Do 'Major Shakeups' Mean CBS News Is in Free Fall?

So maybe they won't reinvent the wheel. Some of these problems affect all the networks. Americans under 40 aren't paying much attention to broadcast TV any more, news or entertainment. What's unique is the Left hates Bari Weiss as if she's creating CBS Newsmax, even though it looks like nothing of the sort. Suffice to say there are more negative headlines out there about what was once nicknamed “The Tiffany Network.” Ahhh how the times have changed - and not for the good for CBS. Doubtless it galls the network’s old timers to see an upstart site named “Digital Chew” to be headlining this last year: Why Is CBS No Longer America’s Most Trusted Network? Then in what has to be depressing for anyone inside CBS, there were these headlines on different sections of the piece: The Fall of CBS: What Happened to the ‘Tiffany Network’? A Glorious Past: CBS Was the King of Trust Where Did the Trust Go? A Slow Decline for CBS The Rise of Competition and Changing Viewer Habits Attempts to Rebuild, but Is It Too Late? What CBS Can Learn from Its Own History The Bottom Line Ouch. Ouch! But, it is often reminded in the world of conventional wisdom, learning from a bad situation can lead to turning that bad situation around and making a positive situation. Take some of those headlines above. Yes, indeed. CBS was once “the King of Trust.” But what happened? Anyone of a certain age (ahem!) who has watched the network for decades and seen it go from the trusting hands of Edward R. Murrow and then on into the hands of Walter Cronkite -- the latter once dubbed “The Most Trusted Man in America” who received countless awards, both from fellow journalists and on one occasion from President Jimmy Carter -- has seen a slow-motion decline in viewer trust. And in fairness, that decline in that trust was not limited to CBS. That decline in trust was well apparent across what eventually became known as the “liberal media”. From CBS and its fellow broadcast networks to the likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and others the American reading public came to the conclusion that the nation’s media had overwhelmingly moved Left - almost wholesale and decidedly unrepentantly. And the “liberal” addition to its name -making it “the liberal media” - came about because, in fact, starting at least with the Vietnam War, journalists across the board began to turn their reporting from honest journalism and transforming it into opinion journalism. It can be truthfully said that the history of American journalism began to lose its trustworthiness then and there. The obvious question? Can that trust return? And the answer is that this trust has in fact returned - but not as expected. No, the lefty Times and Washington Post and broadcast networks and other liberal media are not going to be moving right. What’s changed is the technology. In today’s 21st century all one has to do is check out the countless conservative websites in the Internet universe. (As I’ve noted before, sites exactly like the site you are reading, NewsBusters.) Not to mention talk radio, which the late Rush Limbaugh helped launch into a major media industry. Time, as the old saying goes, moves on. And so it has in the case of the American media. Which is, one can say, a good thing. A very good thing. And that good thing is not going away. Which, interestingly enough, the CBS News network, in a free fall, is finding out the hard way. Alex Christy Sat, 04/04/2026 - 13:30 Marketing Timing Regular Search Engine Title Do 'Major Shakeups' Mean CBS News Is in Free Fall? CNS Commentary Off