Above photo: A screenshot of Scott Pelley from the recent 60 Minutes program during which he rebuked CBS’ parent company on air, over reported “interference” that led longtime executive producer Bill Owens to resign.
Billionaire heiress Shari Redstone has regularly tried to interfere with news coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza on one of America’s leading TV networks.
The corporate efforts to muzzle “60 Minutes,” the prestigious American television news program, have been publicly exposed by courageous members of its own staff. But mainstream U.S. media reports have underplayed one significant factor: the intense pro-Israel views of Shari Redstone, the billionaire heiress who is the controlling shareholder of Paramount, the CBS TV network’s parent company. Her views have mostly gone unreported, even though she is one of the most powerful media moguls in America, and someone who has already sharply criticized her own network’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Here’s what happened: on April 22, the executive director of ’60 Minutes,’ Bill Owens, resigned, charging interference. Then, at the end of the program’s normal Sunday evening broadcast, one of its on-air reporters, Scott Pelley, dared to stand up for Owens. As the New York Times said, “. . . Mr. Pelley presented Mr. Owens’s decision to resign as an effort to protect ’60 Minutes’ from further interference.”
Pelley pointed out rightly that the parent company, Paramount, has a big merger pending, and that “The Trump administration must approve it.” So far, the majority of the mainstream coverage is emphasizing the merger angle; the (strong) suggestion is that Paramount is trying to tone down criticism of Trump so Shari Redstone can get the necessary Federal Communications Commission blessing to sell it to another billionaire.
Reporting the merger angle about the proposed sale is certainly not wrong. But it downplays another significant factor. Redstone is passionately pro-Israel, and there is evidence that she has regularly interfered in her network’s coverage. Back in January, she apparently complained to CBS executives about a ’60 Minutes’ segment on Israel and Gaza. In response, CBS appointed a special watchdog to pre-review program reports — an unusual, possibly unprecedented step that smells like additional pressure.
Redstone’s pro-Israel passions are no secret. To pick just one example, you could turn to a New York Post report last October, which cited her anger with a couple of other CBS news programs, including “Face the Nation,” the network’s Sunday morning show. The Post said: “She was particularly upset with a ‘Face the Nation’ broadcast last spring in which the show was critical of Israel after seven aid workers were killed during a strike in Gaza. . .”
This raises some important questions:
- CBS News, although no longer the distinguished exemplar that it was in the days of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, is still a powerful presence on the America media landscape. ’60 Minutes’ is the most highly-rated news program on television, has 8.5 million viewers, and will celebrate its 57th anniversary later this year. (By contrast, 2-3 million regularly watch Fox News programming.)
- Shari Redstone is still the dominant shareholder in the parent company, (at least until she does get permission to sell it).
- Redstone is strongly and publicly pro-Israel, and has tried to shape the network’s coverage. Put yourself in the position of, say, the producers of the CBS Evening News. Are we supposed to believe that they are going to ignore her as they plan their daily programming?
So the question remains: Why aren’t Shari Redstone’s views — and her efforts to influence CBS’s news coverage — known more widely?