Inside The Push For Unbiased Journalism At Paramount And WBD

When new ownership took the reins at CBS News, the company guaranteed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that it would “embody a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum and that CBS’s reporting will be fair, unbiased, and fact-based.” To ensure compliance with that commitment, Paramount agreed to bring an independent ombudsman aboard to “evaluate complaints of bias” in the newsroom.

The collective Left lost their minds. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-NY), for instance, blasted the FCC’s action as furthering an “unprecedented and illegal campaign to chill free speech and independent news reporting protected by the First Amendment.” He linked the ombudsman to “government censorship,” “part of the administration’s ongoing, unlawful campaign to silence prominent criticism of the President.”

Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, similarly criticized the “installation of a newsroom ‘minder’ to monitor supposed bias,” accusing the ombudsman of “Appear[ing] to Be Acting as a Government Regulator and Censor Enforcing Trump’s Demands for More Pro-Trump Content.”

The executive director of the Media Law Resource Center, meanwhile, said “the appointment of a ‘bias monitor’ to evaluate and report on substantive content of CBS News” was “the most nefarious move of all, a development which more directly violates the Constitution than any of the others.”

Of course, the FCC was not censoring anyone, and CBS agreed to these terms because “fair, unbiased, fact-based reporting” is just good journalism.

Yet now we hear a curious silence from many of the same cast of characters as California’s Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, imposes conditions on another acquisition by Paramount. Bonta and 11 other Dem AGs sued to stop the company’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), another large media corporation. The two sides settled recently, and the settlement included a commitment by Paramount to “independent, objective, fact-based reporting.” Sound familiar?

To ensure compliance with that objective at CBS News and CNN, two subsidiaries included in the new Paramount, the company will create a “news editorial independent board” to “establish guiding editorial and journalism principles for the combined entity’s news channels.”

Among the board’s duties? “[R]esolving any disputes between CBS News employees, CNN employees and management of the combined entity regarding alleged reporting bias or failure to meet agreed reporting fairness standards.”

So one might call the board a “bias monitor”?

Yet it’s generally crickets from Democrats ready to critique Bonta and the proposed board, though many are unhappy with the overall contours of the antitrust settlement.

To his credit, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) publicly criticized the deal, and now Bonta and Paramount have responded in court filings this week. In a filing dated September 28, the Democratic attorney general says, “The Editorial Independence Board does not raise First Amendment concerns.” Instead, he explains that the board will reflect journalistic best practices and embody Paramount’s private conduct, not the government’s.

Just so. The same is true for the FCC’s ombudsman at CBS News. Both the ombudsman and the board should aim for the same goal: “independent, objective, fact-based reporting.”

For too long, CBS and CNN have operated as an arm of the Democratic Party. That is changing at CBS under Bari Weiss’s leadership. And hopefully it will soon change at CNN. The goal should be simple: reporting that tells it straight down the middle, not as a megaphone for one party or cause. An internal public editor or viewer advocate can reinforce that goal, and doing so “does not raise First Amendment concerns,” contrary to the selective hysteria of some Democrats.

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Daniel Suhr is president of the Center for American Rights, which first proposed the ombudsman concept for CBS News in filings before the FCC.