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Jennifer Schulze is a longtime Chicago journalist. She’s on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social [ [link removed] ]. Subscribe to her Substack, Indistinct Chatter [ [link removed] ].
Americans once relied on CBS News to deliver fact-based news reporting. No more. The audience is fleeing [ [link removed] ] as the network is subjected to a Trump-friendly makeover [ [link removed] ] at the hands of owner David Ellison and news boss Bari Weiss.
Now, Weiss seems hellbent on replacing some of the news with conservative commentary, sidelining journalists in favor of pundits [ [link removed] ] who share her MAGA-coded political ideology. Case in point, her new Senior Global Affairs Correspondent: Sir Trevor Phillips [ [link removed] ].
Before I get to that, it is important to understand a key difference between a broadcast network like CBS and a cable operation like CNN. Broadcast news programs have limited time to deliver the news. Cable news networks, on the other hand, have hours of air time to fill. Since gathering and reporting news is expensive and having opinions to share is not, cable networks have long filled air time by adding pundit segments. CNN has even built an entire program [ [link removed] ] around clickbait exchanges between pundits.
Because CBS, unlike CNN, has only a handful of newscasts, it has traditionally used that more limited air time to deliver credible, fact-based news reporting by journalists. Not anymore.
During her 10-month tenure, Weiss has hired far more MAGA-coded talking heads [ [link removed] ] than journalists. By my count, there are upwards of 30 new pundits and contributors [ [link removed] ] at CBS News. Most come from conservative media [ [link removed] ] or right-wing think tanks [ [link removed] ] and share Weiss’ political ideology. Some are just quacks [ [link removed] ].
Meanwhile, Weiss has, so far, failed to build up CBS’ strongest asset — its accountability journalism. She’s hired very few journalists (some are woefully unqualified [ [link removed] ]; most are aligned with her politics [ [link removed] ]). But at least 200 journalists have now left CBS through Weiss-instigated firings, layoffs, and buyouts. That includes the multiple 60 Minutes [ [link removed] ] investigative journalists [ [link removed] ] fired in the “Black Thursday” massacre.
You can already see evidence of the content shift when you watch the CBS News. It’s not yet like the nightly food fight on CNN starring MAGA favorite Scott Jennings [ [link removed] ] but more political hot takes are finding a home at CBS. Just last week, the CBS Evening News [ [link removed] ] [ [link removed] ]ran an entire opinion segment questioning why Democrats supported former Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner as long as they did. It was not a news piece reported by a journalist with facts and context. It was a political commentary from anchor Tony Dokoupil, but was not labeled as such. Viewers deserve more transparency than that.
The evening news only has about 22 minutes available for news coverage so it was also a big mistake to waste nearly two minutes on a political opinion piece. I think it’s also concerning that the news anchor who promised viewers he’d be more accountable than the iconic Walter Cronkite [ [link removed] ] changed lanes mid-show. Switching back and forth from news reporting to punditry is at best tricky business and at worst — as when commentary and opinion masquerade as factual news — just propaganda.
That brings us back to Sir Trevor Phillips.
Phillips is many things, but a globetrotting journalist covering international news and dangerous conflicts is not one of them. He is a popular Sunday morning talk show host [ [link removed] ]and an opinion writer [ [link removed] ]for Rupert Murdoch-owned media outlets in the U.K. His long and varied resume includes writing books, a knighthood for his work on human rights, and running an executive search firm — a position he apparently still holds.
Now Phillips has been named “Senior Global Affairs Correspondent” for CBS News, but he’s actually one of the network’s new pundits. The journalists who are actually reporting on global affairs have years of on-the-ground reporting experience in conflict zones and other major worldwide events. That includes the BBC’s Lyse Doucet [ [link removed] ], ABC’s Martha Raddatz [ [link removed] ], NBC’s Richard Engel, [ [link removed] ]CNN’s Matthew Chance [ [link removed] ], or foreign correspondents at CBS News like Holly Williams [ [link removed] ], Mark Phillips, and Imtiaz Tyab.
While Phillips has been doing interviews in a UK studio, these journalists have been covering the Iran war. Before that it was Gaza and Ukraine with high level political summits and other international crises also in the mix. They are not pundits, but fearless news reporters.
If Sir Trevor’s gilded resume includes no actual reporting, what was it that attracted Weiss’s attention? Perhaps it was that time Phillips, a former Labour politician, was suspended from the party for a time for comments he made about British Muslims. [ [link removed] ] Maybe it was Phillips’ involvement in a right-wing think tank [ [link removed] ] or his deep ties to the Murdoch empire. [ [link removed] ] It would certainly fit the pattern if Weiss hired him for his right-coded politics and posh accent. He will join several other Brits recently brought on by Weiss [ [link removed] ]including a Hunter Biden-obsessed tabloid reporter (who I wrote about here). [ [link removed] ]
Last week, Breaker Media [ [link removed] ]reported [ [link removed] ] that Phillips’s first CBS assignment will be for 60 Minutes. You heard that right. The former Labor Party politician turned talk show host is apparently fronting a piece on Donald Trump ally, Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK party.
Worse, the segment was reportedly initially in the hands of CBS foreign correspondent Holly Williams [ [link removed] ]. In true Weiss form, she apparently plucked the Farage story from Williams and gave it to Phillips instead. There’s no public reaction from Williams yet but two [ [link removed] ]60 Minutes [ [link removed] ] producers reportedly balked [ [link removed] ] at the reassignment and are refusing to work with Phillips on the piece.
This is the second time that Weiss has meddled with reporting assignments for 60 Minutes. She did something similar with an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, taking it from correspondent Leslie Stahl and giving it to a reporter of Bibi’s choosing. Like Stahl, Williams is a very experienced journalist with years of consequential work across the globe.
Reassigning Williams’ story to a pundit sends a message to CBS staffers and viewers that traditional news reporting and solid journalism credentials don’t matter. It also reinforces the growing sense that fact-based, accountability journalism is no longer at the core of CBS News. Given that, Sir Trevor might just fit in perfectly.
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