When the New York Times recently posted a fluffy profile of billionaire socialite Lauren Sánchez Bezos, Katie Couric couldn’t resist. “Hi Amy Chozick,” she tagged the story’s writer on Threads. “Are you allowed to refuse assignments? This feels, um off.”
Couric is quite active — and pretty cutting — on Threads. Here’s another good one: After someone posted an inane clip from “Melania,” Couric snarked: “Riveting.” And when a Threads user solicited casting ideas for someone to play the unctuous Sen. Lindsay Graham in a movie, she had this idea: “Mrs. Doubtfire.”
“For some reason, Threads really brings it out in me,” she chuckles while speaking to Variety. “I think that I have earned the right to, on occasion, express my opinion. People find it amusing that I am direct, and at times a little droll. When was the last time we used the word ‘droll’?”
Meet Katie Couric, unleashed. “I love @katiecouric’s zero fucks era so much,” wrote one commenter — to which Couric responded, “It’s nice being the boss of me.”
Couric has been freed from corporate media since 2017, when she launched her independent Katie Couric Media. Nearly a decade later, she’s turned it into a thriving enterprise with 40 employees, including more than one million newsletter subscribers (with verticals including news, health, climate, business, food, lifestyle and shopping), a Substack with 130,600 subscribers, more than 10 million social followers, the podcast “Next Question With Katie Couric” (129,000 views/downloads per episode) and more.
Recently, Couric’s short-form explainers on the SAVE Act and the Pentagon framing the war with Iran as a “holy war” have attracted millions of views. Couric is also developing documentaries, and has several scripted and unscripted projects in the works through the production unit Barolo Films, which she and husband John Molner launched in 2025. Driving its revenue, Katie Couric Media operates with 50 content partners (including Procter & Gamble, Eli Lilly, Talkspace, Humana and Exact Sciences) and more than 100 affiliate partners.
“I feel like I’m continuing to have an impact,” Couric says. “I’m just doing it differently.”
It’s been nearly 20 years since Couric took over as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” on Sept. 5, 2006, on the heels of a 15-year tenure as the approachable, informed and driven co-anchor on “Today,” right when that show dominated morning television.
Her “CBS Evening News” tenure wound up not working out the way Couric had hoped. She left the anchor desk just five years later, a bit disappointed that she couldn’t update the institution as she had hoped to do. “I have ideas of things that I might have done differently,” she says now. “I never realized what a traditional news operation CBS was, and what a traditional format an evening news broadcast was — and is. I was naive to think that we could do anything more than really play with the edges of the newscast.”
From there, she launched a daytime talk show — produced by her old “Today” show boss Jeff Zucker — but that, too, wound up not being the right fit. In 2013, Couric signed on with Yahoo! (at a reported $10 million salary), but Yahoo! shifted its news priorities, and was acquired in 2017.
That’s when she went indie. And these days, free from the constraints that plague network newscasts and corporate media, Couric believes she’s doing some of her best work. At the same time, she has plenty of thoughts on the state of broadcast news — and why she thinks attempts to reach centrist audiences with “both sides” reporting (something new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has been tasked to do at Couric’s old stomping grounds) — is doomed to fail.
“I think it probably would have been easier with a less polarizing president,” she says. “There is a significant segment of the population who believe that the Trump administration poses an existential threat to democracy, and for those people, to have a ‘both sides’ newscast is a violation of journalistic ethics.”
Variety recently spoke with Couric on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the launch of her “CBS Evening News” stint. She shared her thoughts on the state of broadcast news, the challenge mainstream organizations have in covering Trump, why she prefers being independent, her take on how new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is transforming CBS News, and, yes, how much fun she’s having on social media.
Looking back at 20 years ago, what do you remember about your hiring at “CBS Evening News” and the intense media coverage surrounding it?
I was with my daughters at a mobile food bank, and we were passing out soup and oranges to underserved communities. This was before I left “Today,” and one man, I handed him his soup, said, “So are you going to leave the ‘Today’ show or not?” And I thought, “Wow, I guess this story has gotten around.” It was a lot of attention on this decision. I remember it being bittersweet. I loved my time on the “Today” show. And then, of course, came all the attention of going to CBS. Because of the historic nature, as the first female to do that job as a solo anchor, a soft launch was pretty impossible.
Those jobs still held so much weight.
I think David Carr wrote about this, and I remember kind of chewing him out, that how when women get a job, they don’t get it until it becomes less important. I don’t think that was necessarily the case, but even back then, viewing habits were starting to shift.
