CBS News pulls job offer from a TV producer over Trump posting.

Plus: Marty Baron, Ted Boutrous, Peter Baker and Taylor Lorenz on President Trump versus the News Media.

CBS News pulled a job offer from a TV producer after it discovered she had written a critical personal essay about a first term Trump policy. The unnamed producer, who has since deleted the item, has been trying to solicit help from various journalism organizations to lobby CBS News President Tom Cibrowski to reverse the decision. The producer emailed industry veterans for help saying that there were no jokes about the President, nor criticism of his mental state or looks, just a personal take about a policy that had affected her life.

The situation is raising questions about the extreme vetting news networks are conducting to avoid finding themselves on the wrong side of the President. It’s not hard to see why CBS News would be cautious. The network is currently facing a $20 billion lawsuit from President Trump over its editing of an interview with former VP Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes.” Though the two sides have agreed to mediators, CBS News’ parent company Paramount Global is still looking to finalize a merger with the Ellison-backed Skydance Media. CBS News was not immediately available for comment.

Fighting President Trump in the courts doesn’t come cheap either. First amendment lawyers can run as much as $2,000 an hour. “[Trump] is like a wild animal. He sees vulnerability and he’s pouncing … over and over again. He’s using the full force of government to sabotage the economic sustainability of the press,” said Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post. I called him earlier this month to get his thoughts on the volley of lawsuits and FCC investigations against media owners. Baron suggests the news media create a jointly backed legal fund. “There are fewer resources and financially the press is weakened.”

Reporters are in the firing line of the White House’s extraordinarily aggressive push-back on social media, and while there’s no shortage of tough journalism around, there’s a feeling that the networks have been making blood sacrifices.

Ted Boutrous, a first amendment lawyer and partner at Gibson, Dunn, told me, “I was very, very disappointed to see CNN part ways with Jim Acosta who’s a fabulous reporter.” Acosta quit the network in January after his slot was cancelled.

Back in 2018, the White House cancelled Acosta’s press pass in a kerfuffle over a microphone. Media owners were much bolder then. Even while Time Warner was wrestling with the Justice Department over its merger with AT&T, EVP-corporate marketing Gary Ginsberg tapped Boutrous to get Acosta back in the briefing room. “The fracturing of the media world has made it more difficult to marshall the resources and the troops than even five or ten years ago,” Boutrous added. Watching the President launch litigious volleys at media companies has encouraged other subjects of news reports to sue, tying legal departments in knots.

Author Michael Wolff believes he’s been shunned by news networks over his new Trump book. In a piece for The Hollywood Reporter he wrote, “What was not anticipated is how quickly and easily the media has capitulated and groveled. In the past, news organizations have met governmental threats and incursions with implacable resistance,” he wrote.

Media owners are treading carefully as they see how things play out. One person familiar with internal conversations at CNN told me: “Executives are playing the long game and wondering what Trump could do. It’s about thinking it could get way worse and they’re concerned about antagonizing the administration in any way that could expedite that.”

Producers and editors at CNN have noticed that caution is the watchword among senior executives who lead CNN’s morning call. Editorial leaders quickly suggest taking conversations offline if things get too heated for fear of it leaking to the President one insider said. Indeed, there have been combative internal debates about whether to cover everything President Trump has to say. Some staffers have argued that only truthful portions of speeches should make it to air while colleagues pushed back saying the network needs to stay competitive by sharing everything.

Chilling debates too are the corporate reminders that Slack messages can be part of third party legal claims. CNN recently settled with a U.S. Army veteran who claimed he had been defamed by the network. A court had ordered the network to pay $5 million after it aired a segment about his role evacuating personnel in Afghanistan.

Doug Heye, a Republican cable-TV pundit, observes, “Reporters and producers are struggling with fundamental questions about how to cover this administration and they don’t fully know yet…Whatever they do, they’ll be criticized.”

A CNBC staffer said that reporters are feeling incredibly tense: “The first Trump administration wasn’t a cake walk but it’s not just what the administration is doing to the media, it’s everything that’s happening as a country.”

“This is a moment where we need media leaders of principle and backbone and I hope that they realize, for the future of our profession, now is the time we need that most,” Peter Baker, the New York Times’ chief White house correspondent told me as we discussed the departures from his former employer the Washington Post. Another TV newsroom staffer shared, “To see that newsroom in particular. We all thought Bezos would save it and here we are. It’s one of the hardest times.”

