CBS News, the news division of the television and radio broadcaster CBS, has faced several notable controversies throughout its history. This includes the resignation of CBS News president Fred Friendly in 1966 to protest against Vietnam War coverage, the 2004 Killian documents controversy involving Dan Rather presenting improperly verified documents, accusations of liberal bias and plagiarism, and several instances of misrepresented or erroneously attributed footage.

In 1964, Rep. Jimmy Utt (R-Cal.) filed a libel suit against CBS regarding a CBS Reports "Case History of a Rumor" program. He claimed the defendants had "'entrapped' him into giving a television interview that turned out to be a 'cross examination' by Roger Mudd, who acted as 'prosecutor, judge, and jury.'" The case was dismissed. Utt died in office in 1970 and was succeeded by John G. Schmitz.

On February 15, 1966, CBS News president Fred Friendly resigned in protest after the network declined to show hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the expanding Vietnam War in favor of reruns of I Love Lucy. The decision, made by the network's vice president of broadcasting, John M. Schneider, specifically related to the testimony of George F. Kennan not being shown, in contrast to NBC News, which was showing it live.

In 1971, the FCC and the House Commerce Committee issued reports claiming that CBS News financially subsidized Project Nassau, a planned 1966 invasion of Haiti intended to overthrow then-dictator François Duvalier; CBS News allegedly became involved in the plot in order to shoot the invasion for a television documentary. However, the participants in the invasion were arrested by the FBI before it could be carried out. In a deposition, Atlanta Journal reporter Tom Dunkin claimed that Jay McMullen, a CBS producer, told him that he had "spent a lot of time and money on this project and had nothing to show for it." CBS was denounced by Vice President Spiro Agnew, who accused the network of disseminating "self-serving propaganda".

In his 2001 book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg extensively criticized Dan Rather's management of CBS News and what he claimed was Rather's combative efforts to skew the network's coverage.

On September 8, 2004, two months before the 2004 presidential election, 60 Minutes II broadcast a report by Dan Rather claiming that a series of memos had surfaced criticizing President George W. Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard, purportedly discovered in the personnel files of Bush's then-commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. However, independent analysis of the documents in question—particularly analysis of their anachronistic typographic conventions—strongly suggested that they were actually forgeries.

Despite initially defending the authenticity of the documents, Rather and CBS eventually admitted that they were misled about how they were obtained; Rather, however, has continued to insist that the documents weren't conclusively proved to be forged. After an internal investigation, CBS dismissed four producers and allegedly hastened Rather's retirement as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS in 2007, claiming that the network and its management had made him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. In 2009, Rather's lawsuit was dismissed.

On the April 4, 2007, broadcast of the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric gave a one-minute commentary about the importance of reading. However, it was later discovered that Couric's commentary was substantially lifted from a column by Jeffrey Zaslow in The Wall Street Journal. Despite the personal flavor of the piece—with Couric saying how she still remembered receiving her first library card—it was later determined that a producer had written the commentary instead of Couric, and that she had plagiarized from Zaslow's column. CBS quickly fired the producer and promised changes to its procedures.