CBS looks to hire ‘ombudsman’ as part of Trump settlement

JOB OPENING
Wanted: MAGA-leaning broadcast executive looking to serve as a news “ombudsman,” and make CBS News less of a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party.
Stating Salary: $250,000 a year.
Hours: One day a month.

Not a bad gig — and it’s exactly what executives at CBS are searching for at the broadcaster, The Post has learned.

The position is part of a settlement agreement with President Trump’s media regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, which investigated whether the network’s Democrat-friendly political tilt violated FCC “public interest” guidelines.

The investigation centered on a controversial “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 election that Trump and many conservatives believed was edited to make Harris sound more coherent.
Executives at the network are said to be making calls to gauge interest in the job.

The move to hire an executive to monitor and root out newsroom bias also comes as CBS got some good news in the investigation front: FCC chair Brendan Carr will not be ramping up a new probe into criticism that “60 Minutes” also took pains to edit out former President Joe Biden’s verbal incontinence during an earlier interview.

Former Paramount chief Shari Redstone is said to have settled a separate private lawsuit brought by Trump over the Harris editing — paying $16 million, with the new owners privately agreeing to run pro-MAGA public-service ads — over concerns discovery would lead to questions about the editing of the Biden interview that ran in October 2023, months before the former president dropped out of the race over questions about his stamina and mental agility.

CBS isn’t looking for much from the ombudsman, at least that is how it now appears. Sources told me the work load would amount to about a day a month — which outside observers said was ridiculous. The salary would be in the low six figures, sound $250,000 a year, these people said.

“I was told about the ombudsman job listing and said $250,000 is way too low given all the bias over there,” said one top telecom lawyer with direct knowledge of the matter. “You’re going to be working a lot more than one day a month.”

A CBS press rep declined comment, as did an FCC official.

The FCC’s Harris investigation centered on whether CBS’s 60 Minutes unfairly edited the word-salad-prone Democratic presidential nominee to sound more coherent while she answered a policy question.
CBS denied the charges, but the inquiry throttled its parent company Paramount’s $8 billion merger between CBS’s parent, Paramount and independent studio Skydance until the network gave into the FCC’s demands.

The creation of an ombudsman was a condition placed on the network by Carr to gain regulatory approval for the deal, which closed on Aug. 7. Other conditions include the end of Diversity Equity and Inclusion hiring practices.

The job search is being led by Jeff Shell, the new head of CBS News now that the merger is complete. CBS has agreed to have a mediator to handle complaints about the political leanings of its news for two years.

The ombudsman will report directly to Shell, a veteran TV executive, and not the FCC, The Post has learned.

So far, the network has been interviewing right-wing media executives at think tanks, people with knowledge of the matter say.

The FCC will be monitoring the effectiveness of the ombudsman in rooting out what conservatives, and Carr himself, considers wide-spread left-wing bias in the network’s news programming, people with knowledge of the matter tell The Post.

Such bias in local broadcast news can violate FCC fairness guidelines that apply to public airwaves as opposed to cable.

The FCC can deny local broadcast licenses and levy fines over violations of those rules.