CBS News is planning to hire the prominent British broadcaster Trevor Phillips, currently a Sunday morning presenter on Sky News, as a global affairs correspondent for the network, a significant hire for embattled top editor Bari Weiss.
The network has not yet announced the appointment, which was first reported by Breaker, and a spokesperson declined comment when asked about it. Phillips did not respond to a Thursday morning message from the Guardian seeking comment.
While prominent in the UK, Phillips is not a household name in the United States, and it is not clear exactly what his remit will be at the network, which has a London newsroom that recently saw the departure of highly respected bureau chief Claire Day. (Wall Street Journal veteran Shayndi Raice was brought on to oversee foreign coverage for CBS News.)
After beginning his career in media, Phillips entered the political fray. He rose to prominence as a public figure as head of the Commission for Racial Equality in 2003, appointed to the role by Tony Blair. He chaired its successor, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, from 2007 to 2012. He was knighted in 2022 for his work on equality and human rights.
Prior to hosting Sky News’s Sunday morning show, he presented the network’s Sunday politics show.
Phillips is the chairman of the global freedom of expression campaign Index on Censorship and a senior fellow at the right-leaning thinktank Policy Exchange.
He is also a regular columnist for Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspaper, where he has written about Donald Trump and his personal connection with the US.
“I accept that I am biased in all this,” he wrote recently. “I am the son of immigrants, twice over, first to London and then to New York. I come from a tribe that has prospered mightily from its life in America. This is a society that rewards ambition and hard work.
CBS News has been most recently in the news for what veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley called “Black Thursday”, the 28 May gutting of the senior leadership and a significant chunk of the correspondent corps of the network’s most prominent and successful news program.
Pelley was fired a few days later “for cause”, after clashing with the show’s newly hired executive producer, Nick Bilton.
The network has also undergone two rounds of layoffs during Weiss’s tenure, which began in October, creating a need to replenish its news operation.
