What the ‘60 Minutes’ fiasco reveals about press freedom today

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Americans have long held views about press freedom that have had little connection to the real world of journalism, thinking of reporters and television newspeople as crusading, no-holds-barred, Walter Cronkite-like oracles of the truth.

One can get a glimpse of that portrait in popular films. There we find the crafty and heroic newsman Diz Moore, in the 1939 classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Decades later, “All the President’s Men” lionized The Washington Post and reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward for exposing the Watergate scandal, and the 2015 film “Spotlight” told the story of the investigative team at the Boston Globe, which exposed child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

These are just a few examples of the journalist-as-hero myth in American popular culture. Key to that myth is the treatment of the journalist as a free agent, using the protections of the First Amendment for the public good

But the recent “60 Minutes” fiasco suggests that in the legacy media, journalists are employees tethered to organizations with their own editorial and political commitments. The First Amendment protects journalists only from government censorship — not from interference by their corporate owners.

Press freedom has always gone only as far as the owners of newspapers, radio stations or television stations wanted it to go. The goings-on at “60 Minutes” are a reminder of that fact, and of the need for citizens to pressure those who own the media to use it in the public interest.

History suggests that while the politicization of CBS News and “60 Minutes” is tragic, it is not unprecedented.

To take one example, at the turn of the 20th century, U.S. newspapers were dominated by what was called “yellow journalism,” not the staid style that later came to dominate the best outlets. Yellow journalism was attention-grabbing and sensational, even if not always accurate, and was driven by newspaper owners’ desire to sell papers.

Commentators refer to yellow journalism as its era’s “fake news.”

In that era, much of the tone of American journalism was set by a competition between two publishers, Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal. They were not shy about infusing the newspapers they led with their political views or using their news coverage to help political allies.

In the mid-20th century, the business model of news coverage changed, with local newspapers being bought up and consolidated into large newspaper companies. As a report from the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Media and Journalism explains, when those companies went public, “The conflict between shareholder value and quality journalism hit its zenith. … The quest for strong quarterly earnings … made it harder to make long-term investments in journalism.”

From the perspective of 2026, all of that seems like small potatoes. Today, media consolidation has accelerated, and owners of television, radio and newspapers are no longer primarily or exclusively in the news business.

Six corporations — Comcast, Walt Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Skydance, Sony and Amazon — are the biggest players in the media marketplace. Paramount Skydance owns CBS, which is now run by David Ellison (CEO of Skydance Media).

NPR reports that CBS’s new corporate owner “has taken a series of concrete steps to address the concerns of the news division’s sharpest critics — particularly President Trump and his allies.” Decisions like the ones that caused the furor at “60 Minutes,” including the hire of Bari Weiss as news director and handing over the storied program to Nick Bilton, “have come from top officials at Paramount under the new ownership of Skydance Media. And they represent a grand accommodation to Trump by CBS.”

Paramount Skydance reportedly wants to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which in turn owns CNN. To do so, it needs the Trump administration’s approval. Going after “60 Minutes” is a way to show loyalty to the president, a longtime critic of the show.

On June 1, that all came to a head when Scott Pelley, a longtime mainstay on the program, accused Weiss of “murdering” the news institution and questioning her qualifications. The next day, Bilton fired Pelley.

Remember, freedom of the press is only as good as those who own media companies and newspapers allow it to be.

Pelley responded by noting, “Last month 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. … The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.”

We have come a long way from Diz Moore. If the legacy media are to be saved, we must not romanticize their work. Today, more than ever, journalists need our support and our help to keep the press free.

One good place to start is by tuning out CBS or “60 Minutes.”

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.