Tag: cbs

CBS star Matt Gutman accused of sexual harassment in bombshell lawsuit amid ratings fight

CBS star Matt Gutman is facing a bombshell sexual harassment lawsuit as his turn behind the “CBS Evening News” desk helped deliver the struggling network a ratings boost.

The show averaged 4.1 million viewers for the week of July 27, according to Nielsen, its best weekly audience in 17 weeks and its first time topping 4 million viewers since late March.

Gutman was filling in for vacationing anchor Tony Dokoupil.

Gutman, 48, was sued Friday by former ABC News field producer Samira Said, who accused him of making inappropriate sexual remarks during two assignments several years ago.

Said filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, naming Gutman, ABC News and parent company The Walt Disney Co. as defendants.

In one alleged incident, Said claims Gutman began discussing and rating the appearance of a female correspondent while the two were waiting on a public line during an assignment.

The suit says Gutman “initiated a discussion rating a female correspondent’s appearance and reducing her professional standing to a numerical score based on her physical attributes.”

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CBS News Not Airing ‘60 Minutes’ Jeffrey Epstein Story Under Scrutiny

Senator Ron Wyden has questioned why a 60 Minutes interview with now-former correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi on Jeffrey Epstein’s banking practices never aired, adding it had been “suppressed.”

The Oregon Democrat raised the issue in a new Senate Finance Committee report, published on August 4, alleging Deutsche Bank failed to promptly disclose more than $250 million in suspicious Epstein-related transactions.

“It is disappointing that, instead of advancing new facts that would help bring accountability to the men who participated in Epstein’s trafficking operation, the report largely recycles allegations that have already been exhaustively examined by courts and the government,” a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase told Newsweek.

Asked for comment, Wyden’s office pointed Newsweek to page 61 of the report, where it says his taped interview with Alfonsi was intended for a broader 60 Minutes segment on banks and Epstein, adding that it is unclear whether CBS News leadership will allow the broader segment to air following Alfonsi’s departure from the network.

CBS News says the segment simply was not ready before the show’s season ended.

Pushing back against any suggestion that the interview was buried, a spokesperson for the network said in a statement shared with Newsweek via email: “We air pieces when they are ready, and suggesting that an interview is being ‘suppressed’ for any reason is categorically false.”

According to Wyden’s report, “the investigation found significant evidence that JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America violated federal anti-money laundering laws by failing to screen and report Epstein’s suspicious financial transactions in a timely manner.”

A spokesperson for Bank of America told Newsweek: “We take our legal and regulatory obligations seriously and, as we have previously said, the bank did not facilitate wrongdoing.”

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WTH: Scott Pelley Claims He’s “Been In Combat for This Country” in Afghanistan and Iraq in Response to Trump’s Criticisms – Breaks Down in TEARS! 

Scott Pelley hit a new low, bordering on stolen valor, when the disgraced ex-60 Minutes host likened himself to a war hero, saying he’s “been in combat,” despite never fighting for his country. 

In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, his first since being fired by CBS, Pelley was asked to respond to Trump’s criticism of him after his firing.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Pelley was fired after a public meltdown, where he accused CBS’s new Editor in Chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering 60 Minutes.”

Pelly is “terrible,” “a stiff,” and “afraid,” Trump said during an interview last week with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine.

“He’s part of this, you know, gang of crooked, stupid people that don’t care about our country,” Trump added, further slamming George Stephanopoulos for covering up Joe Biden’s mental decline.

Pelly was aghast that Trump described him as somebody who doesn’t care about the country. “Stupid, I can, I can take that. Stiff, yeah, probably,” he told the New York Times’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro before launching into a tirade about his service to the country “in combat.”

“Don’t care about the country? I’ve never worn the uniform, but I’ve been in combat for this country in Afghanistan and Iraq, Kuwait,” he claimed, adding that he’d “been shot at” and “spent nights in foxholes filling up with water in the desert.”

“I’m not aware that the President of the United States has ever done any of those things for his country,” he said.

Then he started crying!

Fighting back the tears, Pelley audaciously likened himself to the American warfighters, declaring, “There is no democracy without journalism. It can’t be done, and that is why I am a journalist.”

After breaking down into tears, Pelley said, “You know, on Fox News, they’re gonna just run the parts where I’m crying and say I’m a lunatic.” Laughing, he added, “It is the era we live in.”

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Scott Pelley Mistook ’60 Minutes’ for His Personal Throne Room

Scott Pelley spent 37 years at CBS News and became one of the familiar faces of 60 Minutes. He also anchored and managed CBS Evening News from 2011 to 2017.

Longevity can bring wisdom, but it also can convince a person who reads a script that the chair is his.

