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We Took CBS’s Money. We Won’t Trade It for Silence.

Four Mike Wallace Scholarship recipients on the rebellion at CBS News and the future of an American institution.

We are often told not to bite the hand that feeds us. In our case, we were not explicitly told not to speak. No one needed to tell us. CBS News funded our education and honored our work—our role was to acknowledge the network’s generosity and graciousness.

The implicit lesson here was that gratitude should speak for itself. The expectation was simple: accept the recognition, cash the check, and leave the criticism to someone else.

We cannot. We are the four most recent recipients of the Mike Wallace Memorial Scholarship, funded entirely by CBS News. The network has invested tens of thousands of dollars in our education and recognized us as representatives of journalism’s future. That future—thanks to the corporate leadership of CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, whose editorial interventions in the network’s flagship newsmagazine, 60 Minutes, spurred the firing of several of the network’s veteran producers and reporters—is now in jeopardy. The shameful attack on 60 Minutes hasn’t happened because the program, or the network, is losing ratings, revenue, and respect; it’s occurred as part of the bid to impose ideological orthodoxy on the network’s news division. Weiss’s agenda to appease the Trump administration sends the message that institutional loyalty matters more than editorial independence, and that the truth is merely one side of a debate. The upshot of this timorous model of newsgathering is that neutrality, not objectivity or accountability, is the highest virtue of journalism. Mike Wallace didn’t think so, and neither do we. Below, each of us offers our personal reflections on our tenure as Mike Wallace scholars amid the corporate news crisis at CBS.

Silence Is Complicity

When I accepted a scholarship in Mike Wallace’s name, I knew I had a responsibility to call out the counter-journalistic practices at the organization he worked for. Staying silent at such a moment would have made me complicit in the disgraceful repudiation of the high standards set by Wallace and his colleagues at 60 Minutes. While I was not expecting the remarks I delivered in acceptance of my scholarship to leave the room, I was not surprised when they did go viral. At a time when public trust in mainstream media is at record lows, my remarks captured a widespread frustration with journalists who are unwilling to take a stand against the ways in which corporate consolidation is disfiguring the work they do at their own outlets. My speech shouldn’t have made headlines—aspiring journalists should be expected to speak out against threats to the profession.

Professional journalists should not need a high school student to ask these questions. Yet my remarks were met by an eruption of applause from nearly every journalist in the room that night. I was glad that they clapped. But the real question is whether they have the courage, integrity, and willingness to speak truth to power when it matters most. Afraid of losing their jobs in a hyper-competitive market, many of them see staying quiet as the safer option.

That’s not a luxury extended to the people they cover. As a student journalist who has spent the past two years covering US immigration policy, I have reported firsthand on the grave threats posed by mass deportation campaigns—not just to undocumented migrants but to the broader American public. Today, ICE has detained green-card holders, American citizens, and has violently menaced protesters, culminating in the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Under the ownership of David Ellison, a public ally of President Trump, and the direction of his appointed lackey Bari Weiss, CBS is suppressing the distribution of stories on the administration’s handling of immigration. Before 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley introduced me at the Emmys, he recognized his ousted colleague Sharyn Alfonsi. Earlier that day, Alfonsi had lost her contract at the network after management worked to suppress her segment on the harsh conditions experienced by Venezuelan migrants at CECOT, the Salvadoran mega-prison used to hold US deportees.

Pelley was soon penalized for speaking out. After a venerable 37-year career, he was fired by the network after criticizing the policies of Weiss and her management team in a contentious staff meeting. Alfonsi and Pelley put their jobs on the line to resist efforts to silence and marginalize their work. All journalists at CBS should follow their lead. Their fear is understandable, but it doesn’t excuse their silence. The stakes are too high.

Truth, Above All........

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