What the Trump Administration Is Buying With CBS's Reputation
The administration's story about the Renee Good shooting was falling apart. CBS gave them the credibility to put it back together.
In December, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss killed a 60 Minutes segment about Venezuelan migrants being tortured in El Salvador’s CECOT prison. The segment, reported by veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, had been cleared by CBS’s lawyers. It had been cleared by the network’s Standards and Practices division. It had been screened multiple times. It had been promoted on social media for days. Just hours before airtime, Weiss pulled it.
Her explanation: the story wasn’t ready. It needed a voice from the Trump administration, which had declined to comment.
Three weeks later, CBS published an exclusive claiming that Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, had suffered “internal bleeding to the torso.” The sourcing was two anonymous U.S. officials. According to The Guardian, CBS staffers raised concerns before publication, with one calling the report “a thinly-veiled, anonymous leak by the Trump administration to someone who’d carry it online.” Weiss, according to staffers who listened to the editorial call that morning, “expressed a high level of interest in the story.” It ran.
A story with on-camera sources, legal clearance, and five rounds of vetting gets killed for not being ready. A story with anonymous sources and internal objections gets published because the editor-in-chief wanted it. The difference between these two stories is not their journalistic rigor. The difference is who they help.
What CBS actually reported
Let’s look at what the story says. The CBS report, which was first posted on X before being expanded into an article, claims that Ross “suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident.” The sourcing is “two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.” The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the injury but, according to CBS, “has not yet responded to CBS News’ requests for more information.”
That’s it. That’s the story.
What we don’t learn: How extensive was the bleeding? What treatment did Ross receive? Did he need surgery? When was the internal bleeding diagnosed? Was it diagnosed at the hospital on January 7, or did this determination come later? If Ross had internal bleeding serious enough to mention, why was he released from the hospital the same day he was admitted? Why did this information take a full week to emerge?
These aren’t gotcha questions. They’re the basic follow-up questions any medical story would require. CBS’s own medical producer raised some of them before publication, asking in an email whether the network could clarify “what type of treatment he received” and whether Ross underwent surgery. These questions went unanswered.
Reiter, the senior vice president, spelled out the problem in his email: “A bruise is internal bleeding. But it can also be something serious. We do know that the ICE agent walked away from the incident — we have that on camera.”
He’s right. We do have that on camera. Multiple videos from the scene show Ross walking around in the aftermath of the shooting. He moved without apparent difficulty. He drove away from the scene. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on January 7 that Ross “went to the hospital. A doctor did treat him. He has been released.” Same-day discharge.
None of this means Ross wasn’t injured. But it does mean that “internal bleeding” without context is close to meaningless. The term covers everything from a bruise you’d get bumping into a table to a life-threatening hemorrhage. When your own senior vice president is pointing out that the claim you’re about to publish could mean almost anything, and your medical producer is asking for basic details you can’t provide, and your sourcing is two anonymous government officials with an obvious interest in justifying a shooting that has sparked national protests, you might want to wait until you have more information.
Unless waiting isn’t the point.
The amplification pipeline
The CBS story published on the afternoon of January 14. Within hours, it had become the centerpiece of a coordinated messaging campaign.
Vice President JD Vance posted on X: “While much of left has lied about this case, it turns out ramming a law enforcement officer with a car causes injuries. Who knew!” Elon Musk, whose platform has become the social media propaganda arm of the Trump administration, added: “She almost killed him.”
The CBS report doesn’t say Good “rammed” anyone. It doesn’t say she “almost killed” Ross. It says Ross had “internal bleeding,” a term so vague that CBS’s own senior vice president had to point out it could describe a bruise. But once the story was out, it became raw material. Vance and Musk took the CBS reporting and turned it into confirmation of claims the administration had been making since the day of the shooting.
Conservative media followed. RedState ran a piece headlined “Exploding the Leftist Narrative? DHS Confirms Agent Who Shot Renee Good Suffered ‘Internal Bleeding.’” The article celebrated the CBS report as vindication, crowing that it would “destroy” criticism of the shooting. Twitchy, another conservative site, mocked Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who had previously noted that Ross “walked away with a hop in his step.” Conservative Brief went even further, claiming that “forensic evidence and hospital records now corroborate Ross’s account.” No such evidence has been publicly released.
The administration feeds a claim to a mainstream outlet. The outlet publishes, lending the claim credibility. Government officials and aligned influencers amplify. Right-wing media treats the mainstream report as validation. The claim gets laundered from anonymous leak to established fact, and anyone who questions it can be dismissed as denying what CBS News reported.
The CBS staffers who raised concerns before publication understood exactly what the story would be used for. They published it anyway.
