Tag: cbs

Larry Ellison’s Son Buys The Free Press, Installs Bari Weiss as CBS News Editor-in-Chief

Israel First billionaire Larry Ellison’s son, David Ellison, is officially buying The Free Press and has already installed self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

From The New York Times, “Paramount Buys The Free Press, Ushering in a New Era at CBS News”:

Paramount said on Monday that it was buying The Free Press, a digital news site founded as an alternative to traditional news organizations, and appointing its co-founder, Bari Weiss, as the editor in chief of CBS News.

The purchase price was roughly $150 million in cash and Paramount stock, according to two people familiar with the terms who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The total amount will be paid out over time, and it may fluctuate depending on the price of Paramount’s stock.

The deal ushers in a new era for CBS News, the storied home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, which has new corporate leadership at Paramount. Ms. Weiss, 41, has never run a TV network, and in her role will have influence over hundreds of producers, anchors and reporters around the world. She will report to David Ellison, Paramount’s chief executive, and work alongside Tom Cibrowski, the president of CBS News.

“We are thrilled to welcome Bari and The Free Press to Paramount and CBS News,” Mr. Ellison said in a statement. “Bari is a proven champion of independent, principled journalism, and I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News.”

Keep reading

New CBS owner David Ellison met with top Israeli general in scheme to spy on Americans

Israel’s former top general sought donations from David Ellison and his father, Larry, as part of a billionaire coterie to fund digital paramilitaries aimed at sabotaging pro-Palestine activists. The leaked documents show one planner explaining, “In the jungle, we need more guerrillas and less IDF.”

With Paramount and CBS News now under his control, the younger Ellison has installed self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief.

The new owner of Paramount, David Ellison, participated in an Israeli government-led plot to surveil and suppress pro-Palestine activists in the US, leaked emails show. Originally dubbed “12 Tribes,” a reference to the dozen Jewish billionaires solicited to underwrite the operation, the scheme sought out American faces to fund surveillance firms run by Israeli intelligence veterans on behalf of Tel Aviv, as it targeted American citizens participating in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. 

The emails documenting the foreign influence campaign to counter BDS were first identified by journalist Jack Poulson, who discovered them in a trove leaked by the Handala hacking collective in 2024. The files show former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was tasked with recruiting wealthy Westerners to fund surveillance firms operated by Israeli intelligence veterans as they stalked and harassed people whom the government of Israel suspected of harboring pro-Palestinian sympathies.

In the emails, Hollywood talent agency executive Adam Berkowitz identified Ellison as “very interested” in “helping out with [undermining] the BDS movement.” Berkowitz introduced Ellison to the Israeli general in a group email: “Benny meet david. David meet Benny,” Berkowitz wrote on December 23, 2015, explaining that he “told david briefly about your [Gantz’s] 12 tribe idea which you can expound on to him which he seemed very interested in.”

Two days later, Ellison replied, “Mr Gantz it is a pleasure to meet you over e-mail. I very much look forward to discussing everything you are working on, and in the mean time hope you are enjoying the holiday season.” He added, “I will be back in LA on January 3rd and look forward to connecting in the New Year.”

A planning spreadsheet names other Zionist billionaires sought for the Israeli effort. They included David’s father, Oracle founder and Friends of the IDF board member Larry Ellison; Israeli-American billionaire and top Democratic Party sugar daddy Haim Saban; and Google founder Sergey Brin, whose “Israel-support” was still “tbd.” One of those named, Canadian bookchain owner Heather Reissman, had “already agreed” to donate.

Keep reading

New owner of CBS coordinated with former Israeli military chief to counter the country’s critics, according to leaked emails

A widely noted dataset of purportedly leaked emails from former Israeli minister of defense Benjamin Gantz appears to show that David Ellison, the new head of media conglomerate Paramount, was coordinating with the recently retired commander-in-chief of the Israeli military on a nascent campaign to sabotage critics of the Israeli military’s activities in Palestine.

The previously unreported emails appear to show David Ellison being recruited in December 2015 as a core American supporter of a nascent Israeli government effort which Gantz labeled the “Counter-BDS Initiative.” The original concept of the program, according to leaked emails and PowerPoint presentations, was to raise $1 million each from twelve prominent Jewish philanthropists in order to fund “state-of-the-art cyber technology as a soft weapon” and to contract the controversial private intelligence firm Black Cube to spy on and disrupt activists.

David and his father, Larry Ellison – the centi-billionaire founder of the enterprise database company Oracle – have come under increased scrutiny as a result of their joint financing of an $8 billion merger between Paramount and David’s own media company, Skydance. The purchase took place alongside Paramount agreeing to pay $16 million to President Trump over editorial choices regarding an interview with former Vice President Harris. Focus further increased on Wednesday, when Larry Ellison was reported to have overtaken his business partner Elon Musk as the world’s richest man.

