• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

"Newsroom culture clash" at CBS News

Only reason I even considered asking is because CBS was her baby and she had a personal attachment to it
No, you misunderstand. Sharri was Sumner's daughter. Sumner assembled the assets that eventually (through a buttload of corporate shenanigans) became his empire, under the Paramount umbrella. He (despite a buttload of deals with the Devil) eventually died. Sharri (after a buttload of battles to gain control of Sumner's estate away from lawyers, executives and alleged gold diggers) finally determined that she should sell Paramount for whatever it was still worth. While all these battles were going on, Sharri had also developed a case of thyroid (IIRC) cancer, so her aspirations may have been tempered by the new harsh reality of her medical situation.
 
Only reason I even considered asking is because CBS was her baby and she had a personal attachment to it
I think she knew who she was handing it off to. I think she was upset about some of the editorial decisions being too "left" while she was there, so think she and Ellison were pretty similar.
 
Did anyone from CBS (Ellison, Bari Weiss) catch the Golden Globes tonight? If so, yikes!
The "see" BS News was pretty funny. I think they're used to it, given other Paramount shows poked fun at them (South Park, Stewart, Colbert.) Kind of like how Fox cartoons on Sunday have always made fun of Fox.
 

Here we go with Paramount suing WB over the proposed deal. Yes we have to watch out for this one in why CBS is the way it is now. It’s another sign that it’s not just Bari Weiss that’s making the final decision at CBS News it’s also because of David and Larry Ellison’s role as the leaders at Paramount.


Paramount Skydance’s hostile takeover effort of Warner Bros. Discovery has taken a new legal turn.

David Ellison‘s Paramount Skydance on Monday sued Warner Bros. Discovery, seeking to force WBD to disclose financial details of its $83 billion deal with Netflix. Paramount also officially announced plans to launch a proxy fight for WBD: The company said it will nominate a slate of directors “who, in accordance with their fiduciary duties, will exercise WBD’s right under the Netflix Agreement to engage on Paramount’s offer and enter into a transaction with Paramount.”The litigation comes after the board of Warner Bros. Discovery rejected Paramount’s latest $30/share all-cash bid for WBD in its entirety — the eighth offer put forward by Ellison with backers including his wealthy father, Larry Ellison.



And yes here is the Trump Administration response to the WB Netflix deal.
 
From Brian Stelter's "Reliable Sources" newsletter in a special Sunday edition (bolded copy is Stelter's---I haven't edited or altered in any way):

Nearly a month has passed since Bari Weiss made the extraordinary decision to hold Sharyn Alfonsi's "60 Minutes" story about Venezuelan men deported by the US to a hellish prison in El Salvador. "I look forward to airing this important piece when it's ready," Weiss said.

Evidently, it's ready now. The "Inside CECOT" report is slated to air tonight, according to sources at CBS.

It's still not 100% official – and CBS News PR has not sent out any listings for the broadcast – but the finishing touches are being made this morning, the sources said.

The process to get to this point has been exasperating. After all, the other people involved in the production thought the piece was done before Christmas.

As Alfonsi wrote in her Dec. 21 internal memo claiming "corporate censorship," the piece had been fact-checked and legally vetted; it had even been shipped off to the Canadian network that re-airs "60 Minutes," which is how a bootlegged copy got online, further embarrassing CBS.

That Canadian copy also means media critics will be able to compare the original report to the Weiss-approved version that airs tonight.

Weiss detractors at CBS say she didn't realize that shelving the CECOT piece would be a big deal, a direct reflection of her TV inexperience, given that the piece had already been announced to the world. Those detractors wonder whether Paramount's political calculations and President Trump's pressures are the real explanations for what's going on.

Weiss allies reject that, saying no journalist should object to her call for "more reporting" that would strengthen the story. They blame Alfonsi — whose contract is up in just a few months — for inflaming the situation and being overly stubborn.

Alfonsi was certainly reluctant to make changes to the original report. But on Thursday, she was tasked with interviewing a Trump official, such as Kristi Noem orTom Homan.

Weiss said she would personally book an interview, two sources said. So "60 Minutes" producers flew to DC from New York, and Alfonsi flew in from Texas. But the promised interview did not materialize. Everyone went home empty-handed.

I get where Weiss was coming from. She was trying to ensure that CBS had exhausted every avenue for comment from the Trump admin.

But Alfonsi had warned about this in her December memo: "Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient."

