CBS' new corporate owner has taken a series of concrete steps to address the concerns of the news division's sharpest critics — particularly President Trump and his allies.
In recent days, the network selected a new ombudsman for CBS News with strong conservative credentials. It promised to run full, unedited interviews on a key public affairs show after receiving blowback from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. And it's in talks to bring on a top news executive who believes the mainstream press is reflexively biased.
All of these decisions have come from top officials at Paramount under the new ownership of Skydance Media. And they represent a grand accommodation to Trump by CBS, known for its rich legacy of journalistic touchstones spanning back to the dawn of television news, including Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and 60 Minutes.
Its coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, U.S. astronauts walking on the moon, Watergate and the Tiananmen Square massacre helped to define those events for Americans. In recent years, some of its most prominent correspondents have covered Trump aggressively. And Trump has attacked the network in his public statements.
These latest moves under Skydance follow a $16 million payment by CBS' previous owner to settle a lawsuit Trump brought against the network and regulatory pressure by Trump's chief broadcast regulator against the sale. Even since CBS changed hands, it has not escaped the wrath of the Trump administration. Recently, the White House and Noem lambasted the network over the handling of a recent interview.
Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that the company wants to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery — the owner of Warner Bros. studios, HBO Max and cable news giant CNN. Such grand ambitions would have to pass muster with Trump administration regulators once more. And they would also raise questions about CNN's direction under Skydance, were they to come to pass.
Paramount Global, CBS and CBS News have declined to comment.
Skydance is run by its founder, David Ellison. He's the producer (along with Paramount Pictures) of Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible movie franchise, among other properties. He is also the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, one of the richest people in the world and a vocal backer of President Trump.
Discussions to give Bari Weiss news leadership role
Among the moves being discussed is one to bring a contrarian journalist on board to steer CBS News. Skydance is in talks to pay $100 million or more to acquire the buzzy digital news and opinion startup The Free Press, which has drawn a lot of headlines, paying subscribers, and investors in its 4 1/2 years. Outside analysts tell NPR the valuation appears high — above what the market might price it as being worth — yet is also an indication of Ellison's desire to work with its founder, Bari Weiss.
Weiss' launch of The Free Press in 2021 was nearly pitch-perfect. It played into the backlash against the social progress movement of the previous year that presaged Trump's return to office.
Weiss delivered a blast at what she says is bias in the mainstream media, including at The New York Times, where she was an opinion editor. Among the examples of ensuing coverage: essays focusing on a perceived pro-Palestinian slant in the media's coverage of Israeli military's actions in the Israel-Hamas war and accusations that NPR's reporting has a liberal slant.
She appears unlikely to run CBS News on a day-to-day level or to oversee logistics. Should the deal be consummated, it seems likely she would operate as a senior news executive shaping the strategy and tone of its reporting, helping to ensure its overall coverage is headed in a desired direction.
Yet the very nature of her role has been one of the sticking points in negotiations, according to two people with knowledge; Weiss has eyed the top news post but has never worked in a broadcast news shop. (The two people spoke on condition of anonymity to characterize private negotiations.)
Challenges of streaming age convinced previous owner to sell
Ellison bought Paramount from Shari Redstone, the former controlling owner. She was proud of her family's legacy for decades but had become convinced that her properties' value would decline as they struggled to compete with streaming giants with deeper pockets at Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney.
Redstone also had bristled at some of CBS' coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. She appointed a veteran news executive with whom she was close, Susan Zirinsky, to oversee 60 Minutes and other top shows.
Redstone also was eager to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump last fall over a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The network aired two different excerpts of her response to a question about Gaza — one on 60 Minutes and the other on Face the Nation. Though in sum the two shows presented nearly every word of her response, Trump argued that CBS had sought to obscure what he said was her incoherence on the subject.
As the company pushed closer to a settlement, the executive producer of 60 Minutes and CBS' news and stations president left (though they were replaced by veteran journalists who are well regarded within the network). CBS ultimately paid out to settle Trump's claims.
Under Redstone, CBS also decided to drop the late-night show of Stephen Colbert, who frequently mocks the president. The network cited financial challenges for the late night sector.
