Rest in pathetic.
Charlotte Clymer at Charlotte's Web Thoughts:
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.
[...] 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. [...] 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.
Charlotte Clymer sums up See BS News’s slide into the abyss best: “Rest in pathetic.”
See Also:
Brian Tyler Cohen: Bari Weiss Puts the BS in CBS