Larry Ellison’s ties to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a prominent opponent of Gantz, are well known. According to reporting in Haaretz in 2021, the Oracle founder went as far as offering Mr. Netanyahu a seat on his company’s board.

The New York Times further reported on Wednesday that David Ellison is considering appointing the former New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss as co-president or editor-in-chief of the CBS News division of Paramount. The possible role comes alongside Ellison’s widely reported consideration of a roughly $100 million acquisition of Weiss’s ‘anti-woke’ media outlet, The Free Press, which prominently criticized CBS for its handling of a contentious interview conducted by its anchor Tony Dokoupil with author Ta-Nehisi Coates on September 30. “The sad truth is that Coates is not speaking truth to power,” editorialized The Free Press, in response to Coates having criticized the Israeli military’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

Paramount has also received criticism for its recent appointment of Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former head of both the conservative think tank Hudson Institute and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, as the conglomerate’s new ombudsman for CBS News.

The previously unreported emails between David Ellison and former Israeli military chief Benjamin Gantz are part of an archive originally released by the hacktivist group ‘Handala’, which is widely believed to be associated with Iranian intelligence, with the U.S.-based nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets serving as the primary intermediary for journalists. A related repository of leaked emails from former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, also published by Handala, led to recent reporting on Barak and the convicted child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein discussing potential investments in the now-defunct data analytics firm Fifth Dimension, which Gantz chaired from 2015 to 2018.

Keep reading

CBS News Caught Deceptively Editing Kristi Noem’s Comments on MS-13 Gang Member Kilmar Abrego Garcia

CBS News is at it again!

CBS on Sunday deceptively edited DHS Chief Kristi Noem’s comments on MS-13 gang member, wife beater and child predator, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

A federal grand jury in Tennessee recently indicted Kilmar Abrego Garcia for “transporting undocumented migrants within the United States.”

He was charged with one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and one count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was ordered to be deported to the East African country of Uganda after a judge recently released him from a Tennessee prison.

However, a radical Obama-appointed judge blocked the US government from immediately deporting Abrego Garcia to Africa.

On Sunday, DHS Chief appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation to discuss the Trump Administration’s work to make the country safer by arresting and deporting dangerous criminal aliens like Abrego Garcia.

CBS cut off Kristi Noem as she was detailing Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s many crimes.

In the clip that aired, Noem said, “[And] the one thing that we will continue to do is make sure that [Abrego Garcia] does not walk free in the United States of America.”

In the unaired clip, Noem said, “This individual was a known human smuggler, MS-13 gang member, an individual who was a wife beater and someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors and even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off. He was so sick in what he was doing and how he was treating small children. He needs to never be in the United States of America and our administration is making sure we’re doing all that we can to bring him to justice.”

Keep reading

Fears About Un-Aired Footage of ‘Drowsy’ Biden Led Paramount to Settle with Trump: Ex-Chairwoman

Sometimes the smallest details tell the biggest parts of a story.

One of the key reasons the parent company of CBS agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump is buried dozens of paragraphs into a New York Times report about now-former Paramount non-executive chairwoman Shari Redstone and the company’s decision-making process.

And it turns out, it involves an apparent play to protect now-former President Joe Biden.

Trump had sued CBS in October over its editing of an interview on the “60 Minutes” program with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. He maintained that “60 Minutes” edited Harris’ answers to make her appear more coherent than she actually was.

Paramount settled the suit in early July with a $16 million donation to the Trump presidential library fund.

According to The New York Times, Redstone and her son, Tyler, feared the lawsuit would bring attention to another CBS interview — this one with President Joe Biden.

“Ms. Redstone said CBS personnel had told her that in October 2023, when Scott Pelley of ’60 Minutes’ interviewed President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the president had seemed drowsy and had to be prodded to answer. She and Tyler worried that CBS might be accused of editing the interview to conceal Mr. Biden’s failings.”

“This case was never as black-and-white as people assumed,” Redstone told the newspaper.

What’s interesting here is that in the “60 Minutes” report itself, correspondent Scott Pelley — a man who openly declared his liberal leanings at a May commencement speech at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University — acknowledged that Biden was “tired,” though he tried to put the best face on it.

From the show’s transcript: “As we spoke to the president, his secretary of state was in Israel, his secretary of defense was in a NATO meeting on Ukraine. America’s oldest president seemed tired from directing all of this. But he was very clear on what he stood for and how his policies, in his view, would see America through.”