And it worked. By the end of the day, “internal bleeding” had become proof that Good had tried to kill Ross, that the shooting was justified, that the left had been lying all along. The vagueness of the claim was a feature. It could mean anything, which meant it could be made to mean everything.
Two stories, two standards
It’s worth laying out the contrast directly.
The CECOT segment was reported by Sharyn Alfonsi, a veteran 60 Minutes correspondent. She had on-camera interviews with Venezuelan deportees describing torture, beatings, and sexual violence at the hands of prison guards. One of them, Luis Munoz Pinto, was a college student with no criminal record who had been awaiting a decision on his asylum application when he was detained and sent to El Salvador. The segment had gone through every layer of vetting CBS has. It had been promoted on the network’s social media accounts and on the air. It was, by every measure that’s supposed to matter in television news, ready to go.
Weiss killed it because the Trump administration wouldn’t provide an on-camera interview. She told staff the segment wasn’t ready, that it didn’t “advance the ball.” According to NPR’s reporting, she also objected to the segment’s use of the term “Venezuelan migrants,” preferring “illegal immigrants,” the language favored by the administration. Many of the men sent to CECOT weren’t in the country illegally. They had applied for asylum and were waiting for their cases to be decided. Calling them “illegal immigrants” isn’t a neutral editorial choice. It’s adopting the government’s framing as your own.
Alfonsi pushed back. In an internal memo to colleagues, she compared the decision to CBS’s 1995 decision to spike an interview with tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand. “CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast,” she wrote. “It took years to recover from that ‘low point.’ By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.”
Now look at the internal bleeding story. Two anonymous sources. No on-camera interviews. No documentary evidence. No legal review mentioned in any of the reporting about the story’s publication. A senior vice president raising concerns about the vagueness of the claim. A medical producer asking basic questions that went unanswered. Staffers describing it as a leak designed to justify a killing.
Weiss wanted it. Trump wanted it. It ran.
So what makes a story ready? The CECOT segment had everything CBS is supposed to require. It was killed because it would embarrass the administration. The internal bleeding story had almost nothing. It was published because it would help the administration.
The pattern
This didn’t come from nowhere.
In August 2025, Paramount paid Donald Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit he had filed over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Legal experts had called the suit frivolous. CBS’s own attorneys said it was without merit. The network paid anyway. At the time, Paramount was trying to secure regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance, the company run by David Ellison, whose father Larry Ellison is a Trump ally. The approval required sign-off from Trump’s FCC.
In April 2025, Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes for over a decade, resigned. “It’s clear that I’ve become the problem. I am the corporation’s problem,” he told his staff. He said he had “lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
In October, Paramount announced it had acquired Weiss’s Free Press for $150 million and was installing her as editor-in-chief of CBS News. She would report directly to David Ellison.
In November, Trump sat down with Norah O’Donnell for a 60 Minutes interview. During the conversation, he praised the network’s new leadership. “I think you have a great new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise,” he said, referring to Weiss. “I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person.” He added: “I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.” He also reminded O’Donnell that “60 Minutes paid me a lotta money.” This portion of the interview did not make it into the broadcast.
What happened after the cameras stopped was revealing. According to The Independent, citing four people familiar with the situation, Weiss was on location for the interview. When it wrapped, she approached Trump to introduce herself. “He was so happy to see her and she was so excited to meet him, they both leaned in and exchanged kisses on the cheek,” one source said. O’Donnell’s “jaw dropped,” according to another.
CBS staffers were not pleased. “I’m still kind of stunned by this,” one reporter told The Independent. “It reeks of elitism.” Another said: “That absolutely is not a normal news practice. A firm handshake is an acceptable greeting. It’s wildly inappropriate and presents an overly chummy relationship with the president that no real journalist should or would engage in because it suggests a lack of objectivity.” A former CBS producer said they had “never kissed a head of state on the cheek before.”
This is the person who decides what’s ready and what isn’t. This is the person who killed a thoroughly vetted segment about torture because the administration wouldn’t comment, then pushed through an anonymously sourced story her own staff called a propaganda leak.
The credibility laundry
There’s a reason the Trump administration didn’t leak the “internal bleeding” claim to Breitbart or the Daily Wire. Those outlets would have run it happily, but it wouldn’t have mattered. When Matt Walsh says the shooting was justified, his audience already agrees. When RedState celebrates the destruction of the “leftist narrative,” it’s preaching to the choir. The right-wing media ecosystem is effective at energizing people who already believe what it’s selling. It’s less effective at persuading anyone else.
CBS News is different. For decades, the network has traded on a reputation built by Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite and 60 Minutes. When CBS reports something, it carries weight. It gets cited by other outlets. It becomes part of the record. That institutional credibility is worth something. And right now, it’s being spent.
