CBS News was once home to giants in the journalism industry.
Walter Cronkite – known as “the most trusted man in America” – broadcast from a bomber in WWII on a mission over Germany. Edward R. Murrow changed investigative reporting forever with a 1960 documentary that is still taught in journalism schools today. And Mike Wallace could stir fear in the hearts of interview subjects with a simple phone call from his “60 Minutes” office.
But today the news giant once heralded as the “Tiffany network” is blinking with crisis as the neutrality of its anchors is challenged and the integrity of editing at its most famous news magazine has been questioned.
Many believe the storm of credibility was born two decades ago when then-Anchor Dan Rather’s supposed scoop on George W. Bush’s Vietnam war service factually crumbled, a miscue so embarrassing it sunk the 60 Minutes II franchise for good.
But a steady run of miscues and clashes in the era of Donald Trump and Middle East war has only inflamed the distrust – at least among conservatives – to scandalous levels and left a cloud lingering over the entire CBS News franchise.
Even one of the CBS’s owners, Shari Redstone, this week questioned its news judgment and scolded it for a “bad mistake” for its handling of morning anchor Tony Dokoupil’s contentious interview last week with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.