CBS News hires Trump loyalist to review news coverage

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

CBS News has hired Kenneth R. Weinstein as its new ombudsman, charged with receiving and evaluating "any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS." He will report directly to Jeff Shell, the president of Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.

Paramount pledged to create the position at CBS News when the Trump administration approved its merger with Skydance, a movie studio and entertainment company. Weinstein, the former president of the Hudson Institute, a right-wing think tank, has no experience producing or overseeing news coverage.

A Popular Information review of his public comments, however, reveals Weinstein has an extensive record of praising President Trump and criticizing Trump's political adversaries.

In a January 2018 appearance on PBS, Weinstein lauded Trump's use of social media, stating it was necessary to counteract the harsh treatment he received from mainstream media organizations. "[H]e is stating [his policies] very directly, very bluntly and getting it around the world instantaneously without the filter of the mainstream media, which has tended to not exactly be the president's best friend," Weinstein said.

In the Summer 2018 edition of the journal Horizons, Weinstein wrote that Trump's 2016 election represented a victory in the "battle to reclaim American patriotism" from "elites." Weinstein praised Trump's "bold rhetoric" and his rejection of "the kind of identity politics that lay at the core of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign." In the same piece, he criticized former President Barack Obama for being "hypocritical" and limiting "freedom of choice and expression in the guise of open-mindedness, thereby engendering a sharp backlash in the United States."

At a May 2018 appearance at the Brookings Institution, Weinstein, who frequently comments on foreign policy issues, said that Trump often "comes up with bold policy options that can change the equation." Weinstein described Trump's foreign policy as "instinctive yet coherent."

More recently, in an October 2024 podcast, Weinstein agreed that his views on foreign policy could be described as "Democrats portray weakness, the Republicans portray strength and the world sees it that way." (He also said that Trump, who calls himself the greatest president of all time and says he deserves the Nobel Prize, "doesn't like excessive… self-congratulation.") In an August 2025 interview, Weinstein described Trump as "tough but fair."

Trump seems to appreciate Weinstein's unflagging support. In 2020, Weinstein was nominated by Trump to be ambassador to Japan. (He was not confirmed.) Weinstein subsequently backed up his words with dollars. In July 2024, he donated $20,000 to Trump 47, an umbrella committee supporting Trump's presidential campaign.

A little more than a year later, Weinstein will hold a top position at CBS News as an "advocate for journalistic integrity."

Paramount's desperate campaign to win Trump's approval

Weinstein's appointment is the result of one of several actions Paramount took to persuade the Trump administration to approve the company’s $8 billion merger with Skydance.

In July, Paramount announced that it reached a $16 million settlement with Trump after he sued the company over a CBS News 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump claimed that the interview, which aired in October 2024, was edited to make Harris look better and constituted “election interference.” (It is standard practice for news organizations to edit interviews for clarity and length.) Despite Trump’s lawsuit being legally baseless, the company agreed to settle.

Last week, CBS News announced that its program “Face the Nation” would be changing its editing policy after facing criticism from the Trump administration. The company stated that it will now only air live or unedited interviews. The change came shortly after Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem targeted the program, claiming that an interview she did with the show was deceptively edited. The edits involved comments that Noem made about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father who was wrongly deported to El Salvador earlier this year and has since returned to the United States, where he now faces deportation again. CBS cut a segment where Noem claimed that Abrego Garcia "solicited nude photos from minors” and abused children. These claims have been denied by Abrego Garcia, are unsubstantiated, and were not part of the criminal charges filed against Abrego Garcia.

In July, late-night host Stephen Colbert announced that CBS would be ending his show next May. Colbert is an outspoken critic of Trump, and had criticized Paramount for settling with Trump just days before the announcement, calling the settlement a “big fat bribe.” In a statement, CBS claimed it was ending the show for financial reasons and that the decision was not related to the show’s content. Trump celebrated the decision, writing on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert' got fired.”

Paramount is also reportedly considering buying Bari Weiss’ The Free Press and eying Weiss for a position at CBS News that would task her with “guiding the editorial direction of the division,” according to Puck. The Free Press is a right-leaning publication that frequently publishes pieces criticizing the “woke” excesses of the left and efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The great capitulation

CBS is not the only major news outlet to capitulate to Trump since he won reelection. In fact, some outlets began capitulating before the 2024 election took place.

In the weeks leading up to the election, Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, who own the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, respectively, killed op-eds at their papers endorsing Harris. Neither owner stopped there.

Just over a month into Trump’s second term, the Washington Post announced that it was revamping its opinion page and would only include opinions that support “personal liberties and free markets.” Bezos elaborated in a note to Washington Post staff, “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” This change led to a drop in subscriptions to the paper and the departure of the Post’s top opinion editor.

At the LA Times, Soon-Shiong faced criticism when an opinion contributor accused editors of reframing a column he wrote lambasting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his confirmation hearings to be more supportive of Kennedy. Soon-Shiong, who is a doctor and medical inventor, posted that Kennedy was the country’s “best chance” to fix the healthcare system and repeatedly encouraged senators to confirm him. Soon-Shiong continued to post in support of Kennedy after his confirmation, praising Kennedy’s courage in one post and saying his tenure as Health and Human Services secretary would be “a transformative time for the nation.”

Reportedly, Soon-Shiong told the LA Times editorial board to “take a break” from writing about Trump. He also implemented an AI “bias meter” on some of the paper’s op-eds.

In December 2024, ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump, agreeing to pay $1 million in legal fees and make a $15 million donation for the construction of Trump’s presidential library. Trump sued ABC after George Stephanopoulos inaccurately said that Trump had been found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll. In fact, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse.

The judge in the case, Lewis A. Kaplan, wrote in a legal filing that the distinction was a legal technicality. “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” Kaplan wrote. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Defamation lawsuits are notoriously difficult for public figures to win due to the higher legal standard they must meet. As a result, the settlement was widely viewed as a way for ABC, and its parent company Disney, to appease Trump before he returned to office.