{"id":646641,"date":"2026-10-15T00:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T00:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/646641\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T00:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T00:36:13","slug":"sir-trevor-phillips-urges-cbs-news-colleagues-to-give-critics-blunt-riposte-cbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/646641\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Trevor Phillips urges CBS News colleagues to give critics blunt riposte | CBS"},"content":{"rendered":"

The veteran British broadcaster Sir Trevor Phillips had some strong words of advice for his CBS News<\/a> colleagues when facing off against critics who question the editorial integrity of the network: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just fuck off and let us do our jobs?\u201d<\/p>\n

Phillips made his blunt suggestion during a contentious meeting of the network\u2019s London<\/a> bureau on Tuesday, during which the foreign editor, Shayndi Raice, went on a lengthy tirade criticizing unnamed staffers for suggesting that editorial oversight amounted to \u201cinterference\u201d and informing colleagues that disobeying editors would be insubordination and \u201clegal grounds for firing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Phillips\u2019s decision to join CBS was announced in June<\/a>. It came after its billionaire owner, David Ellison, installed the opinion journalist and broadcast newcomer Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief in a move that shook staff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Guardian, which first reported<\/a> the Tuesday meeting, reviewed an audio recording of the contentious session that rattled staffers. A CBS News spokesperson and Phillips declined to comment on the meeting.<\/p>\n

Phillips spoke up initially to defend Raice, saying that the message she was delivering was common sense. \u201cI\u2019m genuinely surprised that you had to say anything that you just said in the last 15 minutes,\u201d he said during the meeting. \u201cIt just seems to be axiomatic in any organization \u2026 I did want to say that I\u2019m kind of surprised that in an organization of this vintage and capability, with the clever people I\u2019ve met around here, that any of this actually has to be said.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then turned to outside opinion about CBS, telling colleagues that he faced criticism after it was announced he was leaving his perch at Sky News to serve as the network\u2019s senior global affairs correspondent. Phillips is also a contributor to CBS\u2019s flagship news show 60 Minutes, and voiced a short piece<\/a> on Sunday on protests in Europe. Since CBS parent Paramount Global was acquired by Ellison\u2019s Skydance Media in the summer of 2025, the company\u2019s leadership has faced accusations of tilting the editorial scales in a more conservative-friendly direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could spend the next hour telling you the number of people when it was announced that I was coming here, the number of people who told me for all of the reasons you just explained, why this is the end of my career and how I was going to destroy everything that I\u2019ve ever created, and all of that bollocks,\u201d Phillips said.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cI think we\u2019re in a new game now, actually, where we are now players as journalists. And what people are constantly trying to do is to knock us off \u2013 to frighten us, essentially, into doing this or doing that. It puts a premium on two things \u2013 one is our objectivity, and two: having each other\u2019s backs. I think the worst thing that can happen now is if we start to go about telling people, \u2018Well, I would have done this if the higher-ups hadn\u2019t told me to do that.\u2019 That\u2019s exactly what everybody wants us to get into the game of. That\u2019s how we become vulnerable. That\u2019s how we start adjusting our copy according to somebody else\u2019s lines outside of here \u2026 I think what you said is really, really important, but it points me in the direction of us having the mentality \u2013 forgive my French here \u2013 of telling everybody, \u2018Why don\u2019t you just fuck off and let us do our jobs?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The veteran British broadcaster Sir Trevor Phillips had some strong words of advice for his CBS News colleagues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-646641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}