CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson has resigned after more than two decades at the network.
“CBS News veteran Sharyl Attkisson is leaving the news division to pursue other endeavors,” CBS News spokesperson Sonya McNair said in a statement provided to TVNewser. “We appreciate her many contributions and we wish her well.”
Attkisson, a Washington-based investigative correspondent, called her time at CBS News “one of life’s great privileges” and said she is “grateful for the many opportunities I’ve had.”
Politico’s Dylan Byers reports the departure is the result of several months of “hard-fought” contract negotiations:
Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsized influence by the network’s corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt like her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her packages on television.
At the same time, Attkisson’s own reporting on the Obama administration, which some staffers characterized as agenda-driven, had led network executives to doubt the impartiality of her reporting. She is currently at work on a book — tentatively titled “Stonewalled: One Reporter’s Fight for Truth in Obama’s Washington” — which addresses the challenges of reporting critically on the Obama administration.
CBS News announced last year that Attkisson’s computer had been accessed by an “unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012.” At the time, Attkisson said she was “outraged” about the “very serious and disturbing matter.”