Can CBS Be Saved?

By David M. Friend

I want to thank everyone who read and reacted to last week’s column, A Jew at CBS.  Your responses were intelligent, incisive and overwhelmingly supportive.

It surely has been a rough couple of weeks for CBS News and its head, Wendy McMahon.  There was the Dokoupil fiasco over his tough but legitimate questioning of anti-Israel author Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Then, there was the backlash against 60 Minutes for its misleading editing of a Kamala Harris interview, trying to make her word salad answer less salad-y.  There was another editing incident on Face the Nation with House Speaker Mike Johnson about immigration that changed the meaning of his answer.

McMahon was publicly called out for her handling of the Dokoupil flogging by Shari Redstone, the owner of Paramount, CBS’ parent company.

Yeah, not a good time for Ms. McMahon, any way you slice it.

McMahon was also supposed to meet this past week with her new incoming boss, Jeff Shell.  He’s the guy who’ll be running Paramount when the sale to David Ellison and Skydance is finalized next year.

I can report that Shell and Ellison are aware of the myopic, racially filtered culture at CBS that I outlined last week.

As far as Wendy McMahon is concerned, she had to do something to show that she was on top of a spiraling, out of control situation at CBS News.

So, her media relations department did what it alway does.  It found a sympathetic ear in Joe Flint, the media reporter at the Wall Street Journal, to try to get McMahon some positive press.

Flint was told by a CBS “senior executive” (who I bet is either McMahon or Chris Ender, the Executive VP for Communications), that McMahon is “considering an editorial review to further address issues of fairness in its reporting.”  Flint went on to write “The goal of the review would be to ensure that subjectivity doesn’t seep into reporting.”

I really don’t know how that’s going to work when her standards and practices unit told news staffers not to refer to Jerusalem as being in Israel.  You can’t get any more subjective than that.

Here’s a suggestion for Ms. McMahon.  How about hiring real journalists that pride themselves on being objective and fair, instead of stocking your newsroom with people who pride themselves on being advocates?

How about ceasing to pander to the moral outrages of the cancel cult? How about standing up to your corporate leadership and telling them they’ve imperiled the reputation of CBS News by empowering them?

I was speaking to a former CBS “senior executive” this past week who told me the liberal bias at CBS News runs deep.  That it has been part of the news division’s culture for many years, even before the current Paramount regime came to power.  If you want more proof, just ask Bernard Goldberg what it was like to work at CBS News for 28 years as a conservative.

But that liberalism wasn’t the insidious, career-wrecking wokeism that permeates CBS and other news outlets now.

As I’ve always believed, a newsroom should be a safe place for the open exchange of ideas for news coverage.  The news product is made better with robust, respectful discussion without fear of being ridiculed.  But now, managers walk on eggshells, fearing retribution by the self-anointed guardians of morality, rectitude and social media outrage.  Say something out of line and you’ll be hauled before human resources, the race and culture unit and the DEI department.  You’ll be written up, or worse.  You’ll be marked as someone who isn’t along on the shared journey.

Venture an opinion or story idea that doesn’t pass muster with the mob, and you risk your reputation and career.  You will be made to walk the woke plank to your professional death.

CBS, always big on internal investigations is also, according to Flint, going “to review concerns employees have raised about their personal experiences in the newsroom, including antisemitism, anti-Muslim views, racism and sexism.”

I hope the Jewish employees have the courage to lay it all out for the investigators, because that’s the only way they’ll have a shot at protecting their jobs.

In the twilight of her ownership of Paramount, Shari Redstone is reportedly taking a much more active role criticizing anti-Israel news coverage on CBS.  I welcome that but, it’s too little, too late.

She allowed the people she put into leadership positions to weave inclusion, at its exclusionary worst, into the warp and weft of the CBS culture.

Wendy McMahon is desperately trying to show her new, incoming bosses that she’s the right pilot to pull CBS News out of its tailspin.

But with the progenitors of the current CBS culture like George Cheeks still in the c-suite, no investigation or review will get to the root of the problem.  No positive spin in the Wall Street Journal, will fix it.

It’s going to take a total reassessment of personnel and realignment of the CBS corporate culture by David Ellison and Jeff Shell, to help restore the news division’s prestige and reputation.

At the end of the day, it may be too heavy a lift for a division that loses money and hemorrhaging viewers.  Maybe they’ll just shut the whole thing down.  That would be the ultimate, tragic legacy of the George Cheeks era at CBS.