After more than a decade in broadcast news across the country, Stephon Dingle moved back home to Baltimore in 2022 to work at WJZ-TV, the local CBS station he grew up watching with his grandmother.
“I wanted to serve this city,” Dingle said.
Instead, he found himself navigating a workplace where some current and former employees describe retaliation, discrimination, and a hostile newsroom culture — and where speaking out came with consequences.
Dingle is one of a group of eight Black journalists whose allegations have escalated into a national rebuke, with leaders from the National Association of Black Journalists disinviting CBS and WJZ from its annual convention in August unless their concerns are addressed.
According to Tramon Lucas, the president of the Baltimore Association of Black Journalists and a digital editor at The Baltimore Banner, the group of current and former Black journalists — who refer to themselves as the “WJZ Accountability Coalition” — have come forward to detail patterns of mistreatment inside the newsroom.
Lucas said BABJ took a deliberate, methodical approach, asking journalists to document their experiences in detailed memos and reviewing those accounts before going public.
“We’re journalists — we know not to go out here and falsify information,” Lucas said. “Everything we’ve said has been attributed to what these employees detailed in their memos.”
In November, the group released its findings that Black journalists alleged “a culture of fear.”
Many of the allegations against WJZ’s leadership specifically name Tanya Black, the station’s vice president and news director, who is Black.
Lucas said that fact does not lessen the concerns raised by the coalition. “It’s unfortunate that, under Tanya’s leadership, there have been this amount of Black journalists who said, ‘Hey, I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel seen. I feel like if I speak out, I’m the next one,’” he said.
In a statement to Baltimore Beat, CBS Television spokesperson Elita Fielder Adjei called the allegations “unfounded, unsubstantiated, and flat out false,” and rejected claims of discrimination.
Adjei also said CBS “has long been committed to editorial excellence, community journalism, and a newsroom that reflects the diverse voices and perspectives of the audience we serve. Black professionals serve across the newsroom and throughout the organization, including roles that shape editorial decisions and storytelling. We’re proud of CBS Baltimore and the people who power it.”
Dingle, a two-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, former WJZ anchor and reporter, and vice president of BABJ, is the only journalist to speak on the record about conditions inside the newsroom. But his account matches the experiences compiled in memos by the journalists and reviewed by the Beat.
BABJ says multiple Black employees were let go or pushed out in 2025, but that things escalated in October when CBS News announced major layoffs across the country. In Baltimore, the network laid off four people, all of them Black, including the station’s first Black chief meteorologist, Derek Beasley.
Adjei said the recent layoffs and workforce reductions at WJZ were driven by broader economic pressures, not by race. “These painful decisions were made with fairness and driven by what is best for our station’s business and journalism moving forward. We reject their claims of discrimination or that only Black employees were affected by these moves.”
In a statement to the Beat, BABJ said it “reject[s] the characterization that our advocacy is solely about the October layoffs,” which only affected Black employees. The group argued that the two dozen staff members of all races who have left the station since 2022 cannot be explained by economic pressures alone and instead point to deeper concerns about workplace culture, leadership, and accountability.
The allegations at WJZ echo concerns raised in a 2021 Los Angeles Times investigation that argued that CBS ignored complaints of anti-Black racism and misogyny across its local stations, including claims that a senior leader blocked efforts to recruit and hire Black journalists; NABJ publicly demanded an external investigation and several station executives were later fired.
When Black journalists are pushed out of newsrooms in cities like Baltimore, communities can lose reporters with the trust, perspective, and lived experience to tell their stories fully, BABJ members said.
Dingle was raised in Park Heights by his grandmother, who would wake him each morning to watch WJZ. As a child, he mimicked the anchors, narrating what he saw in his neighborhood. His family nicknamed him “Mr. WJZ.”
After a journalism career that took him to multiple cities — including Louisville, Kentucky, where his coverage of protests following the police killing of Breonna Taylor earned him a Best Reporter Emmy in 2020 — Dingle said returning to Baltimore was the highlight of his career, even though he says he took a pay cut to do so.
“It was a dream,” he said. “I couldn’t believe I was working alongside the people I grew up watching.”
That dream, he said, began to unravel after in August 2023 he reported concerns about what he described as sexual harassment by a senior colleague — a complaint he said he raised in good faith and expected leadership to take seriously.
Instead, he said, the station told him they could not substantiate the claim nor tell him if the colleague faced discipline; the colleague remained on air.
Dingle said his role began to shift in the months that followed his complaint — he was passed over for opportunities, removed from assignments, and excluded from key coverage, allegations that are similar to the issues described by other journalists in the memo.
Dingle described the subsequent toll on his mental health, saying he experienced anxiety and depression during his time at the station. “It became a slow erosion,” he said. “Of your work, your confidence, your place in the newsroom.”
Dingle described the subsequent toll on his mental health, saying he experienced anxiety and depression during his time at the station. “It became a slow erosion,” he said. “Of your work, your confidence, your place in the newsroom.”
