CBS beyond the meltdown
Three years ago today, The Atlantic published an article titled “Inside the meltdown at CNN,” and the entire media industry turned to gawk and gossip about a leader engulfed by crises.
Now it’s happening at CBS News. “PELLEY NUKES BARI!” is the top link on The Drudge Report this morning. Drudge goes on: “MURDERING ‘60 MINS‘… RIPS NEW PRODUCER… TURMOIL AT CBSNEWS…”
It took a while for CNN to recover from that period of chaos three years ago. It will take CBS a while to recover, too. These blowups are always bad for morale, bad for public perception, bad for the news business writ large.
And this current “60 Minutes” crisis is not just inside baseball. This morning, NBC’s “Today” show devoted a long segment to “GROWING CHAOS AT ‘60 MINUTES.’”
But before I get into the Scott Pelley and Bari Weiss of it all, I want to share what I say when people privately ask me about CBS and parent company Paramount. There’s no avoiding the topic, not with Paramount trying to buy CNN’s parent Warner Bros. Discovery.
So when I’m asked — which is every day — I say CBS is complicated right now. Paramount’s corporate interests make it a lot more complicated. But the journalistic output is strong, and that’s what matters most. I say, judge the programming, not the people.
It’s fair to be skeptical of the changes Weiss and co. are implementing. It’s fair for the press to scrutinize Paramount’s cozy relationship with the Trump administration.
But some of the narratives about CBS News in the David and Larry Ellison era are quite frankly out of control.
CBS News has not gone MAGA despite a flood of progressive claims to that effect. (I suspect that the people who act like Trump owns CBS now don’t watch much CBS. Of course, it doesn’t help that some conservative activists talk like CBS is “theirs” now. I doubt they’re watching, either.)
The CBS newsroom is still doing what newsrooms do, despite the sometimes deafening noise about Weiss and her overhaul of the network news operation.
But there’s a lot of misinformation on social media about what CBS is actually airing and reporting. My humble advice: Watch and read for yourself.
I watched last night’s “Evening News,” and Tony Dokoupil led with Trump’s “retreat” amid backlash to the “anti-weaponization fund.” Dokoupil showed video of January 6 rioters storming the Capitol in his tease. He didn’t shy away from the latest bad news for the president.
In other words, the reality of CBS News does not match many of the perceptions.
Pointing that out is not a defense of Weiss or a dodge of the mini-scandals and self-inflicted wounds that have piled up in the nine months since Ellison hired her. It’s just a statement of fact.
This morning, I reread that CNN “meltdown” story from three years ago. My takeaway: These legacy news organizations are capable of weathering practically any and every storm.
Scott Pelley was not fired overnight, and he did not resign. But it is anyone’s guess what will happen with him next. Some insiders think he wants to be fired. His detractors say he acted like a bully at yesterday’s staff meeting. His supporters — and he has many — say he was just standing up for his colleagues and trying to protect the “60 Minutes” franchise. Now, as Sara Fischer wrote for Axios, “Nick Bilton, the newly installed executive producer of ‘60 Minutes,’ faces a crisis of confidence.” Today is Bilton’s second official day on the job, and he has meetings lined up with staffers, though not Pelley. According to a person with knowledge of the matter, Weiss and Bilton sought out Pelley for a private meeting last week, perhaps trying to avoid yesterday’s eruption. But the longtime correspondent did not take them up on the offer. An audio recording of his remarks quickly leaked to outlets like The New York Times and Status, ensuring his charge that Weiss is “murdering” “60 Minutes” would be widely heard. And now it lingers in the air, unrebutted. Weiss notably did not attend the staff meeting yesterday. According to the NYT, “a CBS executive at the meeting said that Ms. Weiss had been ‘prepared to come, and we asked her not to,’ citing the staff’s ill feelings surrounding the firings.” Weiss did not address the matter on this morning’s editorial call, either. Pelley certainly leaned into the prevailing narratives. He said of Weiss, “The changes that she’s made at the ‘Evening News’ have been catastrophic.” Some Dokoupil allies took exception to that, since the 6:30 ratings are basically the same as a year ago. But Pelley was definitely speaking on behalf of many “60” veterans. Former “60” boss Bill Owens applauded Pelley while accepting a New York Press Club award last night. He said his friends at the newsmagazine “were fired by people who don’t even know what we do. Who don’t actually care. But they did put in a tech columnist to be the next executive producer of 60 Minutes.” I hear Pelley is now away on vacation — which makes sense, given that “60 Minutes” wrapped up Season 58 last month. There is real fear inside CBS about what Season 59 will portend. As for Bilton, a TV news executive source described him to me as a “pain sponge,” invoking that famous phrase from “Succession.” At CNN, we’re covering the CBS pain with regular disclosures about Paramount’s pending acquisition. Analyzing Bilton’s hiring, I told CNN’s Elex Michaelson the other night that “it might be brilliant or it might be a disaster. I don’t think anybody knows, and that’s why there’s so much curiosity about whether this is going to work or not.” Ultimately, I said, viewers will be the ones who decide. |
Views from left and right |
From the right: Writing for Mediaite, Isaac Schorr argued that Pelley’s “embarrassing tantrum proves Bari Weiss’s point.” He also asked, “Just how many Americans would keep their job after such an unprofessional outburst?” Katie Miller also heaped scorn on Pelley yesterday. “ ‘Journalists’ imagine themselves as this savior class that exists on a higher moral plane than the rest of society,” she tweeted. “In reality, 60 Minutes has pushed a biased format for the last decade that fails to evenly inform its viewership in favor of a coastal elite bias. A clean house at 60 Minutes is long overdue.” From the left: Writing for Salon, Sophia Tesfaye asserted that Weiss is “running the Trump playbook at ‘60 Minutes.’ It goes like this: Take an institution that still commands public trust, install loyalists with no relevant experience in positions of authority, fire the people who push back, dress the whole operation in the language of reform — fairness, innovation, a new direction — and you dare anyone to prove that what you’re really doing is building a protection racket.” I know many people, including independent-minded journalists, agreed with this take from longtime TV critic Bill Goodykoontz, who called Pelley’s rant “an overdue battle cry.” Pelley, he wrote, “isn’t going down without a fight.”