Consider what happened on January 7, the day of the shooting. Instantly, the administration had a story ready. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Good had “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.” Kristi Noem said agents had been pushing their vehicles out of the snow when Good “attacked them.” Trump posted that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.”
The video showed something else. It showed agents approaching Good’s car on a clear street. It showed one of them grabbing her door handle, yelling at her to get out. It showed Ross fire through the windshield. It did not show anyone getting run over. It did not show anyone stuck in snow.
The administration’s story was falling apart. The video was everywhere. Local officials were contradicting federal claims. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told ICE to “get the fuck out” of his city and called the self-defense justification “garbage.” Minnesota’s attorney general was demanding an investigation. The government needed something to change the conversation.
A week later, CBS gave them “internal bleeding.”
Before CBS published, critics of the shooting could point to the video and say: Ross wasn’t run over. He walked away. He drove himself from the scene. He was released from the hospital the same day. Whatever happened, it wasn’t what the government claims.
After CBS published, defenders of the shooting had a response: He had internal bleeding. CBS News confirmed it. Are you saying CBS is lying? Are you a conspiracy theorist now?
That lack of specificity is what makes it useful. “Internal bleeding” sounds serious. It sounds like the kind of injury you’d get from being hit by a car. Most people don’t know that a bruise technically qualifies. Most people aren’t going to read the part where CBS’s own senior vice president raised that exact point before publication. They’re going to see the headline, see the CBS logo, and conclude that the government must have been telling the truth after all.
This is what CBS’s credibility is being used for. Not to inform the public, but to sanitize an administration narrative that was collapsing under the weight of video evidence. Not to report what happened, but to provide cover for people who need the public to stop asking questions.
David Ellison’s father is one of Trump’s closest allies. Ellison hired Bari Weiss, who killed a story about the administration’s deportation policies because it wasn’t “ready.” Now CBS is publishing anonymously sourced claims that its own staff calls propaganda, and those claims are being used by the vice president and the world’s richest man to justify the killing of a 37-year-old American citizen.
The right doesn’t need CBS to reach its own audience. It needs CBS to reach everyone else. It needs the imprimatur of a mainstream news organization to transform a government talking point into an established fact. Weiss and Ellison are providing that service. They’re laundering narratives that wouldn’t survive scrutiny if they came from anywhere else, and they’re doing it with the credibility that generations of CBS journalists spent their careers building.
Walter Cronkite signed off every broadcast by saying, “And that’s the way it is.” I wonder what he’d say about the way it is now.
What CBS is now
A thoroughly reported segment about torture, with on-camera sources and full legal clearance, gets killed because it might upset the administration.
A thinly sourced claim from anonymous government officials, with no details and no verification and internal objections from the network’s own staff, gets published because the editor-in-chief is interested.
The first story would have told Americans something true about what their government is doing in their name. The second story helped the government obscure what one of its agents did to an American citizen on a residential street in Minneapolis.
This isn’t a both-sides situation. This isn’t a matter of perspective. CBS chose what kind of news organization it wants to be, and it made that choice twice in three weeks.
The staffers who leaked to The Guardian understood what was happening. They’re the ones who called the internal bleeding story what it was: a thinly-veiled leak designed to justify a killing. They risked their jobs to tell the public that the story they were being asked to publish didn’t meet the standards CBS is supposed to uphold.
Those people still believe CBS should be something better. They still think the network’s credibility is worth protecting. That’s why they talked.
I don’t know how many of them are left. I don’t know how long they’ll stay. What I do know is that every time Bari Weiss kills a story the administration doesn’t like, and every time she publishes a story the administration does like, the gap between what CBS claims to be and what CBS actually is gets a little wider. The people who built that institution’s reputation are watching it get strip-mined to serve the interests of a president who once sued the network and now praises its leadership on camera.
Renee Good was 37 years old. She was a poet, a mother of three. She dropped her six-year-old off at school on January 7 and never came home. An ICE agent shot her in the head.
The government lied about it. The video proved they lied. And when the lie started to fall apart, CBS helped put it back together.
That’s the way it is.
It's not hard to use the letters CBS to develop a new acronym to describe the quality of their reporting. C could stand for colossal.
This is brilliant commentary, Parker. The CBS element is in certain ways the most pernicious of the whole thing. We the People are really going to need truth-telling in the coming maelstrom, and that CBS of all outlets is signed up to lie and muddy the waters for the Trump regime is bitterly ironic. Your piercing of that facade earned you a paid subscription from me. I hope more Americans begin to understand whom they can and cannot trust and direct their attention and support accordingly.