Good morning from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Here's the latest on "60 Minutes," Kaitlan Collins, Tony Dokoupil, Elizabeth Warren, Bill Ackman, Katie Drummond, YouTube and more... |
With a shellshocked staff and several open correspondent offices, Nick Bilton is trying to find a way forward for "60 Minutes."
The past week of dreadful headlines has shown that many people doubt Bilton and Bari Weiss can uphold the newsmagazine's reputation. Some believe that's by design — that the show has been poisoned on purpose. Scott Pelley sure thinks so.
A CBS spokesperson rebutted that in a new statement yesterday. But the real statement will come in September when the new season of "60" premieres.
"We're acutely aware that the premiere has to be a banger," a well-placed CBS source remarked to me last night.
Right now, it remains unclear whether the three remaining correspondents — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim — will return for Season 59. The CBS News management team is working hard to convince them to stay.
As Status first reported, the trio met for more than an hour yesterday to talk through everything that's happened since last Thursday, when Tanya Simon and other top producers were ousted along with Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.
Pelley, Alfonsi and Vega have all levied charges of editorial interference by CBS bosses. So the remaining correspondents want and need assurances.
"There is no political interference at CBS News, not from ownership, not from Bari Weiss,” a CBS spokesperson said. “The only 'interference' is the normal back and forth between editor and correspondent that happens in every newsroom.”
Behind the scenes, I'm told that Bilton has been holding back-to-back meetings with correspondents and producers, acknowledging the awful state of affairs at the show and committing to turning things around.
A very optimistic source told me it's "full speed ahead" at the show. It basically has to be; the Season 59 premiere date is September 13. (Last year, the premiere date was September 28, but it's two weeks earlier this year owing to the NFL schedule.)
Veterans of the show — who know what it takes to produce three mini-documentaries a week — are skeptical, to say the least. "It seems almost impossible for me to imagine what kind of a show they can put on in September," former "60" correspondent Steve Kroft told NYMag's Michael Calderone in this new interview.
But someone's gotta imagine it. So producers are brainstorming investigations for the forthcoming season. Agents are pitching clients for the open correspondent roles. Editors are getting back to work on the summertime episodes that feature repurposed stories from last season. (It's unclear if any of Pelley's stories will re-air.)
Staffers might be wondering what the new boss wants. So I think this is an important bit of reporting: Bilton has welcomed story pitches about President Trump and the Trump administration, and several such stories are in the early stages of development for Season 59, two of the sources said.
"Bari and Bilton have something to prove," Alex Weprin remarked in this new THR dialogue about the "60" reboot.
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Varying views from inside CBS |
Deadline's Dominic Patten surveyed attitudes inside CBS for this piece, and found that many "fault Weiss and her new-ish team for their handling of the situation."
He also noted, however, that there is a "contingent inside CBS News and the overall network that views some of the changes Weiss has instigated as long overdue for a 21st century media organization. 'People at CBS News, both talent and staff, are not big fans of 60 being so siloed,' we heard. 'They believe it needs to be integrated into the larger newsroom.'"
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How CBS covered the firing... |
Last night, the "CBS Evening News" featured a reported piece on Pelley's firing, with senior correspondent Jim Axelrod highlighting Pelley's 37-year tenure and recounting "a tumultuous three days for CBS News," including the back-and-forths between Pelley, Weiss and Bilton.
After that, Tony Dokoupil paid tribute to Pelley, calling him "a man from another era" who "valued truth at all costs, and always kept alive the memory of colleagues killed in the field." He concluded: "Scott, from all of us, thank you." Watch the full segment here.
>> "Credit where credit's due," Zeteo's Justin Baragona, a frequent critic of Weiss-era CBS, wrote. "CBS Evening News ran a fair and transparent story."
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Dems push for foreign ownership review |
"Sen. Elizabeth Warren and three other Democratic lawmakers again are pressing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to conduct a foreign ownership review of Paramount‘s proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery," Deadline's Ted Johnson writes, describing a new letter that will most likely be ignored by Bessent. "Such a review — via the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which Bessent chairs — would add an additional regulatory hurdle for the transaction."
Speaking of the Paramount-WBD deal...
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Trump's pressure campaign against CNN continues |
Last night, a top editor at another outlet asked me whether there's any indication that the president is privately pressuring the Ellisons to clean house at CNN, assuming Paramount seals the WBD deal. My response: The pressure is happening right in front of our faces.
Yesterday in the Oval Office, after The Daily Caller's Reagan Reese asked Trump about his widely detested "anti-weaponization" fund, Trump pivoted to... attacking CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who was standing near Reese.
When Collins pressed for answers, he told her to "be quiet," adding, "You should be ashamed of yourself. You used to be a conservative. She used to be a conservative from Alabama. Can you believe it?"
"I'm still from Alabama, sir," Collins said.
"But CNN, in particular CNN, does such false reporting," Trump went on, "but now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it out. I doubt it. It's hard to straighten garbage out."
That's the president's message to Paramount CEO David Ellison, right there, live from the Oval Office. It's as if the president is saying to Paramount, "I doubt you'll do anything. Prove me wrong."
