Henry Kissinger has been dead nearly three years but his legacy of Machiavellian intrigue will long be remembered. Perhaps no more so than Chile where the Kissinger and Nixon sought to keep socialist Salvador Allende from gaining power.
TIME – after the coup – 9.24.1973
When that failed and a military coup eliminated President Allende on September 11, 1973 the American government aligned itself at the hip with the free market fascist leaning junta led by Augusto Pinochet.
Excerpted from Foreign Affairs Magazine – 12.3.2023 Timothy Naftali
The Nixon administration continued the policy started by President Kennedy of deploying covert action in Vietnam to prevent the socialist Salvatore Allende from ever becoming president of Chile
Kissinger and Nixon.
Never best friends. Just allies out of necessity
In September 1970, Henry Kissinger supervised the CIA’s efforts to arrange a military coup to prevent Allende, who had just received the largest number of votes in a national election, from becoming president that year. “I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist,” Kissinger announced to the board that recommended U.S. covert action to Nixon, “just because its people are irresponsible.” Known as “Track II,” this covert action failed to produce the desired outcome.
Three years later, there were no American puppet masters in the military coup, led by the brutal Augusto Pinochet, that brought down Allende. But Kissinger welcomed the result and refused to apply any pressure on the new, pro-U.S. regime to prevent human rights abuses—indeed, Kissinger did the opposite.
Chilean military guards detained political prisoners in the Santiago soccer stadium after the 9.11.1973 military coup
In June 1976, after Pinochet’s junta had detained thousands of innocent Chileans, torturing an estimated 30,000 and executing at least 2,200 of them, Kissinger told Pinochet in a private meeting, “My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world, and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going communist.”
Opening theme of 1982 film ‘Missing’, adapted from the book of the same title by Thomas Hauser. The controversial cinematic account of the deaths of two Americans Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. Detained and executed by the Chilean military after the coup.Missing (1982 film) – Wikipedia
Top photo: La Moneda the presidential palace in Chile under attack during the September 11th 1973 Coup.
Daily Beast 7.23.2026The First Amendment survives Wall Street Journal – 7.23.2026Wall Street Journal – 7.20.2026
Donald Trump lives in America in 2026. His attitude and actions are akin to Germany in the 1930’s.
While Trump is precluded from going as far as 1930’s Germany he is using his Department of Justice to intimidate and bully the media for exercising its First Amendment rights to publish.
This is a chilling assault on the foundation of 🇺🇸 American democracy
One of the first things the National Socialists did after assuming power in early 1933 was quash the free press. This action was followed by a series of book burnings.
The president is waging an across-the-board war against the First Amendment and its legal interpretations from the mid-20th century to today. – Huffington Post 3.13.2025
Excerpted from The New York Times – 7.20.2026
The Trump administration sought the phone records of several New York Times journalists and their relatives — including one reporter’s mother — in its effort to unmask the confidential sources who had provided information for articles about the security capabilities of President Trump’s new Air Force One jet.
The Justice Department told The Times late last week that it had issued subpoenas to third-party phone service providers seeking several journalists’ phone and text messaging records. That effort was in addition to the subpoenas issued on July 10 that sought to compel reporters to testify before a federal grand jury.
The government’s actions amount to an extraordinarily aggressive and unorthodox attempt by the Trump administration to unearth the confidential sources of independent journalists whose reporting had angered the president.
The additional subpoenas — which also sought information about calls and messages on the phones of two of the reporters’ spouses — were described in a motion filed on Saturday by lawyers for The Times, which is seeking to quash the requests. The motion was unsealed on Monday morning by Judge Arun Subramanian of U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Top drawing: Herblock in Washington Post June 1971 during Pentagon Papers First Amendment battle. The Nixon administration tried to enjoin the New York Times from publishing the history of the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court upheld the Times right to publish.
“A little bit of courage is all we lack. So, catch me if you can I’m going back.” The Byrds
I am unsure what is more infuriating reading this WSJ editorial screed.
Standing by Israel despite its ongoing three year onslaught against the People of Gaza.