If Pelley and “60 Minutes” felt the need to put in posterior-covering garbage like that, it’s truly hard to imagine how bad the actual footage the program left out really was.

The fact that Redstone was worried about raw footage being cherry-picked (the article’s word) by Trump’s lawyers is a pretty good sign that the then-sitting president of the United States — a man with a nuclear arsenal at his command — came across like he was drooling his way through an after-lunch nap.

Keep reading

TV Anchor Sues Boston CBS Affiliate, Claims White Employees Targeted by Corporate DEI Policies

A veteran television anchor for Boston, Massachusetts’ CBS affiliate filed a lawsuit claiming she was demoted to fulfill corporate diversity quotas.

Katherine Merrill Dunham, who is white, claimed that WBZ-TV “exploited” diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies imposed by CBS and Paramount Global, taking “career-ending action” against her.

The lawsuit stated that CBS has said “diversity, equity and inclusion standards need to be a top priority for leadership in every corner.” The suit also cited CBS executives that claimed WBZ-TV was “too White” and had the “least diverse station for on air talent,” and the “Whitest of all their stations.”

In September 2023, WBZ hired black meteorologist Jason Mikell, and Zack Green, a white meteorologist, was let go.

“On February 22, 2024, Defendant Mikell made an inappropriate sexual innuendo about Ms. Merrill on air. Specifically, he implied that Ms. Merrill and her co-anchor had sexual relations at a gazebo. Mikell was not disciplined for his sexually charged remark,” the lawsuit stated.

Fox News continued:

WBZ, CBS and Paramount took no action to investigate Merrill’s complaint about Mikell’s aggressive confrontation and threatening treatment of her, nor did they investigate the previous complaints lodged by Merrill’s colleagues about Mikell’s “sexually charged” comment on air about Merrill, according to the complaint that was obtained by Fox News Digital.

However, Merrill was informed “that an investigation was being conducted into allegations that she treated coworkers differently because of their race.”

“Merrill vehemently challenged the validity of Defendant Mikell’s allegations and denied (and denies) any of her actions, inactions, or comments were as described or motivated by overt racism or unconscious bias,” the complaint read. “Based on the falsity and/or and misleading nature of Defendant Mikell’s allegations, Defendant Mikell acted with malice and/or improper motive in lodging a complaint against Ms. Merrill.”

Keep reading

Skydance Says It Had No Role in Cancelling Stephen Colbert, Blowing Hole in Democrat Conspiracy Theory

Skydance Media is now saying it played no role whatever in the cancellation of CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Th let has made a conspiracy theory out of the cancellation of extreme left-wing comedian Stephen Colbert by CBS, with the wild claim that the network cancelled the show so that President Donald Trump’s administration would approve the merger between CBS owner Paramount and Skydance Media. But Skydance is now saying that it had no hand in cancelling Colbert’s show and his cancellation has nothing to do with the merger plans.

Skydance General Counsel Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon responded to a letter by leftist Democrat U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden to say that, while her company knew of the cancellation, they were only told after CBS had made its decision. And Skydance was not part of the deliberation process.

The Democrat Senators had sent a letter to Skydance asking if the company was involved in cancelling Colbert.

“Were you or other Skydance executives involved in discussions about canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? If so, please provide information regarding the timing, nature of, and participants in these discussions, including whether the pending transaction with Paramount was discussed,” the letter asked.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), among other elected Democrats fire off social media screeds and even appeared on cable news channels and asserted that the lawsuit settlement between President Donald Trump and CBS parent company Paramount “sounds a lot like bribery.”

Keep reading

CBS Is About to Have a Big, Expensive Stephen Colbert Problem — and Howard Stern Is the Precedent

There’s precedent for this: Twenty years ago this year, Howard Stern left terrestrial radio, opting for the Sirius Satellite (later Sirius XM) moneybag. Twenty years later, Howard Stern has gone from an A-list superstar to a has-been; the natural consequence of hiding behind a paywall for so long.

Without the feeder system of terrestrial radio to onboard new fans, eventually, his older fans lost interest and left, and nobody new took their place. And now Howard Stern — a man whose audience was once 20 million strong — has become a complete and total nobody.

Consider: Stern’s 1993 “Private Parts” book sold over 1.1 million copies. It was the fastest-selling title in Simon & Schuster history.

A few decades later, he released the book “Howard Stern Comes Again” (2019) with the exact same publisher, Simon & Schuster. While accurate book stats are tricky to track, in one listing, Stern’s 2019 book was credited with just 265,295 sales, finishing about 2,500 units behind Mark Levin’s seventh-ranked book title, “Unfreedom of the Press.” (There were even anecdotal reports of Stern’s book being sold at the dollar store, the tragic fate of so many over-published and under-demanded book titles.) Stern’s audience is a pitiful sliver of what it once was.