YouTube launched right around the time you started. Does it feel like you got in network anchor chair right before it all changed?
To me, the job was extraordinarily important, and the responsibility was huge, anchoring an evening newscast. I felt a lot of pressure, because I was the first woman to do that as a solo anchor. Obviously, Barbara Walters and Connie Chung had done it before, but there was a lot of focus on that, for better or for worse, in sort of a tried and true sexist way. But I definitely felt that was a very important job at the time. Of course, I have ideas of things that I might have done differently, that I wrote about in my book [2021’s “Going There”].
How do you feel about it all now, a few years after your book, as we hit this anniversary — and how people covered your appointment CBS Evening News? Was the scrutiny even more sexist than you remember, or focused on the wrong things?
I still feel that I never realized what a traditional news organization CBS was, and what a traditional format an evening news broadcast was — and is. I was naive to think that we could do anything more than really play with the edges of the newscast. And that making fairly big changes would be really challenging, not only internally at CBS, but externally for the audience. I was brought there by Les Moonves to modernize the format, and specifically, to make it less “voice of God.” But I think at the time, that’s what people were used to. That’s what they wanted, a very straight newscast, and not necessarily the more casual authenticity that we’ve seen really surface in this era of social media. I think that broadcast is probably the last bastion of very traditional TV news, and not particularly receptive to a lot of changes. And even today, while there are a lot more gerunds used, and this kind of speedier delivery, I think it’s essentially pretty much like it’s always been.
In some ways, don’t we need an evening newscast more than ever to combat all the noise, opinion and misinformation out there?
Ostensibly, I think they still hold a really important role in the national news diet. But having said that, by the time they come on at night, if people are looking at their phones or following news feeds, much of what they’re reporting has already reached consumers. I’m not sure if this ubiquitous, 24/7-news cycle in the palm of our hands is such a great thing — but it exists. So I think it makes the evening newscasts more important, and yet somehow less relevant.
Watching something like “Broadcast News” is almost quaint and wish fulfillment now.
Not only that, but it’s also before the nation was so balkanized. And before news had become so fragmented. Where we could all hold on to a universal notion of truth and facts. I think that’s what people are really nostalgic for.
Because people now perceive what they’re watching from their own political perspective, they’re never going to get the newscast that they want anymore. They want to hear what they want to hear. Is it even possible to do a straight-ahead newscast anymore?
I think it’s very difficult for a number of reasons. I think it probably would have been easier with a less polarizing president. But I think there is a significant segment of the population who believe that the Trump administration poses an existential threat to democracy, and for those people, to have a “both sides” newscast is a violation for them of journalistic ethics. You saw CBS, for example, do a 16-second read on January 6, basically giving the Trump view of January 6 and the Democratic view of January 6. I think for a lot of viewers, they see that as a cop out. Similarly, yes, some people think the election was rigged, and yet, are newscasts supposed to say these people believe the election was rigged despite absolutely zero evidence supporting that? I think we’re we have entered a new era of not only facts, but context and perspective and to repeat things that aren’t true, hoping this to appear unbiased is not the solution.
The media has also been criticized for “sane washing” some of President Trump’s social media posts, and not sharing some of his profanity-laden rants, like the one on Easter where he wrote, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards.”
I don’t think that is necessarily a good example of corporate ownership muzzling or failing to be transparent or direct about the truth. I think that has to do with broadcast standards. I don’t think you can really say “fucking” on national television.
But what if the president says it?
I think better examples are how corporations and broadcasters might be less than transparent about things. The thing I just mentioned about January 6 conveying the idea that it wasn’t an insurrection. It’s just blurring the truth, and trying to not put the administration in a bad light, for fear of repercussions.
There’s a sense that not enough alarm was raised by the media during the 2024 election, or that, for example, Project 2025 was downplayed.
I think that’s true. I think Project 2025 got attention in some quarters and not enough in others.
What is the role of corporate media today? And the need for independent media?
I’d love to separate corporate from media, because I think that’s a real problem. Whether we’re talking about ABC paying $15 million to the Trump library on what should have been an on-air correction by George Stephanopoulos or CBS paying $16 million from what almost every legal expert said was a specious lawsuit about the editing of the Kamala Harris interview [on “60 Minutes”]. That was obviously because they wanted the [Paramount/Skydance] merger to go through, and it was so obvious. That, to me, is a real issue in in media today, and I found that really deplorable. That level of capitulation was just incredibly disappointing to me. Similarly, the law firms that did that. They would argue that they would go under. I’ve talked to heads of some of these law firms, and my late husband’s law firm represented a lot of those who said, “We are not bowing to this kind of pressure.” But it’s a good old-fashioned shakedown. And I haven’t seen a lot of profiles in courage during this really perilous time.
