James Bednar

CBS News departed the world of journalism earlier this month. It was 98. Born as United Independent Broadcasters, Inc. in Chicago on January 27, 1927, the news organization was once a vanguard of American journalism and played a central role in what many have described as “the American Century.” Three months after it was brought into the world by entertainment manager Arthur Judson, it became the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System after a subsidiary of record label Columbia Records invested in it — and then subsequently sold it within a year to brothers Isaac and Leon Levy and their business partner Jerome Louchheim, who owned local radio affiliate WCAU in Philadelphia. They hired their in-law William S. Paley to lead the network, and he rebranded it to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Mr. Paley poached Paul White from United Press, who was hired as the first news director at CBS and quickly transformed it into a juggernaut of the Fourth Estate. By the late-1930s, CBS Radio had more than a hundred affiliates throughout the country with bureaus in every major American city. Within a short time, the medium of radio went from providing short summaries of newspaper reporting to scooping print outlets on stories and often seeing their original reporting printed by newspapers without attribution. It was during World War II that CBS News vaulted into global visibility. A young Edward R. Murrow delivered live, rooftop reports during the Blitz, a campaign of sustained bombing runs on London by Hitler’s Germany. His on-air descriptions of the carnage brought the war into American living rooms and helped build public opinion against the Third Reich prior to the United States entering the conflict immediately following Pearl Harbor. It was Mr. Murrow and his colleague Bill Shader who were the first reporters to enter the Buchenwald concentration camp only days after it was liberated by the U.S. Army’s 6th Armored Division in April of 1945. Their reporting of the nightmarish state of the camp was soberly underlined by Mr. Murrow: "I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words... If I’ve offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry." CBS Radio earned six Peabody Awards for their news coverage during World War II. During the Second Red Scare in the early-1950s, as McCarthyism metastasized across the American landscape and citizens of all walks of life were cruelly targeted by their government through anti-communist witch hunts, it was CBS News and Mr. Murrow who stood strong against Joe McCarthy and eventually won the day, solely through force of reason and appeal to the American people. For 18 years, as broadcast journalism rapidly grew into the primary source of information for most Americans, it was Walter Cronkite who sat down with the country every night during CBS Evening News and slowly became the national conscience. His honest and steady reporting was iconic—from the horror of the JFK assassination to the unbridled wonder of the Apollo moon landing—earning him the reputation of “the most trusted man in America.” It is Mr. Cronkite who is widely credited with catalyzing a major turning point in public perception regarding the Vietnam War, which had largely been framed as something not unlike what many current reporters would likely reduce to a “culture war,” an unfortunate difference in opinion between equally valid perspectives. Bothsides-ing, if you will. Following his trip to Vietnam in 1968 after the gruesome Tet Offensive, Mr. Cronkite came home and was blunt with American viewers: "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could." The story goes that LBJ watched Mr. Cronkite’s on-air editorial and remarked: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” A month later, he announced he would not seek reelection. It was this consistency of excellence that earned CBS News the nickname of “The Tiffany Network” — mostly for its outstanding quality, a jewel of integrity in broadcast news. And partly because of its color television demonstrations at the former Tiffany & Co. building at 401 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which is now partially the home of an American Eagles Outfitters (don’t get me started on the symbolism). It was in 1968 that the network launched 60 Minutes, an hour-long television news magazine featuring segments that were quite varied in tone: hard-hitting journalism, deep dive investigations, interviews with prominent public figures, and human interest stories. It is no accident that the early years of the post-Watergate era in political media marked a dramatic rise in the popularity of the program. By the conclusion of the 1979-1980 season, 60 Minutes was the highest-rated show on television, nearly 30 million Americans tuning-in weekly to better understand the state of their nation. For two decades, an array of respected journalists—Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Harry Reasoner, Lesley Stahl, Ed Bradley, Steve Croft, and many more—powered a ratings juggernaut that drew bigger television audiences than the most popular sitcoms of the day through the force of clarity, thoroughness, and sobriety in tone. Throughout that time, CBS Evening News began to decline in its rating share with the rise of competing programs on ABC and NBC, yet still commanded a high degree of respect from the American people. The health of CBS News took a turn for the worse last year when Paramount Global—the then-parent company of the network—merged with Skydance Media, which is owned by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, both of whom are close friends of Donald Trump. That merger had been awaiting regulatory approval since before the 2024 election. Meanwhile, Trump had filed a lawsuit against Paramount, alleging that 60 Minutes had inappropriately altered an interview they did with Vice President Harris during the election. There is zero credible evidence to back up this claim. It’s absurd on its face. But because Paramount wanted the merger, they threw 60 Minutes under the bus and agreed to settle the lawsuit brought by Trump, paying him $16 million. After Trump’s election, the merger was approved, and the Ellisons bought The Free Press—the outlet owned by Bari Weiss—for $150M and brought her into the fold to run CBS News. The tenure of Bari Weiss has been quite rocky, to put it mildly. Last month, over the objections of 60 Minutes producers and staff, Weiss spiked a segment on the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. The segment, led by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, had been rigorously vetted by the network’s legal department and privately screened five separate times to solicit internal objections and critiques from the network. As Clare Malone of The New Yorker reports, Weiss had missed all five private screenings, but viewed it on the Thursday evening before it was scheduled to air that Sunday. She emailed suggestions for edits, all of which were accepted. But meanwhile, the Ellisons were actively seeking to purchase Warner Brothers, and Weiss almost certainly realized that a 60 Minutes segment critical of the Trump admin could scuttle approval of the merger. She killed the segment only hours before it wa scheduled to air, claiming it wasn’t yet ready because it lacked comment from administration officials. The decision was widely criticized by the rank-and-file of CBS News, and Ms. Alfonsi wrote a memo to her colleagues that got to the heart of the matter with this line: “In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.” Remarkably, it turns out that Bari Weiss either didn’t know (or forgot to check) that the segment she spiked for American viewers went out in a broadcast package to a Canadian streaming app called Global TV, which distributed the originally intended 60 Minutes show—including the killed segment—to viewers worldwide less than 24 hours after the kerfuffle began. Canadian bootlegs of the segment spread online like wildfire, shared widely with each other by Americans on social media, and thus, Weiss had entirely failed in her censorship attempt. Earlier this month, Tony Dokoupil began his tenure as anchor of CBS Evening News after being handpicked by Weiss, despite not really having a considerable background in hard-hitting broadcast news, much less one viewers would expect for a network’s leading news anchor. Barely more than two weeks in, it is already widely considered a disaster. Dokoupil comes across as awkward, confused, and stridently compliant in honoring the messaging strategy of the Trump administration. He introduced himself with bombastically populist flair, which is curious given that he has enthusiastically settled into the role of shameless mouthpiece for his billionaire benefactors. Viewers appear to be repulsed. Ratings for CBS Evening News are already down more than 20 percent from this time last year, pulling just half of the 25-54 audience enjoyed by ABC and NBC. If Weiss was hoping to transform the network into a propaganda outlet on par with Fox News, her sales pitch has fallen flat with conservative viewers. The all-in gamble has been lost. CBS News is survived by their former colleagues in journalism and the American people. Rest in pathetic. ---- Link to full essay available here for easier sharing: charlotteclymer.substack.com…