How did CBS News cover the settlement between its parent company Paramount Global and President Donald Trump? It addressed it head-on, in a blunt piece of commentary from CBS Evening News anchor John Dickerson on Wednesday’s newscast.
Dickerson, who was named co-anchor of the newscast earlier this year alongside Maurice Dubois, told viewers that “the Paramount settlement poses a new obstacle.”
“Can you hold power to account after paying it millions? Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust?” he continued. “The audience will decide that.”
In a midnight settlement, CBS owner Paramount Global reached a deal with President Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The settlement sparked anger and anxiety within CBS News, given the nature of the complaint, which was about how the CBS newsmagazine edited the Harris interview. The only saving grace was that the settlement did not include an apology, a line that many at CBS News were worried the company would be willing to cross.
In his commentary, Dickerson began by reporting the news, before digging into the context of trust, and why it matters at CBS specifically.
“Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, settled a suit with President Trump today,” Dickerson said to begin the segment. “Journalists don’t like to report on themselves. Sometimes that’s false humility. Mostly, it’s a practical limitation. Reporters try to find order in chaos. We prefer to explain the cause of a bombing, the intent of a bill, the marvel of a new discovery. Putting chaos in preliminary order helps viewers make sense of their world. They tell us this, at airports, restaurants, at church. the audience brings us their fears, their questions, their good faith view of things. It reminds us that we are stewards of that concern. It’s a grace to receive another’s trust, but also to have a mission that shapes your work, mission, that can sound grandiose.
“We are not all that. Public figures have taught us that misguided mission can do more harm than brute force,” he continued. “We pride ourselves on our BS detector, so it ought to work on ourselves too when it doesn’t. The stakes are real, a loss of public trust, the spread of misinformation. A visitor to our newsrooms might wonder why we debate a single word for so long, why it takes hours to answer the simple question, what is this story about? Why there’s a cry of frustration when a detail is off by an inch? That is what work looks like when it is deeply felt, when the audience’s concerns become ours, passed by bucket brigade from the subjects of our stories, to correspondence, to producers, to editors, fact checkers and writers.
“The obstacles to getting it right are many. The Paramount settlement poses a new obstacle. Can you hold power to account after paying it millions? Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust? The audience will decide that. Our job is to show up to honor what we witness on behalf of the people We witnessed it for the network’s first heroes ran to rooftops during the bombing of London. Its current ones carry that same instinct.
“But another story from CBS early days also captures this spirit. The young correspondent was filing a story when it started to rain. The takes they’d already filmed were fine. Everybody could have just gone inside, but she persisted the rain, turning the notes in her hand to pulp again and again. She worked to get it right. This wasn’t London under the fire. It was just a regular story, that’s the point. So the rain has picked up, but we’ll stay at it. We hope you will too. See you tomorrow.”
You can watch the segment, below.