Or, relitigating the US involvement in Vietnam. An act of Washington stupidity which lay waste to Southeast Asia resulting in the deaths of 58,000 Americans. And hundreds of thousands of Asians.
Several bloody and bandaged soldiers ride on top of a tank used as a make-shift ambulance after the Battle of Hue in the Vietnam War, Hue, Vietnam, February 15, 1968. (Photo by John Olson/Getty Images)
Wall Street Journal editorial 7.16.2026
The vote by 103 House Democrats on Wednesday to block U.S. arms to Israel as it fights a multifront war is a shocking abandonment of an ally. It’s a sign of the rapid conquest of the Democratic Party by its anti-Israel wing, and it echoes another betrayal half a century ago—in Vietnam.
The measure to strip Israel of all aid—humanitarian and military, offensive and defensive—was offered by the isolationist Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky. He was the only GOP member who voted for it, as it failed on the House floor, 314–104.
The shock is that nearly half of all Democrats voted for it. They included former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the second ranking Democrat in leadership, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts. Another 10 voted “present”—non-profiles in courage all. “It is clear that the status quo is not tenable,” Ms. Clark said in a statement before the vote. “We should not provide a blank check for military aid to any country that does not comply with U.S. law, interests, and values. The [Benjamin] Netanyahu government has failed to meet that standard.”
Israel has violated no U.S. laws we know of. As for U.S. interests, Israel is fighting by the side of the U.S. against Iran and fighting alone against Iran’s proxies that have killed Americans. The defense relationship with Israel is a U.S. military advantage that helps maintain America’s technological edge over adversaries. When Democrats are voting to abandon even Iron Dome missile defense, this is self-sabotage out of anti-Israel animus.
It’s one thing to oppose Mr. Trump’s war on Iran, but it’s a far more radical step to cut loose a steadfast ally. How is it a U.S. “value” to disarm an ally fighting against murderous enemies that fire rockets on civilian towns?
VIETNAM – APRIL 30: The Fall of Saigon in Vietnam on April 30, 1975 – The north-Vietnamese tanks cross Saigon on the way towards the Doc Lap palace. (Photo by Herve GLOAGUEN/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
All of this echoes the sad denouement of the Vietnam War, when Democrats fought for years to cut off funds for South Vietnam, restricted U.S. aid, and denied its pleas for help in 1975. The North Vietnamese Communist offensive overran the South, sending more than a million “boat people” into the open ocean.
That is where the Democratic Party—and some parts of the far right—appear to be heading. It’s a telling sign that even Seth Moulton, often sensible on foreign policy, voted to disarm Israel as he competes in a Democratic Senate primary in Massachusetts. That’s where the party’s grassroots voters apparently are.
Some might dismiss the House vote as of no great account because everyone knew the Massie measure would fail. But the mistake is thinking that this is a one-time affair. The political momentum is growing against Israel, even if Israelis depose Prime Minister Netanyahu in their October election. This movement thinks Israel is evil while Palestinian terrorists are victims.
The party of Harry Truman, who recognized Israel in its time of founding crisis, is becoming the party of Zohran Mamdani. It’s a betrayal for the ages.
New York Times – 7.15.2026Washington Post – 7.11.2026
Donald Trump wants nothing more than to stamp out the First Amendment.
This wannabe dictator will use his final 925 days in the White House unleashing the Department of Justice and abusing the levers of presidential power to stifle, harass and prosecute his political enemies by any means necessary.
First it was former national security advisor John Bolton who published “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” Bolton plead guilty to one charge against him and is looking at a 2.5M fine and five years prison time.
The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.
The smirking bully Trump
The Times journalists who received subpoenas included Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, who reported on Wednesday that Mr. Trump had departed Turkey on the old Air Force One as a security precaution at the urging of the Secret Service. On Thursday, The Times reported that the new Air Force One, a Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. Both articles cited sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.
The subpoenas — which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday — were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.
In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters’ homes.
The Times denounced the administration’s actions.
