested.”

The CBS correspondent who suggested in an internal note that the network “should refrain from adopting terminology” from the Trans Journalists Association stylebook here was Jan Crawford, I’m told pic.twitter.com/keGpLdXJcZ

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) January 5, 2026

The reported email blow-up comes after Weiss was installed as editor in chief in October with a mission to shake up the network, putting her under a microscope and prompting a steady stream of criticism.

Weiss’s choice to anchor the “CBS Evening News,” Tony Dokoupil, had a rough Monday debut as he stumbled through the broadcast — tripping over a teleprompter pivot and leaving viewers with several seconds of dead air.

“There is blood in the water,” one CBS journalist told the Guardian when asked about Weiss’s tenure.

Her first major controversy involved pulling a “60 Minutes” segment by veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi that had been scheduled to air Dec. 21, citing editorial concerns including the lack of a response from the Trump administration.

Alfonsi circulated an internal email protesting the decision, calling it “political.” Some staff viewed the email as insubordinate, but others saw it as the first public airing of long-simmering grievances.

The pulled segment, which examined alleged abuses at El Salvador’s Cecot prison, aired on Canada’s Global TV, anyway.

Nearly 200 former CBS News journalists reportedly signed a letter urging the boss of Paramount Skydance, which owns CBS, to course correct. The missive to exec David Ellison has been shelved for now, the Guardian reported.