But the reporting continues, unabated and unconstrained. Collins led "The Source" last night by saying Trump's defense of the fund "has only intensified what seems to be shaping up to be a pretty big intraparty fight…"
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Inappropriate and entirely predictable |
Trump also "used sexist tropes" while criticizing Collins, "the latest in a long string of incidents in which the president has crudely attacked female journalists," Josh Marcus wrote for The Independent.
It was completely inappropriate, completely unbecoming of the presidency and completely predictable from Trump, all at the same time.
Anderson Cooper played the clip and reacted to it this way last night: "That’s the president of the United States, a nearly 80-year-old man who has no problem commenting on her physical appearance and telling her she needs to smile. That doesn't happen to men. No one's ever said that to me in an office setting. She was there like every other journalist doing her job, standing around with a bunch of non-smiling men, by the way, all behind her."
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Stars and Stripes board members sue Pentagon |
Two advisory board members of Stars and Stripes have sued the Pentagon, "alleging that an effort to impose new restrictions on the paper was an act of illegal censorship," WaPo's Scott Nover and Liam Scott reported yesterday.
"Unlawfully censoring 'the soldiers' paper' is an insult to the dedicated members of the armed forces and an attack on the freedom of speech — a foundational Constitutional principle for which those brave service people dedicate their lives," Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, the organization repping the plaintiffs, said.
>> In a statement, Stars and Stripes said it has a "long-standing mission to provide independent journalism to the military community, and that independence is fundamental to our credibility and our purpose."
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Canada's streaming concession? |
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney "is intervening to roll back a rule that would have forced U.S. streaming giants to spend billions of dollars on Canadian television, a decision critics cast as Ottawa's latest concession in President Donald Trump's trade war with Canada," Politico's Mickey Djuric reports. Here are all the details...
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YouTube working to integrate publisher paywalls |
YouTube has long been a headache for news publishers: a massive video platform where audiences expect everything to be free. But that's changing, because "YouTube is working on integrating its platform with publisher paywalls, a move that could fundamentally reshape the news industry's relationship to the traditionally free-to-air video streamer," Bron Maher reports for A Media Operator.
YouTube's Europe VP,
Pedro Pina, said that "a paywall that has a conversation between YouTube and the current paywall of publishers is something that has not yet been developed, but we have product and engineers working on it." He added that publishers, including France's
Le Monde, have "pushed us to start developing that solution" and he expects it to be "happening very soon," per Maher...
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WIRED is putting its podcasts on the radio |
Liam Reilly writes: WIRED is launching a new weekly, hour-long show on KQED's radio network in California. Titled "Uncanny Valley," the show will be hosted by global editorial director Katie Drummond. The Saturday 7 p.m. PT broadcast "will feature edited highlights from that week's episodes of WIRED's flagship podcast of the same name, combining segments from Katie's Big Interview series" with clips from the news show hosted by top editors Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer and Leah Feiger, the outlet says...
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>> "The Minnesota Star Tribune will cut its workforce by 15% through buyouts and layoffs." (Star Tribune)
>> "NPR is finalizing a new model for calculating stations' membership dues that also offers options for them to save money." (Current)
>> "Fox One is rolling out new product features and enhancements as it prepares for one of its biggest stress tests since launching last year: the 2026 FIFA World Cup," Lucas Manfredi writes. (TheWrap)
>> Recently retired quarterback Russell Wilson "is joining CBS Sports and 'The NFL Today.'" (The Athletic)
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>> "Meta lost its fight on Wednesday against the EU's labelling of its Messenger app as a powerful 'gatekeeper', which places obligations on tech companies with significant influence," Foo Yun Chee and Inti Landauro write. (Reuters)
>> "Peptide companies have been doing AI-engine optimization by spamming the biohackers subreddit to manipulate ChatGPT and Google," Jason Koebler reports. (404 Media)
>> I'm intrigued by this: Hasbro has launched Sixth Wall, "a new artificial-intelligence studio aiming to bring the toymaker's cast of characters into the new technological era." (WSJ)
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'Backrooms' crosses the $100M mark |
Kane Parson's "Backrooms" crossed $100 million at the domestic box office on Wednesday, "becoming A24's first movie ever to do so, and their highest grossing movie stateside," surpassing "Marty Supreme," Deadline's Anthony D'Alessandro reports.
>> As Tinseltown finds itself abuzz with talk of YouTube filmmakers, Business Insider's Lucia Moses lists 16 creators "Hollywood could bet on next after the success of 'Backrooms' and 'Obsession.'"
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Post-Colbert ratings watch |
"Late night's post-Colbert map is still being drawn, but ratings numbers for the first real night of late night's new normal put Jimmy Kimmel well out in front," Jed Rosenzweig reports over at LateNighter. On Monday, "Kimmel dominated the hour with an average of 2.185 million total viewers" while CBS "saw a steep drop-off from its year-ago performance..."
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A few more Hollywood headlines |
>> "Bill Ackman is looking to sell his stake in Universal Music Group," just days after they rejected his takeover bid. (Bloomberg)
>> Amazon's Prime Video "has released its first weekly list of the top original series and films on the service worldwide," joining "Netflix in publicly releasing global top 10 lists each week," Rick Porter writes. (THR)
>> "Vasana Montgomery, the 25-year-old 'Love Island USA' Season 8 contestant that was dismissed for using the n-word in social media videos, issued a formal apology on Wednesday." (TheWrap)
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