Even as his role inside the newsroom changed, his work continued to receive accolades: in 2024, Dingle earned three Emmy nominations, including for Best Anchor.
“You’re being told you’re part of the future,” he said. “But you’re being treated like you don’t belong.”
In a memo submitted to BABJ, he wrote that the newsroom had shifted “from collaboration toward fear and control,” and that retaliation affected “assignments, tone, access and respect.”
Seven other current and former journalists described similar experiences in memos submitted to BABJ and reviewed by the Beat, including what they called a discouraging and retaliatory environment, particularly for Black journalists. Two also spoke under the condition of anonymity with the Beat, describing a deeply toxic workplace.
“It really affected my self-confidence,” one said. “Managers not supporting you, but actually tearing you down and knocking your confidence.” They recalled dreading spending time at the station: “I don’t even want to go into work today.”
Both said they began documenting their experiences after they felt management was building cases against them. “It’s easy for our experience to be swept under the rug,” the journalist said.
Another, who said they remain in contact with several current employees at the station, said conditions have not improved.
BABJ is calling for an outside investigation into WJZ’s newsroom culture, HR practices, and management conduct — including anonymous employee surveys and a review of whether managers named in the allegations meet NABJ’s professional standards. The coalition is also calling for counseling and career support for affected employees, and for implicated managers to receive leadership training or be reassigned.
Lucas maintains BABJ’s goal is accountability and says the group has a track record of seeking dialogue and remedies rather than calling for firings.
“We always start with, ‘How can we meet? Can we get an apology? How do we fix this?’” he said. “We’re advocating not just for Black journalists, but for the community they serve.”
CBS said it has sought “direct, good-faith dialogue” with BABJ and NABJ for several months, inviting representatives to meet with station leadership, visit the newsroom, and discuss their concerns.
Representatives from BABJ, NABJ, and CBS are now planning to meet on April 10 to discuss the allegations. An initial meeting set for December 4 was cancelled by WJZ the day before it was to take place. In an email to both organizations, the station wrote that the approach taken “to make inaccurate claims prior to engaging in discussion, and to air your grievances in press releases” suggested they did not share its goal of a “thoughtful, constructive, and future-focused” meeting. Another meeting scheduled for March 25 was cancelled due to widespread airport disruptions and illness.
The dispute is unfolding amid broader shifts in the media industry, including layoffs, consolidation, and the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion. Black journalists have been especially impacted by these changes, raising concerns about editorial independence, public accountability, and the future of local journalism in majority-Black cities like Baltimore.
“I feel as though the [parent company CBS] has bent the knee to the administration,” one former WJZ journalist told the Beat. Since the network was acquired last year, owner David Ellison and “anti-woke” top editor Bari Weiss have reshaped the news organization’s work to appease the Trump administration. “There were reports that the company was ending its DEI efforts, and it felt like we weren’t given the resources we needed.”
In recent layoffs at outlets including Teen Vogue, CBS, NBC, and The Washington Post, Black and Hispanic journalists were disproportionately affected, and teams covering race and ethnicity were dismantled, according to Columbia Journalism Review.
Some members of the WJZ Accountability Coalition remain at the station, others have found work elsewhere, and some say the toll of their experience pushed them to leave corporate media altogether.
In February, BABJ and NABJ convened a joint town hall at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, bringing together journalists and community members to raise awareness about the dispute and the broader crisis facing Black journalists. Organizers said CBS and WJZ were invited to participate, but an empty seat on stage marked their absence.
NABJ President Errin Haines, an award-winning journalist and founder of The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on gender and politics, said the stakes extend beyond individual careers, warning that the loss of Black journalists weakens newsroom coverage and the communities they serve.
“We know the role that Black journalists play in telling the full American story,” Haines said. “When we lose them from these newsrooms — whether through layoffs or because they feel like they can’t stay — we also lose the stories they’re uniquely qualified to tell.”
“We know the role that Black journalists play in telling the full American story,” Haines said. “When we lose them from these newsrooms — whether through layoffs or because they feel like they can’t stay — we also lose the stories they’re uniquely qualified to tell.”
Haines also warned that CBS and WJZ would be disinvited from NABJ’s August convention in Atlanta if they failed to meet the coalition’s demands. “Please don’t show up at our convention if you are mistreating your employees,” said Haines.
Lucas added that conditions inside newsrooms shape the news that reaches the public. “When you’re removing journalists or putting them in environments where they’re dealing with internal issues, that shows up in the work,” he said. “It affects how communities are covered.”
Since leaving WJZ — after, Dingle said, the station placed him on what is known in television as “pay-or-play,” continuing to pay him while keeping him off the air until his contract expired in October 2025 — he has been searching for full-time work while launching The Narrative Co., a media and culture company focused on collaborative storytelling. He said he remains committed to telling authentic stories about the community he came from.
For Dingle, the dispute has become about whether the journalism industry is willing to confront its own failures with the same rigor it brings to covering others.
“We’re in a season of accountability,” he said. “How can we do that as journalists with everyone else, but not our own people when they’re doing wrong?”