“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” said David McCraw, The Times’s top newsroom lawyer, in a statement on Friday evening.
Adolf Hitler perished in his bunker in bombed out Berlin over 81 years ago as the Russian closed in.
Hitler may be long gone physically but his insane 12 year Third Reich lives on. No more so than in the hearts and minds of the German public.Memorialized worldwide in countless historical works, fiction recreations, movies and documentaries.
It’s no surprise that Deutsche Welle would ask the question, “How do Germans cope with having Nazi Grandparents?” Leave it to the bureaucratic Germans to make publicly available online the names of Nazi party members. There were over 8,000,000 members.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 7.9.2026
Germany is now regarded abroad as a world leader in how to confront a country’s dark past. There are 100,000 Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones”) embedded in streets to commemorate the victims of National Socialism, a Holocaust memorial stands in the heart of Berlin, and schools place a particular focus on the Nazi era.
Since millions of NSDAP membership cards have been made available online, many Germans have been surprised to discover that their ancestors weren’t always as innocent as family stories had led them to believe.
“I always thought of my grandfather as a left-wing unionist, and now he’s turned up in the NSDAP database,” Hanno Dannenfeldt told DW. It was always said in the family that his paternal grandfather had clean hands.
Now that the National Archives of the United States has published its collection of National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) membership cards, Dannenfeldt is one of countless Germans eager to find out whether their relatives were members of the party that ruled Germany during the Nazi era from 1933 to 1945.
This has not been an easy task: The site is often inaccessible because of heavy traffic, and the user interface is difficult to navigate.
A German tool simplifies the search
The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit has developed a tool that simplifies the search. Users simply enter the name and perhaps the year and place of birth of a person — and the results appear immediately. These records are sure to be of interest to people in South America, as well: Many Nazis went into hiding there after World War II. However, a subscription is required to use the service.
What users find there can be painful. Often, it means suddenly looking at their families in a very different light. Memories of a loving grandfather who was always full of fun and energy can contrast sharply with evidence now presented in black and white that the very same grandfather was a member of the National Socialist Party.
After the war, few families spoke about the crimes of the Nazi era, let alone their own role in them. According to a study, more than two-thirds of Germans believe that their ancestors were not Nazis. Nearly 36% believe that their relatives were among the victims, and over 30% believe that their ancestors helped victims of the Nazis — for example, by hiding Jews.
But this can’t possibly be true. Only about 1% of Germans actively resisted. In 1945, one in five adult Germans was a member of the Nazi Party — which had a total of 8.5 million members — thereby lending their support, at least on paper, to that unjust system.
And yet, nationalism is on the rise in Germany again. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is gaining influence. Dannenfeldt wonders whether Germans might again embrace the justifications of the Nazi era. “Some people might think, ‘I’ll join the AfD and make a career for myself,’ he said. “When you realize that your own family didn’t put up much of a fight back then, it makes you think about just how great the danger is today, as well.”
Nazi sentiment has always been widespread in America. Perhaps the most factual documentation is the Academy Award nominated “A Night at the Garden.” The Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1937.
What’s happened to American edgy political film making? Hollywood has been cowed during the Trump regime and is afraid to speak of racism and violence on the screen.
The 1988 film ‘Mississippi Burning’ is the Hollywood telling of murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi on June 21st 1964 and the subsequent investigation by the federal government.
‘Mississippi Burning’ is violent and political. Church burnings, lynchings and blatant racism.
The performance by Gene Hackman portraying a home grown FBI agent is arguably the strongest performance in the story of American racism and all its ugliness. Hackman was awarded the Silver Bear for best Actor at the 1989 Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award as best Actor.
The following clips from Mississippi Burning are vivid examples.
