Letter to Shari Redstone: You’re Conflating the Antisemitism Fight With Press Freedom, and You Will Lose Both

If Redstone is not careful, her efforts will backfire and undermine the credibility of her CBS News division

By Sharon Waxman

There is nothing more important to Shari Redstone at this moment in time than her fight against rising antisemitism. I know because she’s told me. I know because she said so just this week. 

“I’ve been fighting racism and antisemitism for a long time, but after Oct. 7, it became my life,” the executive chairwoman of Paramount Global said at a screening for a heart-rending new documentary, “Children of October 7,” airing on Paramount+ and one of her networks, MTV. “It became the most important thing that I can do with my time — that I can teach my children, that I can bring people together to not just watch this movie but to share this with people they know, to tell the truth, to tell the stories.”

Noble words. Noble intentions. But if Redstone is not careful, her efforts will backfire. She will fail both at combating antisemitism and at preserving the credibility of her CBS News division. 

She’s already done significant harm. What many who are angry with Redstone in the wake of “60 Minutes’” chief Bill Owen’s resignation this week do not understand is that her frustration and alleged “interference” in CBS News is rooted less in a knee-jerk response to Donald Trump’s naked bullying and more in her concern over coverage of Israel and antisemitism. 

Redstone broke with her news division last fall, when CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil was disciplined for asking pointed questions of Ta-Nehisi Coates over his new book about the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Black intellectual admitted that he was not interested in exploring the Israeli side of the conflict, but felt Palestinians were treated like Black Americans under Jim Crow; Dokoupil said his views “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”

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After internal criticism of Dokoupil, a CBS News review of the interview found that it “failed to meet the organization’s editorial standards,” as TheWrap then reported, wagging a finger over the journalist’s questioning without saying precisely what was wrong with it. “We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door,” said CBS News executive Adrienne Roark in her statement to the staff. The implication was that Dokoupil was biased. 

In a rare move two days later, Redstone broke publicly with her news team to disagree. “I think they made a mistake here,” she said. “I frankly think Tony did a great job with that interview.” And she added that Paramount’s three co-CEOs agreed with her: “I think we all agree that this was not handled correctly, and we all agree that something needs to be done.”

Something was done, after another bump over Israel in January. “60 Minutes” aired a segment about Gaza in which former State Department officials discussed the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s push against Hamas. The segment was accused of failing to point out the terrorist nature of Hamas; the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called the segment “a biased and one-sided piece.”

Nancy Spielberg and Shari Redstone attend the NYC Screening of The Children of October 7 on April 22, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)

The blowback came as Redstone was on a plane on her way back from Israel. Within 48 hours co-CEO George Cheeks had placed former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky as a new “executive editor,” overseeing standards and journalistic practices, reviewing “highly complex, sensitive issues like the war in the Middle East,” as Cheeks said in a memo sent to CBS News staffers.

Roark, meanwhile, exited the company in February. 

In the midst of all this hangs the deal for Redstone to sell Paramount Global to Skydance, backed by billionaire Larry Ellison, which has been pending federal approval since last July. Since winning the election, Trump has been determined to bring the media to heel, and took aim at the biggest broadcast target with the most exquisite point of vulnerability: CBS News. 

He sued for $10 billion, and then upped it to $20 billion, over an absurd allegation that CBS had deceptively edited an interview with then-candidate Kamala Harris. The lawsuit, as everyone who knows anything about fair news practices and the mechanics of TV news recognizes, is nonsense.