There are editorial decisions that get made and there are editorial decisions that get unmade after the White House calls the network, and CBS News airing President Donald Trump’s primetime election integrity address last Thursday is the second kind, with staffers having been told the speech would only appear on the network’s streaming platform before a last-minute reversal put it on broadcast television, which is the sequence of events that produces a Raw Story headline and a question about what specifically changed between the two decisions.
CBS News staffers had been informed the speech would air only on the streaming service, per Raw Story’s confirmed reporting published 37 minutes ago, citing media reporter Oliver Darcy’s outlet Status. The White House then reached out to the network. The speech subsequently aired on broadcast CBS. The reversal caught staffers flat-footed, per Raw Story, which is the description of an editorial change that was not communicated down the chain of command before it was executed.
CBS News is headed by Bari Weiss, who took the position earlier this year and who is described by Raw Story as “Trump-friendly,” which is the media shorthand for an executive whose editorial instincts align more closely with the administration than her predecessor’s did. Weiss built her editorial reputation at The Free Press, a subscription outlet she founded after leaving The New York Times over what she described as ideological pressure, and she has maintained a publicly skeptical relationship with progressive media orthodoxy while cultivating relationships across the political spectrum. Her appointment to CBS was controversial. Her first major broadcast decision involving a Trump address is now also controversial.
Trump’s speech, which was described by critics including Sen. Mark Warner as a “rehash of falsehoods” about Chinese election interference, aired on CBS after the White House outreach. Warner said he was “embarrassed” that networks aired it as news. CBS aired it after a reversal that staffers did not see coming. China called the underlying claims “entirely fabricated.” All of this happened on the same Thursday that two US service members died in Jordan.
The White House outreach happened. The reversal happened. The staffers were surprised. What changed in between has not been officially explained.
When a network tells its own staff a presidential address will stream and then airs it live after the White House calls, and the network’s editor-in-chief is described as Trump-friendly, what exactly is the editorial process?
Sources
Raw Story: Last-minute CBS News flip-flop on Trump speech catches staffers flat-footed