Pelley’s exit from CBS looks a lot less like martyrdom and a lot more like Job 101 catching up with him late in life.

Pelley lost his job after a tense staff meeting with Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News, and Nick Bilton, executive producer of 60 Minutes. The meeting was intended as an introduction of Bilton to the staff, but Pelley mounted his holy soapbox and used the moment to attack leadership, complain about the direction of the program, and question Bilton’s qualifications.

Reports described Pelley accusing Weiss of “murdering” the show and telling Bilton he had “slender qualifications.” 

The man/boy was handed his walking papers shortly afterward.

Anybody who has ever held a job knows the rule; it’s not complicated: don’t torch your boss in front of the company and then act shocked, SHOCKED! when the company removes your badge. Pelley had every right to dislike the actions management made, and he also had every right to raise concerns through normal channels.

Instead, he chose a public confrontation, then reached for victimhood like a man who confused tenure with ownership.

Then came the interviews. 

The New York Post shared his ludicrous interview with the New York Times, breaking down in tears about his bravery.

Jobless news veteran Scott Pelley broke down in tears as he claimed the hysterical tirade that got him fired from “60 Minutes” was a response to the “murders” of his “family” in a “Black Thursday massacre” at the show.

Pelley, 68, broke down several times during an interview with the New York Times as he discussed for the first time being axed from CBS News after nearly four decades at the network.

He conceded that he had been hyperbolic to accuse new network boss Bari Weiss of murdering “60 Minutes” — just to go even further, claiming it was the staff themselves that she murdered.

“It’s like your spouse being murdered,” he said at one point of the rejigging of staff with newcomers in to take charge at the show.

“No one saw the Black Thursday massacre coming,” Pelley told the paper of the network laying off senior staff, including executive producer Tanya Simon.

“It’s like your spouse being murdered.”

Who in the everlasting wide world of sports talks like that?!

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The Firing of Scott Pelley by ’60 Minutes’ Reveals Media Elites Have No Idea How Little the Public Trusts Them

The firing of Scott Pelley by ’60 Minutes’ has angered all of the right people and exposed the fact that the liberal elites in our media have no idea how many people in America no longer trust them.

Jake Tapper of CNN invited Scott MacFarlane onto his show, a journalist who left CBS News for a far left outlet called Meidas News, along with Terry Moran, who was fired by ABC News over an indefensible anti-Trump tweet, to react to the Pelley news.

MacFarlane showed that these people are utterly clueless about their situation.

Transcript via Curtis Houck of NewsBusters:

Former CBS correspondent-turned-MeidasTouch pundit Scott MacFarlane scoffs at the notion found in polls Americans don’t trust the media…

“I would venture the bold prediction that, if Americans were surveyed about the trustworthiness of 60 Minutes, it may have more support and more trust, more credibility with Americans than the general milquetoast term “media.” What is the media at this point that they’re being polled on? Are they talking about specific programs, specific sources of information?

Are they talking about the garbage on the internet, the garbage on talk radio? Are they talking about the actual verified, bonafide source sources of journalism? The ones who actually have credibility and empirical evidence to back up their reporting. This all feels to me like apples and oranges.”

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CBS Fires Professional Prevaricator Scott Pelley

Longtime readers of mine know that I don’t often do news stories. I’m the verbal bomb-throwing opinion guy here at the PJ Media Ranch; my colleagues handle the heavy news stuff much better than I do. Once in a great while, however, I come across a story that just makes me happy. Also, this one broke around 11 p.m. EDT, which is prime time in my Morning Briefing work day. 

The New York Times:

CBS News fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday, jettisoning one of the network’s best-known journalists in a clash over the future of “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news program.

Mr. Pelley, 68, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” joined the network in 1989. At a staff meeting on Monday, he accused the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” citing the ouster last week of the program’s leadership team and two on-air correspondents.

“We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” Nick Bilton, the tech journalist who was hired last week as the new “60 Minutes” executive producer, wrote in a memo to the show’s staff on Tuesday night.

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Dr. Jill Repeatedly Claims She Never Saw Signs that Joe Biden Was Falling Into Cognitive Decline – And CBS Mornings Host Isn’t Even Buying It

Dr. Jill insisted that she had never seen anything to indicate that Joe Biden was in cognitive decline during an interview with CBS Mornings host Rita Braver.

Jill Biden sat down for an interview with CBS Mornings to discuss life after the White House.

“Did you ever see signs that [Biden] was falling into cognitive decline?” Rita Braver asked Jill Biden.

“No,” Jill Biden said.

Rita Braver was not buying Jill Biden’s claim.

“No?” Rita Braver asked.

“No,” Jill Biden insisted.

“Truly?” Rita Braver asked.

