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CBS Evening News fails to cover Trump's pardon of cryptocurrency executive with ties to Trump business venture

CBS’ counterparts NBC, ABC, and PBS all covered the story on their Thursday evening news shows

Written by Gideon Taaffe

Research contributions from Alex Guiden

Published 10/24/25 12:45 PM EDT

This week, President Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who served four months in prison due to his company’s role in facilitating money laundering for criminals and terrorists. Binance has been a supporter of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto company. 

CBS’ evening news program failed to cover this story last night while its broadcast counterparts NBC, ABC, and PBS all did.

Binance has played a pivotal role in supporting the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial by helping increase the use of USD1, World Liberty’s flagship coin. According to The Wall Street Journal, “World Liberty has generated significantly more income for the Trump family in the past year than their property portfolio ever has annually.” Since his arrest, Zhao has lobbied the Trump administration for a pardon and the Trump family has held talks about taking a financial stake in Binance. 

According to a Media Matters review, CBS Evening News did not cover the pardon on its Thursday evening broadcast, while its counterparts ABC, NBC, and PBS did. In covering the pardon, the other broadcast networks all noted that Zhao and Binance have business ties to the Trump family.

Video file

Citation

From the October 23, 2025, edition of ABC World News Tonight

CBS recently appointed Bari Weiss, the founder of the conservative media company The Free Press, as its editor-in-chief. NPR wrote of her appointment, “She is seen as a change agent for a network regularly accused by President Trump and his political allies of liberal bias.” 

Paramount, CBS’ parent company, was recently taken over by Skydance — run by Trump ally Larry Ellison’s son, David Ellison — and has since made several moves to appeal to conservatives. Along with hiring Weiss, Paramount named Kenneth Weinstein, “a conservative policy veteran who Trump nominated to be US ambassador to Japan in 2020,” ombudsman for the news channel, putting him in charge of “monitoring allegations of bias and audience complaints.” Ellison also agreed to end any diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at the network and has reportedly discussed the possibility of providing Trump with $20 million of public service announcements. 

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