Same thing with the universities. I think we all expected that these companies and institutions would show more backbone.
At the same time, I don’t work at those places, and neither do you. If their very existence is threatened by this, I don’t know. It would be a really hard decision. But I think in other cases, the more courageous thing to do would be to tell the administration to pound sand. Who knows what the repercussions of doing that. I would tell them to pound sand politely.
Right, now these companies all need government approval for their mergers and acquisitions, so they’re not going to.
Or they’re afraid of regulation. It’s a serious conflict of interest. There’s no way around it, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is just wrong. I loved my years in broadcast television, and I’m grateful for them, but I remember when [former NBC president] Bob Wright wrote me an email back in the day where he’d gotten a lot of negative feedback from an interview I had done with Condoleezza Rice — and I was really taken aback. I said, “I’d appreciate if you stayed out of my journalism, and I’ll stay out of your quarterly reports.” And he did, and there was this unspoken understanding that these two entities were very separate. Now, there has been this really dangerous merging of profits and journalism, which I think doesn’t serve the public well.
And now we’ve seen the government strip public media of funding, which will also have a chilling effect, and will silence important journalistic voices.
You also hear that that streamers don’t want any political content. They don’t want to poke the bear. To me, some of the best documentaries in history have been about important political issues. What does that say to us about the chilling impact on free speech this administration has had? And also the anticipatory obedience by a lot of these news organizations who are more timid. Now, a lot of people aren’t pulling back, and there’s been fantastic journalism going on right now. But you can’t help but imagine that people are pulling their punches a bit.
As a producer, are you finding it harder to sell documentaries?
The lion’s share of my time is spent as an independent journalist. Writing our newsletters, reporting things on social media, doing a weekly Substack show. So I am really covering the news, I would say almost as aggressively as I ever was. It’s been wonderful to be able to have longer conversations. People forget that the evening newscast is 22 minutes long, and so to be able to really dig into these important topics on platforms like Substack and YouTube and my podcast has been incredibly gratifying. I have so much freedom. I may see something written by a former FBI agent about internal chaos in the FBI, and I can call someone who knows that person and get her to do an interview with me on Substack. So it’s not just two sound bites, but they talk to me about what is happening at the FBI, and if it in fact puts us at greater risk of a terrorist attack. From Richard Haass, the former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, to Mike McFaul to Jamie Raskin to Mark Kelly. I think I straddle the worlds of very traditional media when we didn’t have this paradox of choice, and there were fewer options, to now this kind of wild west of everyone has a podcast. But because I was established as a journalist before everything changed, I’m able to parlay that into getting big names to talk to me about important issues.
Do you think some of these stories and these people who you’re talking to are being ignored by the larger, mainstream media?
I don’t know if they’re being ignored. I think, honestly, there just aren’t enough outlets for them in mainstream media. Look at a 22- to 24-minute newscast at night, they’re not going to be able to have a full conversation about an important issue that requires nuance and thoughtfulness. On a morning show, those interviews have gotten shorter and shorter. They could do it on “60 Minutes,” but there are only so many slots. And there aren’t other real magazine shows that aren’t true crime. So you can understand why so many people who are interested in having an in depth conversation are gravitating toward podcasts. There’s unlimited real estate, and they know that they can actually have these conversations.
Do you feel any pressure or threat of retribution from the powers that be? How far will this administration go in terms of trying to silence its critics?
I guess a good example is Don Lemon, and you see what happened to him. I think it created an even more loyal audience. So I think some of these moves to intimidate or silence reporters, they’re just not very effective — unless you work for a big corporation. If you’re in a vulnerable position where the ramifications could hurt you financially, I think you pay a lot more attention to that kind of pressure.
What do you make of some of these other independent outlets that appear to be gaining more traction, like Meidas Touch?
I interviewed the three brothers from Meidas Touch. We live in this highly polarized world, but I think that there are plenty of people who don’t feel as if the mainstream press is taking the Trump administration to task as much as it should be. That has created a huge opening for new media like the Meidas Touch or Aaron Parnas, who apparently never sleeps. And other people with different points of view. Unfortunately, I think what it’s done is further polarize us, as we all kind of commit to our respective ecosystems and echo chambers.
