- - Connie Chung Blasts CBS’ ‘Greedy Owners,’ Says They Caused Network to ‘Crash Into Crumbles’

Liza EsquibiasDecember 6, 2025 at 3:10 AM

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Connie Chung -

Connie Chung did not hold back her feelings about the recent acquisition of CBS News, where she once made history as the second-ever woman co-anchor of a network newscast in 1993

Chung claimed that the "greed" of the network's owners "has caused the venerable CBS to actually disassemble"

In August, Skydance Media acquired CBS' parent company Paramount in an $8 billion deal after settling a lawsuit with President Donald Trump

Connie Chung is expressing her disappointment in CBS News.

During a conversation on the Thursday, Dec. 4, episode of the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, the 79-year-old journalist slammed her former network and its current ownership. When Torre asked Chung what it is like to watch CBS now, she revealed, “We don’t. I can’t.”

“The paradigm has completely changed in news, and we have so much opinion that the truth doesn't hold value anymore,” she said. “What we end up doing is trying to — we as consumers — trying to find the truth. We can't find good old-fashioned facts, and it's distresses me so terribly.”

“CBS is a whole different organization that I had worked for,” continued Chung, who worked at the network for several decades and became the second-ever woman co-anchor of a major network's nightly newscast on CBS Evening News with Dan Rather in 1993.

NBC via Getty

Connie Chung

In August, Skydance Media acquired CBS’ parent company Paramount in an $8 billion deal one month after CBS News settled a lawsuit with President Donald Trump, who accused the program of deceptively editing former Vice President Kamala Harris' 2024 campaign trail appearance on 60 Minutes, per a report by Reuters.

As part of the settlement, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to the president's future presidential library, although the lawsuit originally sought $10 billion in damages and triggered concerns over the precedent Paramount would set for media companies by giving into Trump's demands.

Shari Redstone, who was Paramount Global’s controlling shareholder at the time, told the board she wanted to settle the legal battle and “underscore[d] the fact that a pending multibillion-dollar lawsuit from the president made it difficult for Paramount to do business," the New York Times reported earlier this year.

“CBS has now been taken over thanks to greedy owners, Shari Redstone, partnering with David Ellison, Larry Ellison's son,” Chung stated. “Their greed has caused the venerable CBS to actually disassemble, to crash into crumbles.”

CBS via Getty

Connie Chung

She went on to call out newly-appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who is best known for running the opinion website The Free Press and had no experience running a news organization of CBS' size. Chung said she doesn’t believe Weiss “could possibly restore” the network.

“When I worked at CBS, it was owned by William Paley, and he actually made it a point of allowing the news division to be autonomous and not have to worry about the bottom line,” Chung recalled. “He had a president by the name of Frank Stanton, who went before Congress time and time again to defend the fourth estate. Now we have a complete dismantling of that kind of social responsibility, that we are watchdogs. We reporters, are watchdogs of government.”

“It's our job to report information that is not fed to us,” she added.

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Chung further highlighted a recent incident in October, during which reporters at the Pentagon surrendered their press passes in protest after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave them an unprecedented ultimatum, claiming they would be kicked out of the building unless they agreed to an exhaustive list of restrictions on their coverage.

“It was repulsive, and I'm so glad that they walked out,” Chung said. “I think it's so important what those Pentagon reporters did. They're trying to do their job, and they're being muzzled.”

PEOPLE reached out to CBS for comment.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”