And eventually, that’ll be Stephen Colbert’s fate, too. But don’t focus on that yet: The important part is what happened after Stern announced he’d be leaving terrestrial radio (Oct. 6, 2004) but before he actually left on Dec. 16, 2005.

Stern spent much of his final months on terrestrial radio hyping up how awesome his new satellite radio show was gonna be (often by throwing shade at traditional radio). It led to a 43-page CBS lawsuit for “[misappropriating] millions of dollars’ worth of CBS Radio air time for his own financial benefit.” (The lawsuit was later settled, with Sirius paying CBS Radio a few million bucks, while also receiving rights to rebroadcast Stern’s old radio tapes.)

In retrospect, nobody at CBS should’ve been surprised: Of course Stern was gonna hype up his move to satellite! His new financial model depended on it! (Indeed, Stern later sued Sirius XM — and lost — when he demanded a payment of $300 million for the new subscribers gained via the Sirius-XM merger.)

Here we are, twenty years later, and CBS is in the same exact situation as before.

Keep reading

“The Gloves Are Off…Go F**k Yourself!” – Stephen Colbert FLIPS OUT After President Trump Savagely Mocks Him Over His Cancelled Show

Fired CBS host Stephen Colbert threw a tantrum and lashed out at President Trump last night after getting fired.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last Thursday for financial reasons, especially given the low ratings. The show will end after the next season in May 2026.

The following day, Trump celebrated the news while mocking Colbert’s low ratings.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Colbert expressed confusion over being fired for financial reasons, pointing out that The Late Show is currently No. 1 in ratings and suggesting an ulterior motive.

“Over the weekend, someone at CBS followed up their gracious press release, followed up with a gracious anonymous leak saying, ‘They pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year.” $40 million is a big number. I could see us losing $24 million, but where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16 million?” Colbert said, referencing Paramount’s decision to settle a lawsuit with the Trump Administration over the editing of Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview.

“Over the weekend, it sunk in that they’re killing off our show, but they made one mistake: They left me alive. And now, for the next 10 months, the gloves are off,” Colbert boasted.

After reading off Trump’s Truth Social post, which responded to his termination, Colbert lost his temper.

How dare you, sir?! Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism?” Colbert fired back. “Go f**k yourself!”

Keep reading

Writers Guild Calls on Letitia James to Investigate CBS Cancellation of Late Show With Stephen Colbert Over Alleged “Bribe” to “Curry Favor” With Trump

The Writers Guild of America is urging Trump nemesis New York State Attorney General Letitia James to investigate CBS owner Paramount over the cancellation of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The Guild accuses Paramount of bribery by firing Colbert to “curry favor” with the Trump administration as it seeks approval for a merger with Skydance.

CBS announced this week Colbert would not be renewed after next season after a ten year run on the network. Reports state CBS was losing $40 million a year on the show. Estimates of Colbert’s salary put it in the range of $10 to $20 million per year.

Paramount recently agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit by President Donald Trump over deceptive editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Text of the Guild’s statement:

The following is a statement from the Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) and Writers Guild of America West (WGAW):

On July 2nd, Paramount agreed to settle a baseless lawsuit brought against 60 Minutes and CBS News by President Trump for $16 million. On July 15, during a regular show of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Colbert went on-air and called the settlement a “big fat bribe” in exchange for a favorable decision on the proposed merger between Paramount and Skydance, a charge currently under investigation in California.

Less than 48 hours later, on July 17, Paramount cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a show currently performing first in its timeslot, giving vague references to the program’s “financial performance” as the only explanation. For ten years, the show has been one of the most successful, beloved and profitable programs on CBS, entertaining an audience of millions on late night television, on streaming services and across social media.

Given Paramount’s recent capitulation to President Trump in the CBS News lawsuit, the Writers Guild of America has significant concerns that The Late Show’s cancelation is a bribe, sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump Administration as the company looks for merger approval.

Cancelations are part of the business, but a corporation terminating a show in bad faith due to explicit or implicit political pressure is dangerous and unacceptable in a democratic society. Paramount’s decision comes against a backdrop of relentless attacks on a free press by President Trump, through lawsuits against CBS and ABC, threatened litigation of media organizations with critical coverage, and the unconscionable defunding of PBS and NPR.

The Writers Guild of America calls on New York State Attorney General Letitia James, no stranger to prosecuting Trump for illegal business practices, to join California and launch an investigation into potential wrongdoing at Paramount. We call on our elected leaders to hold those responsible to account, to demand answers about why this beloved program was canceled and to assure the public that Colbert and his writers were not censored due to their views or the whims of the President.

Keep reading