On The Dean Obeidallah Show, Angelo Carusone discusses the chaos at CBS and what it tells us about changes coming to CNN
Carusone: “It's not just what happens on-air and for the big personalities, it's also what's going to be happening in the day-to-day newsrooms that will also be affected”
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On The Dean Obeidallah Show, Angelo Carusone discusses the chaos at CBS and what it tells us about changes coming to CNN
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From the June 3, 2026, edition of SiriusXM's The Dean Obeidallah Show
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): So, there's sort of a couple of ways to look at this, right? And they're not incompatible. They're just different layers. So, one is, you know, drama, office drama, right? And that's not saying -- but just like, office drama.
The second then is inside baseball, sort of like media navel gazing. It's CBS News. It's 60 Minutes, which has this very, you know, vaulted sort of place as a news gathering and news storytelling institution in the landscape.
And then the third dimension is the larger sort of like information landscape in the country and the fact that what's happening here at CBS and sort of these power struggles, the things that led to this, are part of this larger shift that's taking place all over. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the new owners of CBS are about to become the new owners of CNN.
And so there are three layers. And it is really easy to get trapped in the first one, which is this personality, the sort of the personal part of it. That's the part that makes it so compelling. That's why we're talking about it. And I don't think that's an accident. I actually think that they're all connected. But if you're Scott Pelley, for example, you're not somebody that is not able to control your emotions. You're not some amateur. And you're doing this by design to tell a larger story about journalism, about CBS, about what's happening there, and what's about and what's likely to happen elsewhere, right? This isn't just like, I'm airing some personal grievances because I have a petty dispute. This is, I'm taking, I'm using this moment -- and you teed it up really well because there were a bunch of things that happened to use my position of influence and power at CBS and in the media landscape to actually put a spotlight on, not just what's happening here, but then a warning about what's about to happen elsewhere. And so, that's the nuts and bolts of it.
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This dialectic, this back and forth between Pelley and the executives, it's like they're stepping on a trap in a way, at least a narrative trap, now they don't seem to care, and I think that's the part that is extremely revealing. That's part of the point of the story that he's trying to make is that they don't care, right? They actually don't. And that means that the types of things that usually are safeguards in a news media environment, which are reputational concerns, that is not driving them. Accuracy, standards, reputational concerns, all those things are kind of tied up to credibility and your audience and your relationship to the audience. That's not what's driving or motivating Bari Weiss and CBS right now. Being a political arm is, functioning as propaganda is. And that's the real, that's the warning and sort of the takeaway here.
So every time they sort of step in one of these new evolving stories that he puts out there and they go back and forth, yeah, they're reinforcing the worst impressions. They're also validating at its core of the critique here, which is that they're no longer functioning in the way a newsroom would function. They're functioning as something different.
DEAN OBEIDALLAH (HOST): And So Angelo, I would imagine, I think it's pretty a fair bet, the anchors at CNN watching Ellison's coming, are taking note of this. And maybe some of them are getting their resumes together, to be blunt, and, or others are going to be, we're going to find out how morally flexible they are, let's put it that way. Like, will Jake Tapper be as difficult to them? Will Erin Burnett leave? I mean, I've read things about Erin Burnett might not like the Ellisons or something like that. I mean, I think at the back of my mind, but anyway, I'm not picking on Erin. I'm saying like, there's going to be, I would imagine every anchor gets the message from all of this.
CARUSONE: Yeah, and, you know, and what they're getting to is that they're also getting a review of the playbook and so are all of us. But the people at CNN are, which is that -- what is, if you really concisely articulate what happened at CBS, is you sort of, you install friendly editors and decision makers, then you, you start to spike stories that are outside of your propaganda narrative, and then as a consequence of those spikes, you get agitators or people that are, you know, critiquing or resistance, and then you just purge the resistors. And you keep that cycle going until you've basically gotten rid of all the people that are going to be an obstacle, and that's how you transform these institutions.
And so, if you are one of the bigger people at CNN, yeah, you are probably concerned. I mean, certainly Anderson Cooper should be because they bumped him from 60 Minutes. I mean, he should be because he's clearly one of the targets.
And I think I'll just be clear, it's not just going to be CNN. It is a constellation of outlets. They're also going to have HBO and that means they're going to certainly target Bill Maher.
OBEIDALLAH: Well, they might like Maher, but we'll see how it plays out.
CARUSONE: I would be surprising, you know, he's a scalp for them no matter what, even though he's kind of been in this weird place lately, well, maybe more than lately. But, he's a scalp, and John Oliver, for example. Anything that's sort of outside of their narrative, right? They've targeted late night hosts and he's kind of fits in that bucket. It is going to be a part of their transformation.
And if you're there, you probably should be thinking about what's next or where your lines are. Because it's very clear -- I mean, just to really focus this in on Scott Pelley, for example, as an illustration for other personalities. Scott Pelley is basically like Wolf Blitzer to CNN in that the guy's been there for 40 years. This is not somebody new. I mean, it's a name. I mean, you know, it's like, he was there for decades. He is so deeply tied in to the CBS News brand, and yet they could get rid of him like that and for pushing, not in any way for anything crazy, for basic journalism. So, if you're a CNN anchor, it doesn't matter who you are, you're not safe, right?
So that I think is the other takeaway from this. And they will use the same playbook, which is a real shame because CNN, one, is a global operation in that sense, and you know they made real investments in news gathering post-2016 and they've always made these investments but they did a huge wave of news gathering and news investments, and they have a large news operation team. I think people think of them as just a lot of times, oh, cable news. Yeah, that's like, that's nothing. That's not the CNN operation. The CNN operation is basically like another major newspaper in that they're churning out news reports and news articles on a regular basis. And that is all going to be subject to these transformations. So it's not just what happens on-air and for the big personalities, it's also what's going to be happening in the day-to-day newsrooms that will also be affected.