Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson sat down with veteran TV news executive and journalist Jennifer Schulze to talk about the collapse of 60 Minutes, the Ellison family’s effort to consolidate control over CBS and CNN, what the death of local news means for Americans and why independent media is the only answer to right-wing oligarchs buying media outlets. Schulze, who is the former news director at WGN Chicago and author of the Substack newsletter Indistinct Chatter, brings the perspective of someone with decades of on-the-ground experience in broadcast journalism, and didn’t pull punches about the billionaire conquest of the media.
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CBS’ Gutting of 60 Minutes Is an Attack on ‘the Gold Standard’ of Broadcast Journalism
This week’s firing of 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, along with the forcing out of star journalist Sharon Alfonsi — who spearheaded the bombshell investigation into El Salvador’s CECOT gulag that CBS management tried to kill — and the exit of Anderson Cooper have left the journalism world watching to see what’s next for the remaining faces of 60 Minutes. Schulze didn’t mince words about what’s being lost.
“When I was young, it was the kind of place where you were like, ‘Oh my god, if I could work there — that would be it,’” she said. “To see it go through this trauma intentionally is just remarkable to me. I’m dumbfounded by it, I really am.”
Schulze emphasized that 60 Minutes isn’t some relic of a pre-digital era. Nine million people watched every episode last season. The show has been the gold standard of American broadcast journalism for 52 years, and the journalists who work there earn that distinction every week.
“You have to be a journalist at your core,” Schulze said of 60 Minutes’ on-air talent. “The gutting of 60 Minutes is just unfathomable, really.”
CBS’ Real Strategy: Keeping Donald Trump Happy
CBS Evening News ratings under new anchor Tony Dokoupil have cratered — hovering around 3.7 million viewers while ABC’s David Muir pulls close to 9 million on a regular night. But Schulze argued that’s beside the point, because the people making these decisions aren’t actually trying to run a news organization.
“The strategy is the owners of Paramount — who own CBS and are trying to buy CNN and Warner Brothers Discovery — their strategy is keep Donald Trump happy so he will approve all of the business deals they want to make,” Schulze explained. “They have an $11 billion merger pending right now.”
That context, Schulze said, explains everything from the Taiwan embarrassment — where CBS reported on Trump’s visit to China from Taiwan, 1,000 miles from the actual story — to the destruction of 60 Minutes. The veteran journalist argued that CBS’ billionaire owners, and their hand-picked editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, care less about ratings and more about greasing the wheels that will lead to the growth of their empire.
Bari Weiss Has No Idea How to Run a Newsroom — But That’s the Entire Point
Bari Weiss came to CBS News from The Free Press, a right-wing opinion website she founded after leaving the New York Times. She has no TV news experience. By her own admission, she doesn’t own a television. Schulze, who worked her way from reporter to field producer to executive producer to running WGN Chicago’s newsroom, described Weiss’ hire as, at minimum, an insult to everyone who spent decades preparing for that kind of role.
“She was mostly an opinion editor. She wrote a few columns at the New York Times, left in a huff, and started this Substack,” Schulze said. “I do find it a little bit offensive. I mean, I know people who run these big news organizations who spent their lives preparing for this and working at it every day. And then she swoops in — she’s a political hire, and there it is.”
The practical results have been visible. Schulze documented CBS’ string of failures in a May essay for her Indistinct Chatter Substack. Tony Dokoupil’s broadcast from Taiwan happened because Weiss failed to obtain a visa for him to go to China. She wrote that reporters unable to get to where the story is suggests a newsroom in visible distress.
“Logistics are it,” Schulze said. “You can’t do the news without a solid logistics operation, and they clearly have muffed that. And nobody cares.”
All the Media Properties the Ellisons Could Control Under the Proposed $11 Billion Merger
Oracle founder Larry Ellison — one of the wealthiest people on earth — and his son David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, are racing to finalize an $11 billion merger with Warner Brothers Discovery. If it goes through, the Ellisons will control not just CBS, but also CNN, HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, BET, TLC, the Discovery Channel, Paramount Pictures, and streaming services including Paramount Plus and HBO Max — in addition to their existing ownership stake in TikTok’s U.S. entity.
David Ellison hosted a private dinner for Donald Trump and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who would need to bless the merger, on the same week as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Schulze called the situation blatantly corrupt.
“There are some really important concerns here,” she said, noting reports that Ellison has already privately assured Trump he’d address Trump’s grievances about CNN. “He’s already shown us how powerful he is with 60 Minutes. It’s terrifying, really.”
Schulze expressed hope that California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s lawsuit and a coalition of state attorneys general could slow or stop the deal, particularly given that Democrats are expected to make gains in the midterms. Schlulze noted that Democratic lawmakers have already said they’ll be targeting the merger if they win back a majority in one or both chambers of Congress.
Local News Vanishes Overnight in Indianapolis
In a May 4 post to her Substack, Schulze wrote about how the entire newsroom of Indianapolis, Indiana ABC affiliate WRTV was shut down without warning literally overnight. Over 50 journalists lost their jobs. By 10 PM that same night, a newscast from a competing station took the WRTV team’s place.
Schulze said what happened in Indianapolis is coming to communities across the country, especially if the Nexstar-Tegna merger — which would give one company ownership of 256 TV stations reaching roughly 80 percent of the country — goes through. She argued the stakes are much higher than most people realize.
“Local news is the lifeblood of a community in many respects,” she said. “It’s the place where your local officials are being held to account. It’s the place where reporters are digging into that sketchy contract, or that data center that got secretly approved, and they lied to you about how much energy the data center was going to suck out of your community.”
She urged people to find out who owns their local TV station, and to be vocal with advertisers if they don’t like what they see.
How Nexstar Is Laundering Right-Wing Narratives Through Local Media
Nexstar — which brands itself as a non-biased, middle-of-the-road news organization — owns NewsNation, a cable network that Schulze plainly described as “Fox Lite.” Its prime time lineup is full of former Fox News personalities, and Nexstar chairman Perry Sook has made a series of moves aimed at winning favor with the Trump administration for his pending merger. Schulze warned that NewsNation’s programming is already being fed into Nexstar’s local stations, with more to come.
“We do not need any more of that,” she said. “The right wing has done a perfectly executed capture of media, and it’s not a new project for them. They’ve been doing it for decades.”
The Solution: Public Funding and Independent Media
With legacy media increasingly captured by billionaires trying to cozy up to the powerful, Schulze sees independent media as a critical part of the answer. She also called for expanded public media funding in the vein of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in that a federally funded entity could provide grants to media outlets that don’t have corporate advertisers. She also expressed a need for a national media literacy program, along with a Democratic-led antitrust movement willing to break up media monopolies similar to how railroad and oil barons had their empires broken up by the Sherman Antitrust Act.
“We need to start thinking about media as a public good, instead of a political tool,” Schulze said.
The veteran broadcast journalist also applauded Hungary’s new government as an instructive example the U.S. could soon follow. After a decade of former Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán consolidating media control among his donors and political allies, Peter Magyar’s new government has moved to dismantle the machinery used to target journalists and opposition figures. She stressed that today’s consolidated media environment can be undone, but only if enough people stand up and fight for it.
“Get out there and support any local media and independent media you can,” she said. “They need your help. Help them in the meantime, while we sort this out.”
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