“No,” Jill Biden said.

“Oh, he was definitely aging; I mean, we were all aging,” Jill added. “So, yes, he was slowing down.”

“People were saying he wasn’t the same Joe Biden,” Rita Braver said.

“Well, I don’t think that’s true,” Jill said.

She continued, “He was the same, the essence of the same Joe Biden, but yeah, he was slowing down. He was getting older.”

“It’s a very intense job. I think it ages you quickly. Look at the other presidents, I mean, in comparison, when they started in office and got out of office. It was natural aging,” Jill Biden insisted.

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CBS Torches Stephen Colbert After His Exit

CBS just handed Stephen Colbert the most brutal farewell a network could offer, and it should end all the debate over how and why Colbert got canceled.

Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed officially took over CBS’s 11:35 p.m. late-night slot on Friday, May 22, under a new “time buy” deal with the network. Under the arrangement, Allen Media Group pays CBS for the time period, handles all production costs itself, and controls the advertising inventory. This means that CBS doesn’t have to spend a dime.

That’s a pretty sharp contrast from what Colbert cost it.

CBS announced the cancellation of The Late Show back in July 2025, citing financial reasons. The network said the program was hemorrhaging roughly $40 million a year. At the time, some on the left insisted that the move was political. In their minds, CBS, an anti-Trump network, was doing President Donald Trump a favor by getting rid of one of his critics.

But CBS (again) demolished that narrative.

“With this ‘time buy’ model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit — a $55 million swing,” the spokesperson said, calling it “a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost prohibitive to continue.”

So in axing Colbert, the network turned the whole slot profitable. It sure sounds like CBS has now been unburdened by what has been.

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CBS News Chief Bari Weiss FIRES Far-Left ’60 Minutes’ Executive Producer and Anti-Trump Correspondents

CBS News Editor-in-Chief continues draining the woke swamp at the long-compromised Sunday news program, 60 Minutes.

The Gateway Pundit has documented for years how ’60 Minutes’ repeatedly targeted conservatives and President Trump with one-sided hit pieces while giving Democrats and their allies soft-glove treatment.

The show’s credibility collapsed further after the disastrous Kamala Harris interview that triggered a major lawsuit and exposed its activist bent.

Bari Weiss, who famously walked away from The New York Times over its radical leftward lurch and cancel culture, is now applying the same standards at CBS.

Under the new Skydance/Paramount ownership, Weiss was brought in with a mandate for “actual viewpoint diversity.”

Weiss announced Thursday that she is replacing veteran executive producer Tanya Simon — a 30-year fixture at the program and daughter of legendary correspondent Bob Simon — with Nick Bilton, a tech journalist, former New York Times columnist, and documentary filmmaker with zero experience in traditional broadcast news.

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HELL FREEZES OVER: CBS News ‘Fact Checks’ Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass From Debate, Says Spencer Pratt Was Right 

Something has shifted in the race for mayor of Los Angeles after Spencer Pratt’s amazing performance in the debate earlier this week.

Even CBS News has done a ‘fact check’ on incumbent Democrat candidate Karen Bass, something that is usually reserved for Republican candidates. It’s extremely rare for the media to call out a Democrat candidate in this way.

The fact check had mostly to do with claims made about the wildfires, which are clearly going to play a much larger role in this race than Democrats were hoping.

John Nolte writes at Breitbart News:

Here is a partially edited transcript from the debate that’s relevant to the first CBS News fact check about the mayor’s epic mishandling of the 2025 Palisades Fire that destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and killed 12 people:

SPENCER PRATT: A lot of people talk about climate change and hurricane-force winds. The winds in the Pacific Palisades never reached higher than 40 mph. For those first six hours, they didn’t go above 27 miles per hour.

The whole point of this exchange is that Bass is running around blaming the fire on Climate Change.

KAREN BASS: He talked about the winds — that is just completely inaccurate. If that were accurate, then the planes would have been able to fly. And so if the winds reached close to 100 miles an hour and the planes were unable to fly.

PRATT: Yes, she mentioned me. So this is — she’s an incredible liar. Everyone on their phones, Google it. 40 weather stations in the Pacific Palisades. It never went above 40 miles per hour. She is referencing the Altadena fire.

BIASED LEFTIST MODERATOR: I have to interrupt you. No name-calling, please.

PRATT: Yeah, but no name calling? She just lied though… No more lying. We need the truth.

Here’s the CBS News fact check:

Weather modeling reviewed for my reporting shows winds in the Palisades during those first several hours of the fire were, in fact under 40 miles per hour. Planes could and did fly. Stronger winds intensified later in the evening. And that distinction matters because the earliest hours of a wildfire are often the most critical for containment.

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