TV News LIES

If you’re old enough to have admired CBS in its heyday, watching its decline has been painful.

Decades ago, it was dubbed the Tiffany Network – home of the great journalist Walter Cronkite (“the most trusted man in America”), and innovator of the top-flight magazine program, 60 Minutes.

Even outside its news division, the network was a place where the variety-show host Ed Sullivan could break down racial exclusion by inviting outstanding Black entertainers to his Sunday night program; that was controversial in an era of intense racial turmoil. The CBS news department had some of the best journalists in the nation, and the corporation itself exuded a sense of public mission.

But on Monday, when Bari Weiss was named editor-in-chief of CBS News, it was the latest turn in the network’s confounding departure from its roots.

Given her lack of experience in news, “placing Weiss at or near the helm of a television news division makes no more sense than it would have, a generation ago, to have given such a role to William F Buckley of the National Review or Victor Navasky of The Nation,” wrote Richard Tofel, an astute media observer, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and ProPublica, mentioning conservative and liberal opinionators of their era.

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Arizona’s Democratic senators pressed Mike Johnson on Wednesday to swear in their state’s newest representative, Adelita Grijalva, but the Republican House speaker refused to budge until funding for the government was restored.

Grijalva, a Democrat, last month won a special election to replace her late father, Raúl M Grijalva, in a southern Arizona House district. However, she has been unable to assume her new role because Johnson has not administered the oath of office.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, Arizona’s two Democratic senators, gathered to take questions from the press in front of the speaker’s office in the Capitol. Johnson soon arrived, and the Democrats pressed him on when Grijalva would be sworn in.

“We’re going to do that as soon as we get back to work, but we need the lights turned back on, so we encourage both of you to go open the government,” the speaker replied, according to video of the exchange.

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Some 500 National Guard troops were deployed near Chicago on Wednesday on President Donald Trump's orders despite the objections of the Chicago mayor and Illinois governor, who decried the militarization of their city as an unnecessary provocation.

Trump in turn called for the jailing of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, neither of whom has been accused of criminal wrongdoing. Both have emerged as prominent opponents of Trump's immigration crackdown and deployment of National Guard troops in Democratic-leaning cities.

While Trump administration officials have sounded the alarm over what they call lawless and violent protests in cities such as Chicago and Portland, Oregon, demonstrations over Trump's immigration policies have been largely peaceful and limited in size, far from the "war zone" conditions described by Trump.

The National Guard said on Wednesday roughly 200 soldiers from Texas and 300 from Illinois had gathered in the Chicago area, and were ready to protect federal personnel, including ICE agents, and federal property in the city.

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A federal appeals court on Wednesday lifted a judge’s order blocking President Trump from calling Oregon National Guard troops into federal service, but he still may not deploy them, for now.

The temporary, administrative stay puts U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut’s order halting Trump’s federalization of the National Guard members on hold while the appeals court weighs whether to extend the pause as it considers the administration’s appeal. But it keeps in place her second order barring the president from sending the troops anywhere in the state.

The temporary, administrative stay puts U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut’s order halting Trump’s federalization of the National Guard members on hold while the appeals court weighs whether to extend the pause as it considers the administration’s appeal. But it keeps in place her second order barring the president from sending the troops anywhere in the state.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit wrote in a brief order Wednesday that the decision best preserves the “status quo.”

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Former FBI Director James Comey, a longtime nemesis of President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty Oct. 8 to charges that he lied to Congress and obstructed a congressional proceeding during testimony he gave more than five years ago.

Comey entered the plea through his lawyer and longtime friend, former senior Department of Justice prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, at an initial hearing in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Comey sat stone-faced, staring straight ahead, through most of the hearing. When asked to stand, he stood ramrod straight with his hands at his sides, looking directly at the judge. He didn't say a word.

"It is the honor of my life to represent Mr. Comey in this matter," Fitzgerald said.

The proceeding – which would for most other defendants be routine – took only minutes, but it jump-started a criminal process that could last months or years. The case has special significance because it has engendered widespread concern that Trump is politicizing the DOJ and using it to go after his enemies.

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The Trump administration can’t force organizations that receive federal teen pregnancy prevention grants to comply with an executive order against “indoctrinating” children about “radical gender ideology,” a federal judge ruled Tuesday. 

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., an appointee of former President Obama, ruled that a July directive from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was arbitrary and capricious and contradicted the original congressional intent of the grants.

Howell said HHS imposed binding requirements on grant recipients but gave no indication that those requirements “were the product of reasoned decision-making and analysis of evidence.”

Instead, the agency “seemingly relied on irrelevant ideological factors, and did not justify its change in position,” Howell wrote.

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Louisiana public school librarian Amanda Jones loves helping kids find the right book. 

It’s her 25th year working in the Livingston Parish school district, the same one she attended as a kid. In 2022, she spoke at a local public library hearing about a challenge to remove a book about teen puberty, sexuality and consent from the shelves. She showed up with other community members to argue against banning any books from public libraries.

Soon, social media attacks started. She says commenters called her a "groomer" and a pedophile, publishing the name of her school and saying she was giving children pornography and erotica. Jones thought no one would believe them, but they did. She says she didn’t leave her room for four days, crying so hard her eyes swelled shut. She had debilitating panic attacks and was in and out of the hospital for two months. Jones brought a defamation lawsuit against a pair of conservative bloggers – seeking damages of $1 and an apology – that's still ongoing. Whatever happens, she says she’s committed to staying on the job.

Later, Jones would become one of the faces of the fight against book banning. She has since published a book about her experience called “That Librarian” and made it on TIME100 Next (with an appreciation written by actor and avid reader Sarah Jessica Parker).

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On a street named Gaza lives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a top-floor apartment near a sushi restaurant.

Outside, one recent afternoon, a father stood holding a megaphone.

"Bibi and Sara," he calls out to the prime minister, using his nickname, and his wife. "It's Rom's dad."

Ofir Braslavsky's 21-year-old son Rom is still being held hostage in Gaza, two years after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the devastating Gaza war.

As Netanyahu intensified the war this year, families of hostages have intensified their own war with Netanyahu — pressing him to strike a deal with Hamas to get their loved ones back before it's too late.

These families are among those in Israel who have paid the most agonizing personal cost of two years of prolonged war.

"I'm not going to let you kill my son and bring him back in a body bag," Braslavsky shouts.

The cost of unprecedented national division during wartime:re

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