• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 7, 2025

A commentary delivered by CBS anchorman John Dickerson hours after the news broke that Paramount will pay Donald Trump millions to settle his lawsuit was itself an example of how free speech can be constricted under pressure from a strong-armed, government-based source.

The speech aired last Wednesday at the conclusion of “CBS Evening News Plus,” the nightly half hour that serves as an extension to the “CBS Evening News” mothership and streams on CBSNews.com.

In its entire length of roughly two-and-a-half minutes, the name “President Trump” was never uttered, although the commentary was positioned as one newsman’s response to the way the settlement of the suit -- brought by Trump over a trivial edit in a “60 Minutes” story last fall -- could pollute the purity of CBS News journalism. 

Most of the commentary (delivered by Dickerson in the screenshot above) was a windy discourse on the wants and needs of news consumers, particularly those who consume CBS News content.

“The audience brings us their fears, their questions, their good-faith view of things,” Dickerson said. “It reminds us we are stewards of that concern.”

The commentary had a Shakespearean gravity that is CBS News to the bone. Some of the writing was so flowery that it felt like it got away from its writer, who perhaps could not quite get there with a broadcast deadline looming.

It was not John Dickerson’s finest hour, but we’ve all been there. Should he happen to read this, Mr. Dickerson is welcome to characterize this TV Blog in the same way. He will get no argument from me.

“It is a grace to receive another’s trust, but also to have a mission that shape’s your work, a mission that can sound grandiose,” he continued. 

This is a part of the commentary whose meaning was obscure to me. “We are not all that,” he said, referring to the word “grandiose” (I think).

“Public figures have taught us that [that] misguided mission can do more harm than brute force. We pride ourselves on our BS detector, so it oughta work on ourselves too,” he said.

And here’s the part where he addressed the lawsuit settlement directly: “The obstacles to getting it right are many. The Paramount settlement poses a new obstacle. Can you hold power to account after paying it millions? Can an audience trust you when it thinks you traded away that trust?” 

Framing these thoughts in the form of questions is a sign that Dickerson himself may have been shying away from going too hard on the issues raised by the settlement lest he go too far and offend the corporation that pays him and a President who holds the future of the corporation in his hand.

Convert the questions to statements and they come out stronger -- to wit, “You cannot hold power to account after paying it millions.” And: “An audience cannot trust you when it thinks you traded away that trust.” 

But under the circumstances, the questions may have been the only “safe” way for Dickerson to air his reaction to the settlement. 

He did not take his own company to task for caving and settling, nor did he at any time come right out and say what he really thinks about the President and his lawsuit. 

Perhaps he felt that he just could not. Or to put it another way, here in the real world, there are no Howard Beales (the anchorman in “Network” who went nuts on the air).

Dickerson concluded the commentary with a tribute to the Murrow Boys who gained fame when they reported on the London Blitz 84 years ago for CBS Radio.

“Our job is to show up,” said Dickerson, “to honor what we witness on behalf of the people we witness it for.”

“The network’s first heroes ran to rooftops during the bombing of London,” he said. “Its current ones carry that same instinct.”

OK, but World War II and the Trump administration are two wholly different things. They are apples to oranges.

But Dickerson made his point, which is: Neither CBS nor any other network can feel safe covering a president as litigious as this one, who has no respect for press freedom, and wears the world’s thinnest skin.