The past few weeks have brought a torrent of bad news for those who care about CBS News – the home of the legendary Walter Cronkite and a great deal of investigative journalism over many decades.
Most notably, the network’s parent company, Paramount Global, capitulated to the Trump administration, unnecessarily – and wimpily – settling a lawsuit by paying $16m, purportedly for a future presidential library.
Trump had sued over a story on 60 Minutes, the network’s flagship program, claiming it was deceptively edited to favor his then-rival for the presidency, Kamala Harris. After the settlement was announced, Trump crowed that the network had “defrauded the American people” and was desperate to settle; he also claimed that another $20m in advertising and programming was also coming his way.
Days later, another troubling sign. The network decided to dump The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the top-rated show on late-night television, whose host has been relentlessly critical of Trump. Network bosses claimed the move was financial, since the show was losing money. But it wasn’t hard to connect the dots and see this as part of an all-out effort to appease the president.
The Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren called for answers in a Variety op-ed, asking: “Are we sure that this wasn’t part of a wink-wink deal between the president and a giant corporation that needed something from his administration?”
That “something” is federal clearance for an $8bn merger between Paramount and another giant media corporation, Skydance. (The latter company is doing its kowtowing part, promising to “evaluate any complaints of bias” at CBS News, appoint an ombudsman to keep watch, and ensure there are no diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Paramount. The proposed merger got approval on Thursday from the FCC, which means that it’s essentially a done deal.)
Colbert’s on-air commentary on the settlement was brutal: “This kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It’s ‘big, fat bribe’.” Could it be a complete coincidence that The Late Show was canceled three days later?
Amid all this, one positive development this week shone through like a wan blade of light. A new executive producer for 60 Minutes – the top editorial role – got the nod. To the relief of many there, Tanya Simon is no outsider who might have been tapped to make the show more Trump-friendly.
Simon has deep roots at the revered program – a 25-year veteran of 60 Minutes, she is also the daughter of the late CBS correspondent Bob Simon. She has been the acting executive producer since the previous executive producer, Bill Owens, resigned under pressure, saying he felt he no longer had the full editorial independence he had always enjoyed.
Her appointment, of course, doesn’t mean no political pressure will be exerted from corporate bosses above her, who seem to be under Trump’s sway.
“There is great fear about what comes next,” one CBS News staffer told CNN earlier this month. Simon’s appointment offers at least a modest measure of reassurance.
She “understands what makes ‘60 minutes’ tick,” said the news division’s president, Tom Cibrowski, in a memo to staff. She’s also the first woman, in the show’s nearly six-decade history, to be at the helm.
If the choice had been a right-leaning newcomer, it’s a good bet that top quality talent like Scott Pelley – a former chief White House correspondent and a former anchor of the CBS Evening News – would have quickly headed for the door.
As for the future of CBS, once admired enough to be dubbed the Tiffany Network, the outlook is mixed.
“I know that the C in CBS stands for Columbia, but … it ought to be called the Contradiction Broadcasting Network,” wrote Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch.
That’s always been true, he argued, given the bright journalistic legacy of Cronkite and Edward R Murrow along with some ugly chapters in the distant past. That includes the time when – under fire from the FBI director J Edgar Hoover in the late 1940s – the network demanded that all its employees sign a loyalty oath to the US government.
When it comes to integrity, that history of contradiction is bad enough.
Capitulation, though, is far worse. And given recent events, it’s easy to make the case that CBS – or, more accurately, its parent company – deserves that acronym even more.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