But I do think that many of these media outlets are doing a real public service by exposing things that are going on. For example, the unparalleled grift we’ve seen in this administration, to the tune of — what is it? $4.2 billion? I don’t even know what the latest number is. But the amount of self-enrichment going on in the administration should be covered. And I think part of it is the volume and velocity of news stories that back in the day would be a massive scandal. They have an almost ephemeral nature to them.
It’s the shock-and-awe strategy of this administration, right? Just keep piling on the grift.
It’s been very effective.
Going back to this idea of mainstream media shifting more to the right in an attempt to be seen as more nonpartisan. CBS, of course, now with Bari Weiss at the top, is trying to do just that. What do you make of her strategy? Won’t it ultimately just alienate their existing audience without really attracting any new audience?
That’s such a hard question. I don’t know the answer to that. By not standing for something, will they ultimately stand for nothing? Are there people who still just want “this happened, that happened,” without context or perspective or any kind of analysis at all? I’m not sure. I do think that CBS was in desperate need of modernizing, of iterating their content to be seen on different platforms and not just a specific time of day on one channel. That was a long time coming, something that even I tried to get them to do in 2008, to expand their digital footprint. But this kind of middle-ground audience — I just don’t know what will happen to that with that sort of approach.
The audience that wants more of a conservative perspective in their news, they already have Fox News, Newsmax and others. Even local TV seems to be moving to the right, with companies like Nexstar.
You’ve got Sinclair, and you’ve got Nexstar and Tegna. I think people even in the middle, they want to know when something wrong is happening. But I think they don’t want everything to be hair on fire. I think they want it to be grounded in facts and perspective. Some people would say you have to be alarmist and hysterical, almost, about what’s happening in our country to get people to be less complacent. On the other hand, I think if every event creates this “hair on fire” moment, then people take some of the serious events, less serious.
That’s ultimately the problem of cable news, right? In trying to program 24 hours a day, they end up filling it mostly with opinion. We’ve lost perspective as a result.
I feel lucky that I’m an independent journalist, and when there’s something that deserves a certain amount of time and a conversation of a certain length, I’m able to do it. I don’t have to cut to a commercial for adult diapers or Preparation H. Not that there’s anything wrong with those products!
Now we’re in this age of consolidation. Paramount is trying to buy Warner Bros., which would put CNN and CBS News under the same banner. What are your concerns over what consolidation is going to mean to the network news, to the free press, and what’s going to happen as these companies start to contract?
Well, those are two different questions, right? One is consolidation, and what that will mean for jobs. If CNN and CBS merge, they’re going to have fewer people, probably. If somehow they’re pooling their resources, they’re going to need fewer people doing news, which isn’t great for journalists who care about the world and want to be a part of it. They’re going to cut jobs, most likely. And then the other aspect of it is journalistic independence. I was reading Margaret Sullivan today. And this idea of appealing to center-left and center-right people is anathema to journalistic independence. As Margaret said, you shouldn’t have a political goal. You should have a journalistic goal, and that means telling the truth. Mary Walsh, who was a longtime producer at ‘Face the Nation,’ I think she wrote in her resignation letter, “they want us to appeal to a certain viewer, with a certain political point of view.” And she said, very simply, “I don’t know how to do that.” That shouldn’t be our job. Our job is to report what’s happening and to give it context. Every time I think, maybe these entities that are in one way or the other in bed with the government, maybe they will maintain some independence. Every time I think that, then I read that David Ellison is throwing a dinner party honoring Donald Trump as part of the White House Correspondents Dinner. That’s pretty messy.
How large is Katie Couric Media now?
We have almost 40 employees. I do feel like I’ve been an early adapter. Going to Yahoo, I was hoping they would become this big digital news behemoth. That, frankly, was never quite in the company’s DNA. Or there wasn’t enough of a priority put on that. But I feel like I was pretty early catching this wave, and I want to keep growing and learning and adapting. Because there’s going to be another platform.
In a world where there’s so much noise, so many outlets, how do you get the word out? How do you try to break through?
It’s challenging. I try to have really good conversations with important guests. I also have moments in interviews that “go viral,” where I ask Gavin Newsom about California’s record, and have very specific things to point out, or challenge Scott Galloway with a question from Reddit, and he has a very thoughtful answer that surprises people. It might be a straight-to-camera piece that I’m doing about the Pentagon and the rules that they’re imposing against reporters there, despite a judge’s ruling. I did one on the SAVE act. That got 2.4 million views. And the military usage of theological terms at the Pentagon, that got almost 3 million. And that’s just on one platform — that’s not even counting YouTube and Substack and my newsletter.
