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CBS faces more problems as staff are fired and settlement talks with Trump [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-05-16

Donald Trump suing CBS for a simple interview edit of the interview with Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes is a frivolous lawsuit.

$20 billion is not something CBS can ignore. It's a game changer. Every legal mind says CBS would win the case easily. But Paramount-CBS wants to merge with Skydance and make billions for Paramount-CBS owners. That merger has to be approved by the FCC. Chairman Brendan Carr doesn't like anyone Trump doesn't like.

The head producer of "60 Minutes" quit, saying he felt he could no longer keep telling the truth. Scott Pelley put everyone on notice on the air about the problem.

Now, there is additional news that CBS fired two CBS News bureau chiefs and a senior executive on Wednesday.

Andre Rodriguez was the NYC based North Bureau chief, and Mary Helen Campa was the Southern Region Bureau chief. Two decades of work for CBS didn't seem enough.

Chad Cross of the Beats and Enterprise unit was also fired after 3 years. I can't find out what Beats and Enterprise is. I'm going to assume it means newsbeat.

The sources for the current parts of this story are the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

A source called it "a streamlining move." I don't see it that way. This is still another neutering of the news division. There wasn't anything about their positions being refilled. If the bureaus still exist, that is.

Paramount Global CEO George Cheeks is trying to negotiate a settlement with Trump. Bad idea. Give in to Trump once and it'll be gift that keeps on giving. He won't stop. It will be more costly than ever. People won't go to Paramount or Sundance movies. CBS TV shows' audience will shrink and the merged company, whatever it is called, will be sold at a pittance to bargain hunters.

Shari Redstone, sees the settlement as necessary to getting the merger, which is vehemently opposed by CBS News executives and staffers alike.

Redstone was unhappy with news reporting back in Oct. 2024. She didn't like the coverage of the Israeli-Gaza war and wanted more conservative views. Redstone thought the news was left-leaning at the time. She even sent clips from other outlets to senior CBS officers to show what she wanted. An example was when an Israeli strike on Gaza killed 7 aid workers.

Then, there was the crime of fact-checking Vance during the vice presidential debate with Gov. Tim Walz. The CBS moderators just couldn't let Vance lie about Haitians eating cats and pets in Springfield, Ohio. In September, before the debate, he even admitted on air with Margaret Brennan (one of the VP debate moderators) on "Face the Nation" that he knew it was a lie and would continue telling lies to draw attention to issues. He did the same with Dana Bash on CNN.

Also late last year, staffers were told not to reference Jerusalem as being part of Israel.

Paramount Global began firings last September with newspeople like Jeff Glor, who had been the CBS News anchor from 2017 to 2019. They were aiming to cut staff by 15% to achieve an annual savings of $500 million.

Still another problem is advertisers cutting back due to concerns about the economy.

Paramount Global is planning another round of cuts next month to save still another hundreds of millions of dollars a year. How many people have they got left to do the jobs that 2 or 3 or 4 people were doing before?

CBS News staffers are upset that Paramount is looking to settle when the editing of the Harris interview to show a different part of the answer to the same question is typical of interview editing. Trump is reportedly looking for $100 million to settle the Harris interview suit. Far more that Paramount wants to pay.

I will keep saying a million times to fight Trump and win, and call Brendan Carr's investigation for what it is. A nuisance retribution attack. Paramount does not need to bleed anymore to survive until the merger with Skydance. With all the problems, Skydance could withdraw from the merger and all this would have been for nought.

Paramount wants to settle for $15m to $25m, as did ABC and Meta, respectively.

Still more changes were made to supervise the news department of CBS in January, when co-CEO George Cheeks hired former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky to be executive in charge of vetting stories and checking for bias. Just the job description reads of trying to please Trump, much less Redstone, who is close to Zirinsky.

Zirinsky's hiring angered "60 Minutes" executive producer Bill Owens, and was part of Owens' resignation last month.

Cheeks, however, had pushed for DEI at Paramount with seeing half the casts of unscripted shows be Black or Indigenous people, and a quarter of development budgets to them.

Besides the Harris interview, the FCC has made the DEI efforts part of their investigation. No matter what Paramount-CBS do, it won't be enough. Trump and the FCC will just find one more rock to turn over.

The answer in all the attacks is fight Trump right off the bat. Lawfirms fought and won. ABC paid off Trump, so the FCC went after Disney-ABC for DEI. You know, at the very least, the FCC will find diversity initiatives at Disney's theme parks. Somebody has to make DEI legal again. Strip away this false attack using civil rights as a cudgel. Prove it is not racism.

There are currently 14 federal lawsuits against Trump over DEI being used as a weapon against the plaintiffs. Get one win in those cases and the dominos against Trump will fall.

When it comes to CBS News, Paramount should be standing right behind them in Trump's lawsuit. It's an easy win. But Shari Redstone wants the money and is ready to sell out journalistic integrity for a buck.

That's not what news is supposed to be about.

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