How­ev­er they’re spun, the evi­dence to hand says the changes that are about to befall CBS News are not about truth, fair­ness and bet­ter serv­ing the pub­lic. They’re about mak­ing the already rich, rich­er. News cov­er­age, rep­u­ta­tion and tra­di­tion will be the poor rela­tions, at best.

David  Elli­son, the new own­er of CBS, mouthed vague plat­i­tudes about how he wants the news divi­sion to be “fact-based and truth-based”  and  “We believe in being in the truth business.”
NEWS FLASH: That’s what CBS News is, and was long before Ellison’s bil­lion­aire father Lar­ry hooked the deal that let him take it over.
Now he’s in talks to give a lead­er­ship job in CBS News to Bari Weiss, a co-founder  of  “ Free Press”,  which the New York Times described as “a scrap­py online media start-up that was found­ed as a rebuke to tra­di­tion­al news orga­ni­za­tions.”.
Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, that would also open the door for her to sell her present employ­ment out­let to Elli­son for a report­ed 100-mil­lion dollars.
Putting some­one from the under-edit­ed world of polit­i­cal­ly-biased online news in charge of what the Times described as “the country’s quin­tes­sen­tial tra­di­tion­al TV  news orga­ni­za­tion.”, is the jour­nal­ism world equiv­a­lent of lay­ing linoleum over lov­ing­ly pol­ished oak floor­boards, and think­ing you’ve improved the prop­er­ty value.
Worse, per­haps, as  the check and bal­ance in place for what­ev­er she makes of the news divi­sion,  the new own­ers have appoint­ed Ken­neth R Wein­stein, a for­mer head of the right-lean­ing Hud­son Insti­tute think tank, who has no expe­ri­ence over­see­ing news cov­er­age, to review any com­plaints about CBS News coverage.
A CBS News state­ment said: “As ombuds­man, Wein­stein will review edi­to­r­i­al ques­tions and con­cerns from out­side enti­ties and employ­ees.” 

                   NOW, AND THEN       

He sounds like exact­ly what  Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion chair­man , Bren­dan Carr, had in mind when he post­ed on X that “it is time for a change” at the network.
That assess­ment was cel­e­brat­ing Home­land Sec­re­tary Kristi Noem accus­ing  the CBS Sun­day show  “Face the Nation”  of decep­tion in the way it edit­ed an inter­view with her.
 As hap­pened in the 60 Min­utes  deba­cle that put all this in motion, the net­work caved in and said in future “Face”  would only air live inter­views,  or ones pre­re­cord­ed with no cuts or edits.
And lest we for­get, Ms Noem bragged about shoot­ing a 14 month-old pet dog she deemed “untrain­able,” and “less than worthless”.
Let us hope that in the unlike­ly event Ombuds­man Wein­stein feels the need for prece­dent as guid­ance, he takes the trou­ble to look into CBS tra­di­tion and his­to­ry, rather than its imme­di­ate past.
A fine (but unlike­ly to be fol­lowed) exam­ple would be what hap­pened when the South African author­i­ties went after CBS News dur­ing the state of emer­gency imposed to com­bat increas­ing­ly vio­lent oppo­si­tion to apartheid in the late 1980s.
When “pro­fes­sion­al TV cam­eras” were banned from a mass funer­al in Alexan­dra Town­ship for 17 black activists killed by police, we snuck in a small home movie lev­el cam­era, which tech­ni­cal­ly did not fall under the ban­ning order. The tape was smug­gled out through police road­blocks, and hand car­ried the same day on a flight to Nairo­bi for trans­mis­sion. Tech­ni­cal­ly, that did break the state of emer­gency rules, but we were gam­bling it couldn’t be direct­ly blamed on us.
When two sto­ries on the funer­al led the Evening News, the author­i­ties seized it as a chance to intim­i­date the for­eign Press.
Myself, bureau chief Bill Mutschmann and cam­era­man Wim de Vos were issued depor­ta­tion orders, with the implied threat that unless CBS backed off on what the White author­i­ties viewed as our “aggres­sive” report­ing,  the Johan­nes­burg bureau could be closed, effec­tive­ly end­ing the network’s capac­i­ty for on the ground report­ing of what was then  the biggest ongo­ing news sto­ry in the world.
CBS’ reac­tion was to engage one of the best lawyers in the coun­try, and send in then Vice-pres­i­dent David Buks­baum to fight back.
Min­is­ter of Home Affairs Stof­fel Botha insist­ed that CBS reveal the name of the cam­era­man who shot the video.
Buks­baum  informed him that as a mat­ter of jour­nal­is­tic prin­ci­ple,  CBS News did not reveal sources. Then, hit­ting the table to empha­sise each word, he said: “We. Do. Not.”
It was also made clear CBS had no qualms about going to court over the issue.
After two and half days of nego­ti­a­tions, the deal was a mutu­al­ly agreed state­ment that  “more care could have been tak­en in the han­dling of the  video tape.” There was no apol­o­gy or admis­sion of guilt.
Botha then insist­ed on an advance look at how CBS would report the issue.
In a mea­sured, firm tone, Buks­baum said: “Min­is­ter, no one, not even the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, gets to vet what goes on CBS News. If those are your terms, we’ll  take the depor­ta­tion order.”
The South Africans caved.
That epit­o­mised what CBS News was.
I fear for what it is about to become.

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