Chaney was Black, and Goodman and Schwerner were both Jewish. The three men had traveled roughly 38 miles (61 km) north from Meridian, to the community of Longdale, Mississippi, to talk with congregation members of a Black church that had been burned; the church had been a center of community organization. The disappearance of the three men was initially investigated as a missing persons case. The burnt-out car the three were using was found parked near a swamp three days after their disappearance.[2][3] An extensive search of the area was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), local and state authorities, and 400 U.S. Navy sailors.[4] Their bodies were not discovered until seven weeks later, when authorities received a tip leading them to the remains of the three activists. During the investigation, it emerged that members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff’s Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department were involved in the incident.[1]
The murder of the activists sparked national outrage and an extensive federal investigation, filed as Mississippi Burning (MIBURN), which later became the title of a 1988 film loosely based on the events. In 1967, after the state government refused to prosecute those involved in the murders, the United States federal government stepped in and charged 18 individuals with civil rights violations. Seven were convicted and another pleaded guilty, and all received relatively minimal sentences. Outrage over the activists’ murder helped pass of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Forty-one years after the murders took place, one perpetrator, Edgar Ray Killen, was charged by the state of Mississippi for his part in the crimes, and in 2005 was convicted of three counts of manslaughter and was given a 60-year sentence.[5] On June 20, 2016, federal and state authorities officially closed the case. Killen died in prison in January 2018.
Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade may snag its biggest prize. The current star of the American soccer world.
Team USA stunned its fans and media pundits when it soundly defeated Paraguay4-1 in its opening World Cup match last Friday in SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The most goals ever scored by America in a World Cup game.
The man responsible for this feat is Folarin Balogun, the 24 year old Nigerian who earned “Birthright Citizenship” when his pregnant mother was obliged to stay in New York City during her pregnancy. Medical authorities told her it was unsafe to return to Nigeria.Folarin was born on July 23, 2001and became an American citizen.
Now Donald Trump is attempting to take away Birthright Citizenship which was deemed legal in 1898. The Supreme Court heard arguments months ago and will soon issue its Decision.United States v. Wong Kim Ark – Wikipedia
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), is a landmark decision[3] of the Supreme Court of the United States which held that “a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China” became “at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.”[1]
Wong Kim Ark was the first Supreme Court case to decide on the status of children born in the United States to alien parents. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.[3]
Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco, had been denied re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad, under the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law banning virtually all Chinese immigration and prohibiting Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. He challenged the government’s refusal to recognize his citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, holding that the Citizenship Clause should be interpreted “in light of the common law”.
Excerpted from The Hill 6.15.2026
U.S. men’s soccer striker Folarin Balogun scored two goals in the Americans’ victorious opener of the FIFA World Cup on Friday, a performance that would not have occurred had his mother not traveled to the U.S. just before he was born.
Folarin Balogun scores for Team USA in the World Cup in Los Angeles – 6.12.2026
The performance has also put President Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship back in the spotlight. A challenge to Trump’s executive order ending the policy is before the Supreme Court.
Balogun’s mother, Florence Balogun, traveled to New York while she was seven months pregnant with the future soccer star in 2001. Florence Balogun and her husband, Ben Balogun, were born in Nigeria and lived in London at the time.
While Florence Balogun was at the airport to head back to England, airline employees refused to allow her to fly — saying she was too pregnant, according to an ESPN profile of her son from 2023.
As a result, she stayed with her sister-in-law in Brooklyn and gave birth to Folarin in America on July 3, 2001, ESPN reported. Nearly 22 years later, and despite coming up in the Arsenal academy and playing for England’s under-17, under-18 and under-21 teams, Folarin Balogun decided to play for the U.S. senior national team.
That decision paid off on his World Cup debut, as the 24-year-old scored the second and third goals of the Americans’ 4-1 victory over Paraguay on Friday. The win marked the most goals the U.S. has ever scored in a single World Cup game, and it’s one more than the three goals it netted in the entire 2022 tournament.
But if the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of the president on birthright citizenship, Folarin Balogun may not be able to play for the U.S.
The president’s executive order, which he signed on his first day back in office, stated that the 14th Amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
It is very reassuring to know that voters in Marin and Sonoma County have overwhelmingly endorsed the SMART train which currently runs from Larkspur in Marin to the far reaches of Sonoma County.
