The devolution of CBS News

A network once revered for fact-based reporting is embracing right-wing pseudo-journalism

Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) broadcasting for CBS at the 1968 GOP Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by Ben Martin/Getty Images)

From the pioneering broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow to Walter Cronkite’s trusted voice and Ed Bradley’s impactful reporting, CBS News earned a reputation as one of America’s most trusted news sources. Its flagship program, 60 Minutes, became synonymous with fearless, truth-telling journalism.

More recently, however, things have taken a turn.

In July, CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, paid $16 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit filed by President Trump. In September, CBS News hired a Trump loyalist to serve as its new ombudsman, charged with reviewing news coverage for “bias.”

The most dramatic move came Monday, when Paramount announced that it would hire former New York Times opinion columnist and anti-woke crusader Bari Weiss to be the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. She has no experience in broadcast news. Weiss departed the New York Times in 2020, writing in her resignation letter that the publication had become too left-wing and that she faced harassment for having “centrist” views.

In 2021, Weiss founded The Free Press, a publication that is purportedly committed to “honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence.” In a 2023 column, Weiss suggested the progressive movement “demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual.” In 2024, Weiss claimed that the “political left… makes war on our common history, our common identity as Americans, and fundamentally, on the goodness of the American project.”

Along with hiring Weiss, Paramount purchased The Free Press for a reported $150 million.

In her initial note to CBS News staff, Weiss said that she was committed to producing journalism that was “fair,” “factual,” and “tell[s] the truth plainly.” A Popular Information review of The Free Press’ work, however, reveals that the publication repeatedly distorted the truth to conform to its right-wing ideological agenda.

Falsely accusing UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer of covering up child sex trafficking

In a January 2025 article published by The Free Press, writer Dominic Green accuses UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer of participating in a cover-up of the “grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls.” The accusation, as Green notes, was popularized by Elon Musk on X. Musk alleged that Starmer ignored the crimes because the perpetrators were Muslim. This fits into The Free Press’ preferred narrative that “political correctness” has run amok.

The Free Press article praises Musk for highlighting the issue and echoes his allegations. Green suggests that Starmer, who was director of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from 2008 to 2013, sought to minimize the issue because the “majority of their crimes were committed in cities with a Labour Party–controlled council and a Labour Party MP who needed Muslim votes.”

Green accuses Starmer of “complicity,” saying that as CPS director, he “failed” to bring “major cases to court.” As a result, England is “shamed before the world.” Underneath a picture of Starmer, The Free Press writes that he has “come under fire for his role in an alleged cover-up of a serial rape scandal.”

While the crimes against English girls are real, the allegations against Starmer levied in The Free Press are baseless. As CPS director, Starmer did not cover up the crimes against English girls — he successfully prosecuted them.

Three days before The Free Press article was published, the Financial Times reported that Starmer “began the prosecutions of the Rochdale grooming gang during his final year in post, shortly after the scandal in the Greater Manchester town became the first to come to light.” Further, “Starmer launched an overhaul of the way the CPS investigates sexual abuse to ensure more perpetrators are brought to justice. The reforms also paved the way for historic cases to be reviewed.”

Starmer’s work is praised in a 2013 parliamentary report, highlighted by The Banter, produced by a Conservative government:

We would also like to commend the work of the Director for Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC and the Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North West, Nazir Afzal OBE ... Mr Starmer has striven to improve the treatment of victims of sexual assault within the criminal justice system throughout his term as Director of Public Prosecutions and, when he leaves the Crown Prosecution Service this year, he will be missed. His response should provide a model to the other agencies involved in tackling localised grooming

Green’s piece briefly notes that he “secured some successful convictions,” without reconciling that with allegations that he was complicit in a cover-up. Instead, Green highlights an instance where CPS prosecutors dropped a case in 2009, believing they could not succeed in court. But Green does not mention that the decision was reversed with Starmer’s support.

“The only way we could bring that case was to admit that we had failed these victims when they had first made a complaint in 2008,” Nazir Afzal, the prosecutor who ultimately secured convictions in the case, said. “Keir was 100% behind the decision to publicly admit that we had got it wrong in the past.”

Afzal praised Starmer’s leadership on the issue during his tenure, crediting him for helping him succeed. “Keir left in 2013, the CPS having gone from being dire at doing sex-abuse cases to having the highest conviction rate in our history. That wouldn’t have been possible without the support, resources and the protection I was given by Keir,” Afzal said.

The Free Press article, meanwhile, concludes by accusing Starmer of “covering the party’s backside at the expense of justice for the victims.”

Wrongly accusing the U.N. of inflating civilian casualties in Gaza

A May 2024 article published in The Free Press states that “millions have marched across the world demanding Israel end its ‘genocide’ in Gaza, pointing to the number of civilians killed by the war.” The article, written by Peter Savodnik, claims that the United Nations (U.N.) “now concedes that this number—provided by Hamas—is wildly inaccurate.”

Savodnik’s claim is absolutely false and was directly refuted by U.N. officials.

According to Savodnik, on May 4, the U.N. claimed that around 24,000 civilians had been killed in Gaza. Two days later, Savodnik claims, the U.N. “quietly revised its figures, stating that 50 percent fewer civilians had died.”

But this was not true. Savodnik, along with others on the right, was conflating two different data sets. One is the estimated number of civilian fatalities among “an overall death toll.” The other figures are the civilian fatalities among those “whose identities (such as name and date of birth) have been documented.”

U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq made clear at a press conference that although there are two sets of data maintained, the total number of fatalities “remains unchanged.”

Unfounded claims that the famine declaration in Gaza was based on manipulated data

In an editorial published in August, The Free Press claimed that an international committee had doctored its metrics to declare famine in Gaza. The Free Press editors wrote that the “United Nations-associated body” had “monkeyed with the metrics for its assessment in Gaza.”

As evidence for this claim, the editors link to an opinion column by Seth Mandel in Commentary Magazine, which relies on an article in the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online magazine.

The Washington Free Beacon claims that the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) lowered its standards to issue a “famine classification” for Gaza. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the IPC switched to a less rigorous metric that “has not [been] historically used” for measuring famine: measuring mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) instead of the ratio of height to weight in Gazan children. The article also claims that the IPC moved the threshold for famine to 15% of Gaza’s children experiencing acute malnutrition, down from 30% to “make it easier” to declare famine.

However, the IPC has previously used MUAC to measure famine in other regions, such as Somalia and Sudan. MUAC has been found to be an effective, non-invasive malnutrition measure that can be easier to obtain in difficult conditions because it requires less equipment and training.

Further, the IPC did not lower the famine threshold for Gaza. Instead, the threshold for famine depends on the metric used. When using a weight-height metric, it is 30%, while it is 15% for MUAC. This is because the arm circumference tends to shrink in the later stages of malnutrition. This standard was applied in the reports on Somalia and Sudan.

Distorting data about Muslims in Canada

An article published in The Free Press in December 2024, “The Explosion of Jew-Hate in Trudeau’s Canada,” claims that a study by researcher Robert Brym “found that more than 40 percent of the [Canadian] Muslims surveyed said that suicide bombing targeting Israeli citizens is justified.” But that is not true and is based on a misreading of the data.

The study asked respondents if they agreed with the statement: “There is no justification for Palestinian suicide bombers targeting Israeli civilians.” The study found that 43% of Canadian Muslims agreed with the statement, and therefore believed that the Palestinian suicide bombing of Israeli civilians was not justified. The study found that 30% of Canadian Muslims disagreed.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East wrote a letter to The Free Press, noting the misreporting of the study data and numerous other errors in the article. No corrections were ever made.