And that fight will help determine the future of CBS News. |
Today’s new nonfiction releases |
Jill Biden’s memoir, “View From the East Wing,” is out today, and it has already generated plenty of news. CNN’s Jake Tapper says it’s very difficult to believe many of her assertions in the book; here’s his assessment. Also new today: “Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World” by Eric Metaxas; and ”Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me,” from his daughter, Elizabeth Sordeur Pryor… |
Pentagon closes another door on the press |
“The Defense Department has designated its press office a classified space and banned journalists from accessing it to meet with the public affairs officers who have traditionally answered their questions,” The Washington Post’s Scott Nover scooped yesterday. The Pentagon claims the change was necessary because speechwriters who sometimes handle classified materials now share the office space. But the rule, which comes amid SecDef Pete Hegseth’s broader crackdown on the Pentagon press corps, will restrict journalists’ access to “a space they have for years been able to walk freely,” Nover wrote — the latest inch-by-inch contraction of reporters’ ability to cover the military from inside its own HQ. >> “Every door Pete Hegseth closes to reporters is a door he closes to public accountability,” Biden-era Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher told me. “That’s not strength, it’s government choosing secrecy over scrutiny. This move is not going to stop reporters from doing their jobs, it’s just going to make it harder for his team to do theirs.” |
Kash Patel’s girlfriend sues MS NOW |
”Kash Patel’s girlfriend is suing MS NOW over a report that she abused federal resources as a result of her relationship with the FBI director,” TNR’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling reports. Alexis Wilkins alleges in the suit that MS NOW “knowingly or recklessly” published false claims about her in a December article by Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian that cited anonymous sources claiming Patel had ordered an FBI detail to act as designated drivers for Wilkins’s friend. “We stand firmly behind MS NOW’s reporting,” network president Rebecca Kutler said in a statement. “As a general matter of practice, we don’t comment on ongoing legal matters.” |
Glamour becomes a shopping portal |
“For nearly 90 years, Glamour magazine served fashion, beauty and relationship fare with some award-winning journalism,” NYT’s Sapna Maheshwari writes. “But that era of Glamour appears to be over.” A “skeleton crew” left at the magazine after recent layoffs “will now be focused largely on shopping posts,” with the goal “to earn commissions when readers click links to shops like Amazon and Nordstrom to make a purchase,” Maheshwari reports. The shift, she says, represents “one of the clearest examples of the waning reign of women’s magazines…” |
>> Podcasts hosted by Conan O’Brien and Trevor Noah, among others, “will soon be available to stream on Tubi as part of a new deal with SiriusXM.” (THR) >> Congress has asked NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to testify on June 10 “about the league’s broadcast contracts and whether they are harming American consumers.” (ESPN) >> Yesterday in France, NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger “warned that AI companies were making choices that could lead to ‘a great deal of unnecessary harm’ to the news business and the public’s access to reliable sources,” Corbin Bolies reports. (Variety) >> “The New Yorker is launching a new daily puzzle game: Catalogues.” (The Verge) |
A new FIRE hire and podcast |
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has hired legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen as a senior fellow and is presenting his new weekly podcast, “The Blessings of Liberty: Conversations on the Constitution, History, and the American Idea.” The show’s first episode, which drops today, features a sitdown with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Listen here… |
>> “Florida is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging they know ChatGPT is not safe, especially for minors,” making it the first state “to sue OpenAI over the alleged dangers of its product,” Hadas Gold reports. (CNN) >> “Meta unveiled new safety features on Tuesday to limit harmful content shown to teenagers on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, its first major policy change since the company was found liable in March for harming a young woman with the design of its platforms,” Eli Tan reports. (NYT) >> “Anthropic on Monday announced that it has filed confidential IPO papers” with the SEC, Dan Primack reports. (Axios) >> “As its traffic continues to climb, alternative search engine DuckDuckGo is leaning into anti-AI sentiment” by allowing users to set a no-AI search experience as their default, Sarah Perez reports. (TechCrunch) |