This Is What Institutional Capture Looks Like

CBS News just appointed a Trump donor as its bias monitor, fulfilling a promise made to secure merger approval. The network of Murrow and Cronkite is officially dead.

CBS News just appointed its first-ever ombudsman, a position the network created as part of its merger with Skydance to address “complaints of bias.”

The job went to Kenneth Weinstein, and if that name doesn't ring a bell, here's what you need to know: he's the former head of a conservative think tank who donated $20,000 to Trump's reelection campaign last year, whom Trump himself nominated to be ambassador to Japan in 2020, and who recently wrote a column praising the president as “the ultimate outsider” and a “bold businessman.”

This is the person who will now evaluate whether CBS News coverage is biased… a Trump toady.

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The appointment would be shocking if we hadn't watched CBS systematically surrender its editorial independence over the past five months. But once you understand what's been happening since the Skydance merger was announced, Weinstein's hiring makes perfect sense. It's the latest chapter in the transformation of CBS from the network of Edward R. Murrow into something that would make Murrow spin in his grave.

Oliver Darcy at Status News discovered that Weinstein tried to delete his X account before the announcement, apparently hoping to sanitize his digital footprint. Too late. The internet remembers everything, including his July column calling Trump “the ultimate outsider” and a “bold businessman who asks uncomfortable questions that typical policymakers are too squeamish to ask.”

In February, Weinstein wrote in the right-wing New York Post that European women “can no longer walk safely at night in cities” because of Muslim migrants. He's praised Rupert Murdoch as a “revolutionary” who “transformed global media.” Last October, speaking on a panel, he advocated fiercely for Trump's reelection while warning he was “concerned about a [Kamala] Harris presidency.”

According to Justin Baragona at The Independent, this appointment fulfills a specific promise Skydance made to Trump's FCC chairman Brendan Carr just days before the agency approved the merger. Skydance committed to installing an ombudsman for two years to conduct a “comprehensive review” of “complaints of bias” at CBS News. They also promised to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. House Democrats are now investigating whether anti-bribery laws were violated in the merger process.

To understand how we got here, you need to know what's happened at CBS since April.

It started when Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, resigned after 37 years at CBS News. “It's clear that I've become the problem. I am the corporation's problem,” he told his stunned newsroom, his voice breaking. The catalyst was Trump's $10 billion lawsuit over a Kamala Harris interview, and Paramount's desperation to secure Trump's approval for their merger with Skydance.

Then in May, CBS correspondent Scott Pelley delivered a commencement address warning that “our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack.” The speech went viral and triggered a conservative meltdown, with MAGA accounts calling it “unhinged.” All he'd done was urge graduates to defend democratic institutions.

By July, Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle what the company's own lawyers called a “completely without merit” lawsuit about that Harris interview. Democratic senators called it what it was: extortion. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden was blunter: “Paramount just paid Trump a bribe for merger approval.”

Stephen Colbert made the mistake of saying this out loud. On one show, he joked about the settlement: “I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's Big Fat Bribe.” He even acknowledged reports that Skydance's new ownership might “put pressure on late night host and frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert.”

Three days later, CBS announced The Late Show would end in May 2026. Not just Colbert's run as host. The entire Late Show, a CBS institution since 1993, would be gone. The network claimed it was “purely a financial decision” and “not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” Sure.

And just days before Weinstein's appointment, CBS implemented new rules for Face the Nation after the White House complained about an edited interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. According to The Independent, going forward, all interviews must be broadcast live or live-to-tape. The network sided with the administration's complaints about “shameful editing” even though the excised portion simply contained Noem making unproven allegations about a migrant.

This is what institutional capture looks like.

The Weinstein appointment matters because of who's behind it. Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder worth $180 billion, invested $6 billion to help his son David's company acquire Paramount. The elder Ellison is a Trump supporter. And Trump himself has praised David Ellison as a “great man” who will “do the right thing” at CBS. Trump even boasted about a “side deal” he reached with Ellison to air up to $20 million of pro-Trump advertisements on CBS programming.

David Ellison has also been in talks to acquire The Free Press, Bari Weiss's anti-trans, “anti-woke” media company. One option being floated would have Weiss help direct “the editorial sensibilities of CBS News” without formally joining the management team. CBS staffers are bracing for her arrival even as the network prepares for painful budget cuts.

The mechanism Paramount created for handling complaints reveals how this will work in practice. When someone complains about CBS News coverage, Weinstein reviews it. If he thinks it has merit, he escalates to Paramount President Jeff Shell and TV chief George Cheeks. If they agree, then CBS News President Tom Cibrowski has to “recommend and implement any necessary action steps.”

Notice who's not in that chain of command? Any actual CBS News journalists. The people who understand journalism, who know the difference between legitimate criticism and political pressure, who might defend their reporters against bad-faith attacks. Instead, complaints will flow through a Trump donor who thinks NATO “caters to progressive elites,” then to corporate executives whose primary concern is keeping the government happy so their merger stays approved.

As Darcy notes, even without absolute authority, Weinstein's presence creates a chilling effect. CBS journalists will know that complaints about their work will be evaluated through a right-wing lens. They'll self-censor, knowing that any coverage critical of Trump or favorable to Democrats might trigger a complaint that lands on the desk of someone who publicly worried about a Harris presidency.

We're watching the real-time transformation of American media into something that would be familiar to anyone who's studied how democratic institutions crumble. You don't need to shut down newsrooms or jail journalists. You just need to make sure the people in charge understand that their corporate interests depend on keeping the powerful happy. Install a few loyalists in key positions. Create internal mechanisms that seem reasonable but actually serve as pressure points. Watch as journalists learn to avoid certain topics, to frame stories in certain ways, to police themselves so the ombudsman doesn't have to.

The saddest part is that CBS News still employs talented journalists who believe in the mission of informing the public. But they're now working under a system designed to constrain them, overseen by someone who's made clear he thinks they're part of the problem.

In his 1954 broadcast about Joseph McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow said, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.” Seventy years later, his network has hired someone who believes the opposite, someone who sees mainstream journalism as inherently biased and in need of correction from the right.

This is how it goes. Not with dramatic raids on newsrooms or journalists thrown in jail, but with corporate executives making “purely financial decisions” and appointing ombudsmen for “journalistic integrity.” With each surrender dressed up as a reform, each capitulation explained as a business necessity.