I heard about the DC trip when I asked around about the status of "Inside CECOT" last Thursday night. I was told in no uncertain terms that the piece was not airing this Sunday. "They keep making excuses" to hold the story, a person supporting Alfonsi said.

Others dispute that. On Friday morning, two other sources said management was prioritizing a more timely story about ICE and Minneapolis for this Sunday's broadcast. I was about to report all of this in Friday morning's newsletter when I got a call saying that something had changed. "Inside CECOT" was back in play for Sunday.

By Friday evening, observers knew something was up because PR hadn't sent out listings for Sunday's show. I'm sure more of the backstory will come out in due time. But at this moment, at least, the story is expected to air tonight.
 

If it airs tonight, there will be some who will complain that it didn't benefit from a strong football lead in, and that the majority of broadcast viewers were watching the NFC playoffs on NBC.
 
I think the point all along was it air it when they knew a mass audience wouldn’t be watching. Heck, they’re even doing a piece right now on ICE in Minnesota
 

If it airs tonight, there will be some who will complain that it didn't benefit from a strong football lead in, and that the majority of broadcast viewers were watching the NFC playoffs on NBC.
Did anyone say what was added to this story in the last month?
 
Holy bleep I can’t believe what I already saw this episode and the actual controversial piece on Venezuela hasn’t even aired yet. The ICE segment is certainly something.
 
Rick Ellis at AllYourScreens has a very helpful guide to the changes to the CECOT story:

Essential pull-quote:

The disputed segment finally aired without any prior public notice on Sunday, January 18th and it's notable that the only changes to the story was a new opening narration, and the addition of a lengthy coda from Alfonsi.

Here is a complete transcript of the new piece, with additions highlighted in bold.

Everyone can judge for themselves whether the changes helped the segment, but my reaction is that while nothing that was added is inaccurate, it feels like an attempt to muddy the waters. It's as if a local news station does a piece about your house being robbed, but along with the details of the crime includes a history of the neighborhood you live in and what you had for breakfast the day of the robbery.

 
The piece aired; the visuals still, to me, are what gives the story its impact. The script is important, too, though I still feel that it pulled a punch or two. It was pretty moderate to start with.

One failure in the new script, in my opinion, was in the appended description of Lozada's tattoos:

Neither of the two detainees in our story has been convicted of any crime in the U.S. Nine days ago, DHS sent 60 Minutes a photo of William Lozado's (sic) left arm, with a swastika tattoo. In an interview in November, this is what his arm looked like. He told (us) that he got the offensive tattoo at 15 and didn't know what it meant. He claimed he regretted it and got it changed just before the U.S. sent him to CECOT.

At that point, I believe, Alfonsi should have reiterated a statement earlier in the piece:

But criminologists who study gangs say tattoos are not a reliable way to identify Venezuelan gang members because, unlike some Central American gangs, such as MS-13, Tren de Aragua does not use tattoos to signal membership.

Instead, the counterpoint was:

Five gang experts told us that swastikas and "666," another tattoo on Lozada's arm, have no connection to the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua,

In other words, DHS was deflecting and repeating previously discredited attempts at justification. The quoted sentence sort of called that out, but in an isolated way rather than the stronger, more systematic statement that was in the original part of the piece. It became more of a "he said, they said" kind of interaction, rather than faulting one of the claimed sweeping justifications for sending these people to CECOT.

I saw the piece Sunday night, but had not caught that particular subtlety until now, so thank you for pointing us to that transcript.

The really hard-hitting piece, though, was the lead story on Minneapolis. No American city should have to go through that. The pictures and the interviews told the story; the script was almost incidental at times.
 
The really hard-hitting piece, though, was the lead story on Minneapolis. No American city should have to go through that. The pictures and the interviews told the story; the script was almost incidental at times.

The main reason DHS is there is because some right wing YouTube guy posted a video, and the government believed it. There was no factual proof in the video, no real evidence. But it was good enough for the government to send troops. Meanwhile, they say anything CBS says is fake news. They don't believe the governor, the mayor, or the chief of police. Just a YouTuber.


Meanwhile, CBS is being taken to task because they're not like Walter Cronkite.
 
The really hard-hitting piece, though, was the lead story on Minneapolis. No American city should have to go through that. The pictures and the interviews told the story;

The mark of good TV journalism. My goal when I did it was to only narrate when necessary---when something other than the word or the soundbite was needed to impart information. The less my voice or face in a standup was in that minute-thirty, the better. I think I actually got it below 20 seconds on the really good days.
 


Back
Top Bottom