In 2 Minutes and 16 Seconds, CBS News Shows Why No One Trusts the News Media Anymore
- john raymond
- Jul 15
- 2 min read
It doesn’t matter what side of the political aisle you land on — this much is now a widely accepted truth: people no longer trust the news media. That goes for right-wing Americans glued to Fox News, yes — but it also applies to the rest of us, those who reject propaganda and expect better from supposedly “respectable” outlets.
If you want a case study in how that trust continues to erode, look no further than CBS News’ segment on Trump’s supposed “change in tone” regarding Vladimir Putin.
Clocking in at just over two minutes, the piece is a masterclass in superficiality. It showcases exactly why institutions like CBS — once a titan of serious journalism — now feel like hollowed-out avatars of their former selves. Instead of informing viewers with clear, urgent analysis of what is happening and what matters, they deliver a dulled-down theater review.
Here’s what CBS didn’t say:
1) They didn’t say that Trump’s 100% tariff threat is legally dubious, nor did they make it clear that it directly threatens the far more serious 500% sanctions bill making its way through the Senate.
2) They didn’t say that Trump’s maneuver is a classic sabotage operation — preempt the real bill with an empty threat so that the stronger legislation loses momentum.
3) They didn’t say that this isn’t how the presidency is supposed to work. A president doesn’t bluff his way into international trade punishment on the fly — he asks Congress for authority, signs bills into law, and executes those laws faithfully.
Instead, they talked about tone. About mood. As if any of this matters to a Ukrainian child dodging missile strikes, or to a European country calculating whether it can risk its domestic stability by buying arms it cannot easily afford just to send them to Ukraine.
Tone doesn’t save lives. Mood doesn’t build defense lines. These are not policy categories. They are aesthetic distractions, meant to fill airtime while the real work of power and propaganda slips past unchallenged.
Perhaps the worst part? CBS even quoted Trump praising the Senate bill as “strong” but didn’t stop to ask: Then why undermine it with this stunt? That is the question that matters. That is the journalistic intervention required. But it never came.
Plus they have to know that Trump’s threats of tariffs against Russia are meaningless — we have virtually no active trade with Russia to begin with. So if Trump is willing to engage with theater here, how is not the whole entire thing is theater?
So by covering optics as if they were substance, they participate in the deception rather than exposing it.
So no, this isn’t about media bias in the conventional partisan sense. This is about media incompetence — the kind that makes serious people turn away in disgust. It’s the kind that confuses performance for governance, and thereby betrays its own audience.
The trust is gone because journalism, at its highest calling, is supposed to shine a light. What CBS gave us instead was shadow puppetry.
And America, already drowning in deception, deserved far better.
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