CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman, 48, has been hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former ABC News colleague.
The suit was filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court by Samira Said, a former ABC News field producer who worked alongside Gutman during his 17-year tenure at the network. Said named Gutman, ABC News, and parent company The Walt Disney Co. As defendants in the action, which comes just as Gutman’s recent fill-in anchoring has helped lift CBS Evening News ratings out of a months-long slump.
The lawsuit centers on two alleged incidents that occurred during assignments several years ago. In the first, Said claims Gutman initiated a conversation rating a female correspondent’s appearance while the two were waiting on a public line. The suit alleges Gutman “initiated a discussion rating a female correspondent’s appearance and reducing her professional standing to a numerical score based on her physical attributes.” Other male crew members allegedly joined in and tried to get Said to participate. She refused and told them the discussion was inappropriate, according to the filing.
The second alleged incident occurred while Said and Gutman were covering a press event for a movie release. The two disagreed about whether they should leave the work site, and Gutman allegedly responded with a sexualized insinuation about Said in front of several coworkers.
“In front of multiple coworkers, Gutman responded by making a sexualized insinuation that Said must have an after-hours date in the city,” the suit said.
Said alleges the comments were demeaning and “reduced [Said’s] professional judgment to a sexualized stereotype.”
The allegations against Gutman are part of a broader wrongful termination lawsuit against ABC. Said, who worked as an ABC News field producer for four years, claims she was wrongfully fired in 2025 after dealing with mental health issues. She accuses ABC of violating California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act by failing to provide accommodations.
Said had been assigned to cover the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where she was required to interview child survivors who had witnessed their classmates being killed. After the assignment, Said told her supervisor she needed a short leave to attend to her health, but was denied, according to the suit. A psychiatrist eventually approved medical leave.
The lawsuit alleges that shortly after the leave began, David Herndon, then head of ABC’s Los Angeles bureau, continued sending Said assignment requests. Said was assigned to cover the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. About three weeks into the assignment, she was sent home after a supervisor observed her physical condition deteriorating, according to the suit. Later that year, Said injured her foot while covering a weather-related story in the area. She reported the injury to supervisors but was denied medical leave after being evaluated by a company doctor, the lawsuit claims.
Said is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, along with attorneys’ fees.
Gutman spent 17 years at ABC News, primarily reporting from Los Angeles, before joining CBS News in January. He was the first high-profile talent hired by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who took over the division in October 2025. In a statement at the time, Weiss said, “Matt Gutman goes there. He brings the audience along with him to whatever story he is covering, and he approaches his work with the qualities we look for in all our journalists: fearlessness, energy and relentlessness.”
CBS Evening News averaged 4.1 million viewers for the week of July 27, according to Nielsen, its best weekly audience in 17 weeks and its first time topping 4 million viewers since late March. Gutman was filling in for vacationing anchor Tony Dokoupil during that ratings period.
The lawsuit comes after Gutman recently revealed that he nearly fell for a sophisticated phone scam. In a July video posted to X, Gutman said a caller claiming to work in his bank’s “fraud protection” department gave a name and badge ID and appeared to know detailed information about his banking. The call was convincing enough that Gutman said he nearly walked into his bank and emptied his account. He realized something was wrong when the caller told him to keep bank employees in the dark.
“This person gave me a name, they gave me a badge ID. They seemed to know so much about me, about my bank account,” he said in the clip.
Gutman has previously faced controversy during his time at ABC News. In September, he generated pushback after calling texts from Tyler Robinson, the assassin who killed conservative advocate Charlie Kirk, “very touching in a way we did not expect.” Gutman later apologized for his choice of words. In 2020, ABC News suspended him for reporting erroneously on air that all four of basketball great Kobe Bryant’s children were on board a helicopter that killed the athlete after it crashed in California. Only Bryant and one daughter were flying in the craft.