What’s next for the company? Is it live events?
We do live events. I’m doing one in May with the woman who does “Couples Therapy” [Dr. Orna Guralnik]. I’m also developing documentaries. I’ve got a scripted and non-scripted project I’m working on with The Atlantic. I’m developing something else I’m really excited about. There are a couple scripted projects I’m interested in, but there’s a reason they call it development hell.
If you were running one of these network news operations now, what would you do? What would your advice be on how to blow up these companies and maybe reinvent CBS News?
I think I would double down on investigative reporting, which is expensive and time consuming, but so important. I just think at a time where news has become so commoditized, having stories that are the product of a lot of time and in depth reporting are really important. I think ProPublica is doing a great job. I think the New Yorker and the New York Times have done a great job of really tracking the money that Trump family and associates have made during Trump 2.0. I would really double down on reporters.
But that costs money.
It does. I would make sure that everybody really understands that they have to be their own camera crew. They have to know how to edit. They have to be able to tell stories on various platforms. I often say to my team, if I were graduating from college, the first thing I would do is, obviously, learn how to be a reporter and cover stories, but also be incredibly self-sufficient.
Is there still hope left for the traditional broadcast networks in news?
I hope so, because I do think they serve a really important role for millions of Americans. This is where they get their news and information. I’d also like to see local news beefed up and elevated, because I can’t remember the number of newspapers that have folded in the last 20 years, and people who are connected to their local communities vote more. They’re more interested in what’s happening in the nation as a whole. But network news, I hope it sticks around. It will probably have to be reimagined to take advantage of the way people are getting news. I think it’s definitely possible, but they’ve got some wood to chop.
That was Paramount’s spin in bringing in Bari Weiss to CBS News. Do you think she’s doing that?
I can’t say, because I haven’t talked to her. But I do think that that she understands all the things that I’ve been talking about, how news and information is delivered in 2026 versus 2006. She’s trying to evolve what they’re doing to meet the demands of modern Americans. But the other side of it is, I think, TBD. Whether we’ll see, in an effort to attract more centrist viewers, if it will amount to journalists pulling their punches, and not covering this administration as aggressively as it deserves to be.
It’s the self-censorship that concerns me as much as the actual mandates coming from these companies.
I forget who coined the phrase “anticipatory obedience.” You worry about the chilling effect it has. A lot of it is also they don’t want to lose millions of people who are firmly in the administration’s camp. It comes down to ratings too.
And yet, these companies shifting center-right may alienate their remaining audience that actually is looking for the real journalism.
And people who speak to power, which you’re always supposed to do, right? I think the jury’s out about whether this approach will really work. And what is the approach? Because right now, it seems all over the map. It doesn’t seem to have a very specific point of view.
I’m not really much on Threads, but someone told me, “You’ve got to check out Katie Couric on Threads, because she is killing it right now.”
Mike, I’m a little unplugged on Threads for some reason!
There was one person who wrote how much she was digging this “no fucks era” of Katie Couric.
I’m pretty unedited these days on most platforms, but for some reason, Threads really brings it out in me. People are so funny on Threads, you should join this platform. They’re really clever and they’re very opinionated. At this point in my career, I don’t have any corporate overlord telling me what to do. So I think that I have earned the right to, on occasion, express my opinion. People find it amusing that I am direct, and at times a little droll. When was the last time we used the word droll?
It kind of sums up what we’ve been talking about, the independent era of Katie Couric. You can be a little off the cuff, and it’s kind of opened this whole new door for you.
I agree. I mean, I think I was pretty quippy when I was on the “Today Show,” and obviously less so at the “CBS Evening News.” But to comment on either the administration or that article by Amy Chozick. I try not to be mean or too snarky, but I can be sort of sarcastic at times. I try to keep it within the boundaries of civility, but in a way that I can really say what I think… I am just being sort of transparently who I am, and I think people appreciate it. Especially at a time where there are so many people working in legacy media who have to be very careful about what they say. As someone said, I’m in that era where I don’t have to pull my punches so much.
In comparison to this sense that mainstream media is pulling back, being told to pull back, or self-censoring.
I’m not operating from a place of fear, and that feels really good.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Leave a Reply