BREAKING: Billionaire CBS Owner Plans to Gut 60 Minutes

Here's our plan to fight back.

I need to tell you something that should make your blood run cold.

Bari Weiss, the Trump apologist David Ellison installed at CBS News, is quietly planning to destroy the most-watched television news program in America.

A subscription-only media newsletter just revealed that network leaders talked Weiss out of dismantling 60 Minutes while the season was still on air. So, she’s waiting until May. The moment this season ends, CBS sources say, she plans to “blow it up.”

60 Minutes. The show that brought you Watergate. The show that exposed corporate fraud. The show that’s been the cornerstone of American accountability journalism for more than fifty years.

Gone. Not because it failed. Because it succeeded at exposing the corruption of people in power.

This is what the billionaire takeover of American media looks like. It doesn’t arrive with a gun. It arrives with a patient owner, a friendly hire, and a clock. Ellison buys CBS. He hires Bari Weiss. He waits for the right moment. And then he blows it up.

This is not paranoia. This is the documented, accelerating collapse of the press into the hands of people who answer to Donald Trump. Every outlet that falls makes the silence a little louder.

That’s why I’m writing to you today. Because what happens next depends entirely on what people like you decide to do about it.

Let me tell you what Raw America has already done — and what we’re building toward.

When we launched, I made a promise: we would go where the story was, get access other outlets wouldn’t pursue, and tell you the truth without a billionaire in the background deciding what was too risky to publish.

We’ve kept that promise.

We’ve brought you exclusive sit-downs with Michael Fanone, the Capitol Police officer who fought for his life on January 6th. With Lev Parnas, the man who was inside Giuliani’s orbit and has been speaking truth ever since. With the No Kings organizers building the resistance in real time. We’ve joined the Washington press pool. We have a reporter embedded on Capitol Hill attending hearings and protests, bringing you coverage that corporate networks bury.

We’re in the rooms. We’re getting the access. And our audience is growing every single week.

Here’s what I’m genuinely excited to tell you: we are on the verge of partnering with a new Capitol Hill reporter who has extraordinary access to Democratic members of Congress. We’re talking about the kind of insider relationships that take years to build. The conversations that never make it onto the record, the ones that produce exclusive interviews before the spin machine runs. The kind of access that changes what a publication can do for its readers.

This is the Raw America we’re building. But I need to be honest with you about something.

We’re behind on our fundraising goals.

Not because the audience isn’t there. Not because the journalism isn’t resonating. But because we don’t have a Larry Ellison or a Jeff Bezos covering the gap.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you’ll get to it. You’ll subscribe next week. You’ve been meaning to. Life is busy and there are a lot of asks out there right now.

I understand. But I want you to think about something for just a moment.

Every time an outlet like 60 Minutes falls, every day the Washington Post shrinks — there’s a cost. Journalists lose their jobs. Investigations don’t happen. Stories that could have changed things never get told. And the people responsible for those abuses walk free.

That cost is real. It lands on real people. And the only thing that prevents it from landing everywhere is the existence of independent media that doesn’t owe anyone anything.

Raw America is that. But only if readers fund it.

A year’s subscription to Raw America costs less than 25 cents a day. What it buys isn’t just access to our content. It buys a newsroom no billionaire can shut down, restructure, or blow up.

Here’s what your subscription directly funds right now:

Our Capitol Hill reporter, in the building, at the hearings, in the hallways. The new reporter we’re bringing on with access to Democratic members that you won’t find replicated anywhere else. Exclusive interviews with the people at the center of the biggest stories in American politics. A daily newsletter that connects the dots corporate media refuses to connect. And the independence that makes all of it possible.

If you’ve been reading Raw America for free, thank you. Your readership matters. Sharing our work matters. But today I’m asking for more.

The moment Bari Weiss walks into CBS News in May with a mandate to gut the most important investigative program in America, the need for what we’re building becomes undeniable. The question is whether we’re strong enough by then to fill even a fraction of that void.

We can be. But only with you.

Become a paid subscriber today. Not someday. Today.

If you’re already a paid subscriber — thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You’re the reason this exists. Now I’m asking you to do one more thing: forward this email to someone you know who isn’t yet a subscriber. Someone who is angry about what’s happening to the press. Someone who keeps asking where the good journalism is. Send them here. Tell them this is it.

The journalism you want to exist has to be funded. The newsroom that can’t be bought has to be paid for by the people it serves. That’s us. That’s you. That’s what we’re building together.

I’m deeply excited about where Raw America is going. The access we’re getting. The reporters we’re bringing on. The stories we’re going to break together. The conversations with members of Congress that you’re going to get to hear directly.

But none of it exists without you making the decision today.

Thank you for being on this journey with us. It means more than I can say. Join our people-powered movement.

—John Byrne

Founder, Raw Story and Raw America