Kenneth R. Weinstein is the former president and CEO of the Hudson Institute.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at recent shake-ups at CBS News after a merger between CBS parent company Paramount and Skydance Media.
CBS Brings on a Different Kind of Ombudsman After Recent Missteps
CBS News announced Monday it has hired Kenneth R. Weinstein to serve as an ombudsman, installing a well-known conservative to right the ship after a year in which the network has come under fire for several high-profile mishaps.
Skydance Media had first promised to hire an ombudsman ahead of the FCC approval of a merger between itself and CBS parent company Paramount.
Weinstein, who previously served as president and CEO of the Hudson Institute, a think-tank focused on promoting freedom and free enterprise, will be charged with evaluating any complaints of bias by the network and turning over his findings to Paramount president Jeff Shell and George Cheeks, the company’s head of TV Media.
In the newly created role, Weinstein “will serve as an independent, internal advocate for journalistic integrity and transparency, reviewing concerns raised by employees and viewers, addressing questions about news coverage, and upholding the organization’s longstanding commitment to accuracy and accountability,” according to a Paramount press release.
Weinstein donated roughly $40,000 to Republican and pro-Trump political groups last year, according to federal disclosure forms reviewed by the New York Times. In 2020, Trump nominated him to be ambassador to Japan.
Weinstein said he is “honored to serve as ombudsman for CBS News, one of the most respected institutions in the world.”
“I look forward to supporting the talented team behind its reporting and to stewarding public trust in this critical institution,” he said in a statement.
Weinstein himself commented on one of CBS’s many recent high-profile controversies, writing in a since-deleted tweet that CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil may have “save[d] @CBSNews from utter condemnation” by challenging Ta-Nehisi Coates on his anti-Israel book. The interview sparked widespread backlash amongst CBS’s pro-Palestinian employees and Dokoupil was publicly chastised by network executives and forced to apologize.
Under the Paramount-Skydance merger, David Ellison has taken over as CEO and is looking to promote nonpartisan news and increase accountability.
Not only will CBS News have a newly appointed ombudsman; the network announced last week that Face the Nation will only broadcast live or live-to-tape interviews going forward after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused the show of deceptively editing her recent interview to conceal the truth about about alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The new change also comes after Paramount settled a lawsuit from President Donald Trump over deceptive editing by 60 Minutes earlier this year for $16 million.
Trump took issue with the news program’s airing of a 2024 interview of Kamala Harris, then the Democratic presidential nominee, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to make Harris appear more eloquent in the interview than she actually was. The lawsuit argued the network’s editing choices amounted to “news distortion” and election interference.
CBS agreed to update its editorial policy as part of the settlement. Under the agreement, CBS is now required to “promptly release full, unedited transcripts of future presidential candidates’ interviews.”
And in another move that appears to show the direction the network will take under its new leadership, Paramount is apparently close to closing a major deal with independent journalist Bari Weiss to buy her online publication, the Free Press, and to appoint her to a top editorial position at the network.
Left-leaning news outlets were up in arms over the impending deal. The Huffington Post called Weiss the “polarizing editor of The Free Press” and said the proposal “offers a preview of how Ellison, the son of a top Trump ally, intends to shape CBS News moving forward.”
Salon similarly referred to Weiss as “the polarizing editor and founder of conservative outlet The Free Press” and called her a “controversial figure.”
The Nation warned, “Vile Grifters Are Taking Over Establishment Media.”
“If we lived in a less terrible time and place, Weiss would be dismissed as a crank and a bigot, and never heard from again. But we live in the waking nightmare that is the United States in 2025. So instead, Weiss is being rewarded with a prize that even she must think is kind of wild. That prize? CBS News,” The Nation senior editor Jack Mirkinson wrote.
Headline Fail of the Week
A Washingtonian column argues, “Why Trump Should Not Dine Out in DC.”
“No restaurant wants to end up in the center of a political maelstrom,” writes Jessica Sidman.
The column came in response to the president saying he would consider dining at a D.C. restaurant now that he is working to make the district safer.
“The problem? Pretty much any DC restaurant that the president might visit would immediately find itself in a losing situation,” the column argues.
In deep-blue DC, there are no shortage of restaurateurs who privately (and not-so-privately!) would not want to host Trump. Turning the President away, however, would ignite a firestorm of online hate, irate phone calls, Yelp bombing, and death threats. The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, became a national pariah when it refused to serve then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2018 during Trump’s first term. But that blowback would be nothing compared to spurning Trump himself, particularly since the political temperature is now hotter than a pizza oven.
Trump, though, isn’t likely to go somewhere he’d be turned away, especially given the advance work required by Secret Service. And most restaurants would serve him because that’s just what restaurants do. Still, they would undoubtedly face boycott threats from locals and an onslaught of online and real-life rage.
Media Misses
• The Washington Post issued a correction on a recent piece about the Trump administration’s plans to help rebuild Gaza once the Israel-Hamas war ends, after the article incorrectly claimed that Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza was the result of a “peace agreement.” “Removing Palestinians from Gaza — through persuasion, compensation or force — has been a subject of debate in Israeli politics since Gaza was first wrested from Egyptian control and occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Israeli settlers lived alongside Palestinians there until 2005, when a peace agreement mandated their departure,” The Post wrote in the initial version of the story.
On Tuesday, the article was amended to read, “Israel maintained settlements in Gaza until 2005, when it unilaterally withdrew from the enclave.” A correction now tells readers, “A previous version of this article incorrectly characterized Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. It was a unilateral action by Israel to remove troops and settler communities, not a peace agreement.”
• Ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid is peddling conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt against President Trump in Butler, Pa., last year. She said the media “can’t even ask” questions about the “alleged” assassination attempt.
“He’s got these magical doctors who claimed that he was shot in the ear, but his ear, I guess, grew back,” Reid said. “He had a Dukal bandage on one minute, no bandage the next. We can’t get a medical record from this alleged assassination. He was supposedly shot. We have nothing. We’ve got no — we can’t even ask.”
Fellow former MSNBC host Katie Phang agreed. “Where are the investigative records? One day, he slapped a Maxi Pad on his ear. The next day, the ear is totally fine.”