Michael Goodwin: Scott Pelley's anti-Trump diatribe was more of the same warped, distorted nonsense that puts the BS in CBS

New York Post

28-05-2025

Leaving aside that Scott Pelley probably spoiled graduation day for some Wake Forest University parents and students, his anti-Trump commencement screed last week still has its virtues.
Namely, Pelley's outrageous fearmongering throws open the window to the mindset of a media figure at one of the nation's supposedly premier outlets.
The view we get is so appalling as to be stomach-churning.
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It turns out that the man from CBS is full of BS.
But we already knew that, didn't we?
The surprise is that he outed himself in such a revealing and public spectacle.
Warped by partisanship
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Pelley's description of America and Trump's agenda is so warped by partisanship that he can't see straight.
His version of reality brings to mind the distortions of a fun-house mirror — without the fun.
Carried away by his own grandiosity, he fancies himself a brave truth-teller and reaches for historic comparisons.
Only the most celebrated will do, as Pelley links his juvenile scare tactics to the bold wartime broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow while Hitler was bombing London and the prescient warnings of George Orwell about fascism.
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After quoting Orwell as saying, 'If liberty means anything at all, it means something worth saying that some people don't want to hear,' Pelley not so humbly adds: 'I fear there are some people in the audience who don't want to hear what I have to say today. But I appreciate your forbearance in this small act of liberty.'
What courage!
What humor!
He never mentions the president's name, but doesn't have to.
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His language steals from the headlines of Trump-bashing ­media everywhere.
It's a testament to their conformity that we know who and what he's talking about because the legacy outlets all think and speak in lockstep.
Day in, day out, the heights of journalism plumb the depths of conformity.
Everything Pelley said, we've heard 10,000 times before.
And often with more insight and balance.
But he didn't go to Wake Forest to be fair.
He went to recruit those who don't hate and fear their president by trying to scare them half to death.
'Our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack,' Pelley insisted.
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'An insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak. In America?'
'Speaking' of irony
Is this a commencement address in 2025 or the introduction to a 1950s late-night horror movie?
The theme song of 'Jaws' would have made a fitting backdrop, with Trump as the frightening Great White.
Because no self-respecting graduation speech is complete without citing Abraham Lincoln, Pelley goes for the obvious, saying that 'If our government is — in Lincoln's words — 'of the people, by the people and for the people' — then why are we afraid to speak?'
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Yet there he is, speaking!
Actual fairness doesn't interest him or his network. The once-trusted CBS has become just ­another dog barking at shadows.
Worse, Pelley is a member of the '60 Minutes' team that is leading the charge downhill.
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It denied the legitimacy of Hunter Biden's infamous laptop long after The Post proved it was real, and even after the FBI ­authenticated its damning contents.
And neither Pelley nor any of his colleagues saw the slightest hint that Joe Biden was suffering from serious cognitive decline. To admit it would have helped Trump, so they looked the other way.
You know, to save democracy.
The program continued to shill for Biden up until the minute he dropped out of the presidential campaign, then immediately shifted gears to shill for Kamala Harris.
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The selective editing of a '60 Minutes' interview with her is the target of a Trump lawsuit and is spurring fears among top management that a corporate merger with Skydance Media will be blocked by federal agencies.
Oddly, that fear is having something of an admirable impact in that some segments on '60 Minutes' and presumably elsewhere on the network are being more closely scrutinized for fairness before airing.
As for Pelley, he made it clear he doesn't like the oversight by recently lionizing the program's former executive producer, Bill Owens, who resigned by saying
he had lost control over the contents.
Career death knell?
Perhaps Pelley also fears for his own paycheck, which could explain why he's forsaking journalism and diving into the darkness of propaganda.
He'd fit right in at MSNBC.
Whatever the cause, his speech should mark the death knell of his CBS career.
How can it be otherwise when the underlying assumption is that if you aren't consumed with hate and fear over the president, there's something wrong with you?
It breaks my heart to say it, but this is the ethos of most contemporary journalism, where independent thinking is verboten.
Only one thought per customer is permitted, and it must conform to the party line.
'Tuition liberation day' is what many parents call graduation, but Pelley didn't even have the grace to make anything other than a passing reference to those who paid the outrageous bills Wake Forest charges.
All they got was a lecture about what a horrible country they and their children live in because there is a monster in the White House.
Things are so bad that Pelley felt compelled to compare the current mood to the run-up of the Civil War, the early days of World War II and the campus rebellions over Vietnam.
The fact that Trump was elected — and carried — North Carolina, where Wake Forest is located, never figures into the screed.
That's not an accident. To acknowledge that a contrasting point of view exists would cast doubt on Pelley's dogma.
He calls himself a 'reporter,' as if he's Detective Joe Friday, another television creation who just sticks to the facts.
In Pelley's case, that's not only false modesty — it's also inaccurate.
Just the facts? Hardly
Former CBS giant Dan Rather used to say the same thing about himself — right up to the moment he got booted for using phony documents to try to help Al Gore defeat George W. Bush.
Similarly, Pelley has come out as a rank partisan and can never again be trusted to cover anything remotely related to Trump or ­politics.
Consider that a majority of North Carolina voters backed Trump, meaning that some of the adults in Pelley's audience, including faculty and parents, and possibly many students, voted for the man their graduation speaker described as a wannabe fascist dictator.
And a racist.
Because in addition to his silly comparisons to World War II, Pelley likened the current atmosphere to the run-up of the Civil War.
Get a grip, man!
Then there's Wake Forest itself.
It's an elite private school where full-time tuition and other costs surpass $90,000 a year.
It's not exactly a middle-class bastion or in any way representative of the concerns of most American families.
Then again, neither are Scott Pelley and CBS.