At a time when voters in car centric America are loath to fund public transit the results coming from Marin and Sonoma Counties prove that voters appreciate the value of sustainable passenger rail travel.
Perhaps North Bay voters have experienced rail travel outside the United States where public transit is an essential part of daily life.
The blogger can only bemoan the sordid history of how the automobile industry worked hard to destroy public transit in the United States.(see attached link).
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle and Marin Independent Journal 6.3.2026
SMART’s (Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit) critical sales tax extension rode to passage Tuesday.
Officials in the public transportation world have something to cheer about andare trying to remain optimistic, pointing to a SMART train sales tax extension on Tuesday that won 70% of the vote in Marin and Sonoma counties.
To many observers, it demonstrates not only that residents value transit but that they view SMART as a centerpiece for a new wave of development.
With 100% of precincts reporting, results from Marin show 70.25% of voters in favor and 29.75% opposed. In Sonoma County, with 72% of precincts reporting, returns showed 70.44% voted yes and 29.56% were opposed.
Measure B renewed the quarter-cent sales tax for 30 years. The tax generates about $51 million annually for SMART, equal to more than half of its annual operating budget.
Marin County has 173,082 registered voters, while there are 319,260 in Sonoma County.
The citizens’ initiative required a simple majority vote to win, as opposed to a traditional two-thirds threshold. If the measure had failed, the existing tax would have expired on June 30, 2029.
“We couldn’t be more pleased with the results we’re seeing right now,” said Suzanne Smith, chair of the SMART initiative committee.
“I think it’s a testament to SMART as an organization and the services they provide to the community,” said Smith, a former executive director of the Sonoma County Transportation Authority. “We, as a committee, were lucky enough to have such a great project to sell to voters, to tell voters about, and voters see that value, so we’re pretty excited.”
The 1960’s radical movement thankfully never went away.
Depending on your retrospective walk through American history in the 1960’s ‘Progressives’ are thought of as either forward looking progressives determined to upend the System. Or spoiled rotten kids who didn’t appreciate the good things about the consumer driven money making post World War II era in which their parents participated in.
Zayd Ayers Dohrn was unwittingly and unknowingly raised and nurtured in the maelstrom of 1960’s politics. And seems to have landed with both feet firmly in the camp of realistic thinkers without having forsaken his upbringing.
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal ‘Review’ Joseph Epstein – 5.29.2026
What’s in a name? Consider the name of Zayd Ayers Dohrn, the author of “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young.” His first name derives from that of Zayd Shakur, the minister of information of the East Coast Panthers, a radical group formed in the late 1960s. Ayers was his father’s name, his father being William Ayers, a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a founder of the terrorist group the Weather Underground and a relentless organizer on behalf of revolution. Dohrn was his mother’s name, and she, Bernardine Dohrn, was a fellow member of the Weather Underground, as well as the fourth woman to appear on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. Quite a bit, it would seem, can be in a name.
The subtitle of Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s book is “A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground.” Reading it, I was more than grateful for the ticket I had drawn in the parent lottery. Throughout his book, Mr. Dohrn, who was born in 1977, wonders how much he, his younger brother and his foster brother really meant to their parents. As a child he feared, and he reports he fears still, that next to their commitment to revolution, perhaps not all that much.
The book offers an account of both of his parents’ revolutionary careers. Neither was brought up in a radically political family. Both came to their politics in their early adulthood.
His mother, whom J. Edgar Hoover would call “the most dangerous woman in America,” was born into a middle-class home and grew up in a suburb north of Milwaukee. Strikingly good-looking and an excellent student, she went off to college at Miami of Ohio, where she was rejected by every sorority on campus because she was Jewish. Doubtless this rejection set her off on her political path.
Soon, the author explains, Ms. Dohrn transferred to the University of Chicago, where she fell in with the political faction among the students. (Bernie Sanders, later a firebrand senator, attended at the same time.) She went on to law school, though at the time she had little interest in a legal career. She would work with Martin Luther King Jr. on his rent strike in Chicago and, her son reports, had a single magical meeting with Muhammad Ali.