A promise to a key regulator to appoint an ombudsman
The Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, reviewed Redstone's sale of the controlling stake in Paramount Global to Ellison because it involved the transfer of the broadcast licenses of 22 local television stations. He approved the deal after the settlement of Trump's lawsuit — but with several conditions. One was the appointment of an ombudsman for CBS News to review complaints about news coverage. (While increasingly rare, several news organizations still have these roles. NPR has a public editor, Kelly McBride, who is a senior vice president at the Poynter Institute, the St. Petersburg, Fla., journalism center.)
Ellison tapped Kenneth Weinstein, the former president and chief executive of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on military and national security matters. In 2020, Trump had nominated Weinstein to be U.S. ambassador to Japan. He received bipartisan support from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but his nomination expired without a full vote by the Senate.
Weinstein has no conventional journalistic background. He served several years on the board that oversaw the federal agency that includes the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other international broadcasters funded by the federal government. Several journalists and public officials say he acted in a nonpartisan way.
Weinstein is to report directly to Paramount President Jeff Shell, who served with him on that board. Weinstein will also report to George Cheeks, who oversees Paramount's TV business. Most news ombudsmen have public-facing elements to his job; it is not clear whether Weinstein will present his findings publicly.
In a statement accompanying the announcement of his appointment at CBS, Weinstein said it was an honor and called the network "one of the most respected journalistic institutions in the world."
"I look forward to supporting the talented team behind its reporting and to stewarding public trust in this critical institution," Weinstein said.
Carr said the ombudsman role would ensure "a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum."
The lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC, Anna Gomez, suggested Weinstein would be a check on the independence of CBS News chief Tom Cibrowski. "The job of this FCC-imposed 'truth' monitor must not be to judge whether independent reporting conforms to this Administration's views and priorities," Gomez posted on social media. "That's a clear violation of the First Amendment and the law."
More promises and more changes
Ellison also pledged in a meeting with Carr prior to the FCC's approval that the network would scrap its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives if the sale went through.
Trump has claimed there is still more — a side deal. He says he will receive $20 million worth of public service announcements for causes dear to him. Paramount and CBS have not confirmed that deal.
The network also unexpectedly announced that its Sunday public affairs show, Face the Nation, would only broadcast unedited interviews presented either live or as if they were broadcast live — no edits. Noem and the White House had complained after it had trimmed several minutes from an extended interview with her.
The full transcript shows, among other things, that CBS excised Noem's allegations that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was known to be an MS-13 gang member and had solicited nude photos from minors.
Those allegations have not been adjudicated in court. Garcia has denied being an MS-13 gang member. He was charged with conspiracy to transport undocumented people and transporting undocumented people, and has denied those charges. Garcia has not been charged with allegedly soliciting nude photos from minors.
The Trump administration, which says it deported Garcia to be incarcerated in El Salvador in an administrative error despite a protective order, now says it intends to transport him to the South African nation of Eswatini. There is a hearing set for federal court next month.
CBS' decision to edit out some of Noem's remarks set off sharp rebukes from Trump's allies. Yet interviews on news networks — including NPR — are often taped and then boiled down to their most relevant and compelling elements.
"Fact-checking in real time is damn hard," says Tom Bettag, a former top executive at CBS News and ABC News. "The subject knows he can filibuster — that you have a limited amount of time and that they can run out the clock. If they do not want to answer the question they can just keep avoiding, avoiding, avoiding."
In 1988, when Bettag was executive producer of the CBS Evening News, he and anchor Dan Rather sought to do an interview with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush during the presidential campaign; they wanted the interview so much that they agreed Rather would question Bush live on the show.
A top Bush campaign consultant, future Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, had arranged the appearance. He was just off camera as Rather asked the vice president about the Iran-Contra scandal.
"We never got an answer," Bettag said. "Bush got in all the punches [at Rather] he wanted, and Roger Ailes was sitting beside Bush just cackling." Rather ended up shouting at Bush; Bettag calls it one of the worst mistakes of his long television news career.
"To make editing a dirty word — the politicians win," Bettag said.
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