Meanwhile President Trump praised Jeff Bezos’ efforts to shake-up the paper. The conflicts of interest are obvious. Variety reported in January that Bezos’ Amazon Prime Video is considering a foray into TV news after tapping Brian Williams to cover the election. At the same time Amazon is paying the President and his family for shows. The streamer made a deal for the decades-old former reality show “The Apprentice,” co-owned by President Trump and ponied up $40 million for a documentary about the First Lady who will receive a 70 percent cut of the proceeds (before sponsorships) according to the WSJ.

The full force of the Trump administration’s aggressive dealings with the media come at a time of seismic change, and additional FCC scrutiny and threats of pulling broadcast licenses. CNN’s parent Warner Bros. Discovery is considering separating its cable assets while NBCUniversal is already in the process of spinning out MSNBC and CNBC into a new company with far fewer corporate resources. Meanwhile, advertisers are leaving traditional cable and moving to streaming services or cutting TV spend altogether. Unilever, one of the world’s biggest ad spenders with brands like Dove, said it is shifting 50 percent of its ad budget to social media.

Already, CNN is working on slimming its ranks in TV and rethinking their DC operations. Scores of producers and editors at CNN worked their final day on Feb. 28 after notification of 200 layoffs a month earlier as part of a shift of resources from linear to digital. (The network is hiring for new digital roles.) Among the departures were Allison Hoffman, the executive editor of CNN Politics; managing editor Mikayla Bouchard and Penelope Patsuris, director of programming, business.

NBC News Group’s talent budget also looks decidedly slimmer after the company parted ways with Hoda Kotb, Joy Reid and Chuck Todd while Lester Holt is leaving “Nightly News.” The WGA Union said some 99 staffers had been laid off, though the company said it would post 100 new positions at MSNBC. The company also has to worry about the fire breathing FCC Chair Brendan Carr and his DEI investigations. Nowhere in the news business have DEI efforts been a bigger deal than at NBCUniversal. Craig Robinson, the EVP and chief diversity officer, sits atop a Comcast-funded $100 million racial justice initiative while NBCU News Group’s Yvette Miley oversees a large DEI staff.

When News Group Chairman Cesar Conde announced his 2020 initiative to hire 50 percent women and 50 percent people of color to the company, he told NPR in an interview, “Joy Reid became the first African American woman to be in prime time in cable. And we’re very proud of the incredible professional that Joy is, and to be able to have that as an example is also important in the overall development and recruitment of the next generation of leaders.” Now she’s cancelled and her former boss, Rashida Jones, the first Black woman to lead a major cable news channel left MSNBC too.

ABC News has cut scores of positions as president, Almin Karamehmedovic restructures the news division in the wake of Disney’s $16 million settlement with Trump over comments made by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.

The weakening revenue picture is affecting the TV news business in ways that’s reducing the leverage of the talent and the people who represent them. One agent told me, “What was done by a team of six is now four. It’s difficult to move across networks, and there’s tons of people who are out of work. If you don’t want to do it, they’ll find someone who will.”

The feeling inside newsrooms is “Nervousness. Anxiety,” Chris Cillizza told me. The former CNN political commentator now has his own Substack and YouTube channel. “I have fielded more calls from legacy reporters asking about the independent news creator’s life in the past two months than I did for the first 20 months I was doing this.”

TV news reporters aren’t just competing with each other though. They’re competing with political content creators with zero experience. “Joe Schmo on X could have three million followers and it’s not reporting, it’s not verified and doesn’t issue corrections when he’s wrong. You see the absolute democratization of platforms has reduced the power and influence of traditional media.”

“This time, traditional media is completely neutered. It’s been chaos and Trump recognizes that when they’re preoccupied with chaos he can do whatever he wants,” said Taylor Lorenz, an internet culture reporter, who runs the Substack newsletter UserMag.

“There’s definitely the feeling of really being thrown into the tumble dryer. You don’t know what’s coming next,” one CNN staffer told me. “We get a heads-up from the White House about something and you think maybe it’s about bringing down inflation or a plan for homelessness — and then it’s an executive order about paper straws.”

Worst of all, reporters are feeling that even when they’ve done their best work, investigations are failing to get traction because they’re not always landing with impact with an audience that is weary and switching off the news. “Trump counted it as one of his greatest achievements that public confidence in the press had declined,” said Baron. “He saw himself as somebody who had done the profession enormous damage and in fact he did.”

*I was previously a reporter for NBC News.

I’m discussing President Trump and the Media on Tuesday as part of a virtual panel hosted by The Media Society.

Other speakers include: Robert Moore: ITV News Correspondent and presenter of 'Storming the Capitol: The Inside Story' and Margaret Sullivan: Guardian US Columnist and Executive Director for the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics at the Columbia Journalism School. You can get tickets here.

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