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Bari Weiss & co put the BS in CBS

By Brian Tyler Cohen, June 4, 2026

NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 07: Journalist Scott Pelley speaks onstage at the annual Freedom Award Benefit hosted by the International Rescue Committee at The Waldorf-Astoria on November 7, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano / Getty Images for IRC)

This administration’s assault on the media has been relentless. I’d like to say it’s also shocking in the sheer scale of it, but honestly, I’m not surprised. Since Day One of Trump’s second term, he’s been demanding that media companies pay him tens of millions of dollars (Paramount, ABC, Disney), and demanding the firing of late-night hosts who hurt his feelings. These were all red flags. But Scott Pelley’s firing from “60 Minutes” this week is the one that stopped me cold.

Pelley was terminated Tuesday after confronting new executive producer Nick Bilton — a man with, in Pelley’s words, “slender” qualifications for the job — about the recent firings of longtime “60 Minutes” producers. When Pelley met with Bari Weiss and Bilton and asked for answers, they stonewalled him for ten minutes. He was fired the next day. Bilton’s termination letter claimed Pelley had “hijacked” a staff meeting. Pelley called Weiss’ public account of their falling out “disingenuous.”

This is what the end of an institution looks like. Weiss was installed at CBS News as a compliant mouthpiece for the Trump-allied Ellisons, who bought Paramount and now need government approval for a merger that would also hand them control of CNN. Government collaborators are on the verge of controlling a massive share of American news, and they’re pushing out the journalists who won’t play along. First, Anderson Cooper walked away, then came the firings of Tanya Simon, Cecilia Vega, Sharyn Alfonsi and now Pelley. The institutional knowledge lost in the brain drain will irreparably damage an American institution. 

I wrote about this in my book, “The Day After,” putting it in the full historical context it deserves. This is an exclusive excerpt. 

Under Trump’s second coming, the Foxification of the media has accelerated. Media companies are not just acquiescing to Trump’s coercion; they are actively turning themselves into a pale imitation of a Roger Ailes creation.

The leader of the pack is Skydance Media, which in August 2025 bought Paramount in an $8 billion deal that includes the movie studios, the CBS broadcast network, and Paramount’s cable channels such as Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. The deal sailed through the FCC approval process because Brendan Carr had already shaken down his targets.

In particular, he was ready to take his metaphorical baseball bat to CBS News because of a discrepancy between two edits of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign. The difference between the two interviews was microscopic. But it was all Trump needed to claim that he’d been the victim of a great media conspiracy. Even less than the ABC News error, the CBS News edit was barely worthy of a clarification, never mind a correction. The slim pickings didn’t deter Trump from filing a $20 billion lawsuit — that’s billion with a b — against CBS and Paramount in October 2024.

Continue/Read Original Article: Bari Weiss & co put the BS in CBS – Democracy Docket