Ms. Dohrn would later have a hand in planning the student riots in Chicago in 1968. “I consider myself a revolutionary Communist,” she declared when she was elected to the SDS national board that year. “There’s no way to be committed to nonviolence,” she said, “in the middle of the most violent society history has ever created.” Her hatred for America was unqualified.
William Ayers grew up in the middle-class Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, the son of a high-level executive at Commonwealth Edison (he would eventually become its Chief Executive Officer). In 1963 Mr. Ayers went off to college at the University of Michigan, at the time the residence of the political organizer Tom Hayden and the scene of the founding of SDS. Not political before then, Mr. Ayers began showing up at protests. Soon he quit his fraternity and not long after dropped out of school.
The young Chesa Boudin
They didn’t marry until 1982, when Ms. Dohrn was 40 and Mr. Ayers was in his late 30s. They settled in Hyde Park, Chicago, where they also raised Chesa Boudin, the son of Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert who were serving long prison terms.
Former Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn walks with friend Bill Ayers and an unidentified child outside the Federal Court Building in New York, May 17, 1982. The couple refused to identify the child. Dohrn refused to cooperate with a Federal Grand Jury investigating on October’s bloody Brink’s robbery in Rockland County. (AP Photo/David Handschuh)
“You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
The blogger has listened to radio news for a lifetime. One of the first stations was KCBS-740AM in San Francisco. Long before the days of National Public Radio.
The omnipresent CBS Radio News sign on
Make no mistake the shutdown of CBS radio news has nothing to do with money despite what corporate management insists.
Donald Trump has railed against mainstream media which fails to bow down. The death of CBS radio news is another victory over mainstream media free speech for Trump.
The Trump administration approved Mr. (David) Ellison’s purchase after Paramount paid $16 million to settle a suit brought by President Trump against “60 Minutes.” – NYT 3.20.2026
Excerpted from The New York Times 3.21.2026
It transported Americans onto the rooftops of London in the Blitz and into the bleak embers of concentration camps in liberated Nazi Germany, an aural atlas to world events thousands of miles away.
Edward R. Murrow broadcast from Buchenwald Concentration Camp April 1945
In more recent years, it transmitted eyewitness dispatches from world capitals to hundreds of local stations in rural and sparsely populated parts of the country.
CBS News Radio was a pioneer and stalwart of the mass media century, the proving ground of star journalists like Edward R. Murrow, with a distinctive five-tone chime that became synonymous with breaking news — long before the rise of 24-hour cable and the internet.
Now, its venerable airwaves are crackling to a close. Paramount Skydance, the parent company of CBS, announced on Friday that the radio news network would sign off, after 99 years, near the end of May.
Excerpted from the New York Times 3.20.2021
CBS News came under the control of David Ellison, a billionaire tech heir, after his Hollywood studio Skydance absorbed the media giant Paramount last year. The Trump administration approved Mr. Ellison’s purchase after Paramount paid $16 million to settle a suit brought by President Trump against “60 Minutes.”
Mr. Ellison said he wanted CBS News to appeal to a centrist audience, and he installed Bari Weiss, an opinion journalist and critic of the mainstream news media, as its new leader.
CBS News eliminated its century-old radio division, which broadcast Edward R. Murrow’s World War II dispatches from London, amid a round of layoffs on Friday announced by the network’s editor in chief, Ms. Weiss.
CBS radio news journalists on election night November 1936
More than 60 employees, or roughly 6 percent of the news division, are set to be laid off under the plan, according to a person who requested anonymity to share internal details.
“Certain parts of this newsroom need to get smaller in order for us to make room for the things that we need to build to remain competitive in the future,” Ms. Weiss, who started her job in October, said during a newsroom-wide conference call on Friday, according to a recording.
CBS News Radio, which has roots in the Jazz Age, was once among the premier news broadcasters in the country. “CBS News Radio served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927,” Tom Cibrowski, the president of CBS News, wrote in a memo.
Original CBS Radio news headquarters in New York City- circa 1939
Lee's Perspective 