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CBS News and CNN to Establish Editorial Independence Board
Confirmed
In Short: As part of a settlement with state attorneys general, CBS News and CNN will establish an Editorial Independence Board to oversee editorial integrity under Paramount’s ownership.
The board will be tasked with creating guiding principles based on each network’s policies for accuracy, independence, fairness, and journalistic integrity.
The board will resolve disputes between network employees and management regarding alleged violations of these principles.
No member of any government entity, including federal, state, and local governments, may approve or have approval rights over members appointed to the Editorial Independence Board.
Officers, directors, or non-journalist employees of Paramount-WB are also restricted from serving on the board.
The board will consist of five members who must have practiced journalism for at least 10 years.
The board will report to the corporate board via a chief compliance officer.
The board members will serve for three years and can only be removed for good cause.
The board will be appointed by the board of directors for the combined company within 180 days of the deal closing.
The settlement does not restrict a combination of CBS News and CNN, nor does it give the board oversight over who runs the respective news entities.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) expressed concerns about the board's effectiveness, stating that a Paramount-appointed board for CNN and CBS is worthless.
FPF Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern said, “A Paramount-appointed editorial independence board for CNN and CBS is worthless. The fish rots from the head, and this particular fish is headed by a compromised oligarch with a history of throwing journalists under the bus.”
What's confirmed
- And it will monitor “adherence to ethical journalism as defined by journalism industry best practices and to editorial independence.” “No member of any government or governmental entity, including federal, state, and local governments, may approve or have approval rights over members appointed to the Editorial Independence Board,” per the decree.
What's still developing
- A separate settlement with the Writers Guild of America includes a provision prohibiting writer layoffs at CBS News broadcast for five years, the guild said.
- As part of commitments to close its purchase of Paramount last year, Skydance said that it would install an ombudsman to take complaints over CBS News.
- A special committee was set up in 2007 to oversee editorial integrity at the Wall Street Journal, as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp was looking to acquire the news outlet from the Bancroft family trust.
- The potential ownership of CBS News and CNN under one corporate owner has generated months of fear, anxiety and loathing at both networks, but the Paramount – Warner Bros.
- Nor does it give the board oversight over who runs the respective news entities, something that has been an issue as CEO David Ellison tapped Bari Weiss to lead CBS News after Skydance’s purchase of Paramount last year.
- Discovery, and in the process become the biggest TV news organization in the world.
- With NBC News, MS NOW and CNBC now split between multiple companies, the combined CNN and CBS News will be unrivaled in scale, certainly in the U.S, if not the entire world.
- “No more than two (2) Editorial Independence Board Members may be affiliated with the same political party,” the agreement states, suggesting that journalists with some partisan leanings could be permitted.
- The FPF took immediate issue with the idea of the board.
- It’s unclear how the attorneys general or courts can constitutionally hold Paramount accountable for the board’s actions or inaction without themselves interfering in content.
- “And with respect to CBS, the editorial board makes even less sense,” Stern went on.
- To Carr, of course, that means reporting that is uncritical of the administration.” He finished: “Carr has said that he’d attempt to punish failure to abide by those terms, as he interprets them, as false statements to a federal agency.