Category: News

When news organizations around the world have faced criticism, they have historically turned to specialists: ombudsmen, in-house critics empowered to investigate their employers’ coverage and report their findings to the public.

But when CBS News appointed one last year, under an agreement with the Federal Communications Commission, it took a different tack. It tapped Kenneth Weinstein to flag complaints privately to its executives, pitching him in the hiring announcement as “an independent, internal advocate for journalistic integrity and transparency.”

As CBS News has been shaken by infighting between management and its star correspondents this year, Weinstein’s silence is being criticized by media experts. They say Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, has essentially hired a watchdog who doesn’t bark.

In the nine months since he was hired, Weinstein has issued no public statements about CBS News’ coverage or its controversies. He has not issued any guidance or feedback in staffwide emails or memos, three employees said. He has told some employees that he is scheduled to work only one day per month, two people said, though one said he responded to queries outside his monthly workday.

Most ombudsmen are much more public facing, said Jeffrey Dvorkin, a former NPR ombudsman who wrote the handbook for the Organization of News Ombuds and Standards Editors. That handbook says ombudsmen should report to the public, usually in a weekly column or mutually agreeable time slot.

Part of “stewarding public trust,” as Weinstein promised to do in his hiring announcement, is addressing the public, Dvorkin said.

“What’s the point then?” he said of CBS News’ decision not to require Weinstein to publish anything. “How is an ombudsman going to convey the public’s concerns, both internally and externally?”

Paramount said in a statement that Weinstein had been doing his job.

“He’s there to review concerns about CBS News’ reporting and coverage through a process that has been clear from the beginning,” the statement said. “Since September, he’s independently assessed the issues brought to him and, when appropriate, discussed them with CBS News and Paramount Skydance leadership.”

After Weinstein flags potential problems to Paramount’s executives, they decide whether to raise them with CBS News.

Since Weinstein was hired, Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of the network, has been accused of injecting political bias into stories by three high-profile journalists for CBS’s 60 Minutes. She fired them all as part of a broader shake-up of the show. The remaining three correspondents said they would stay only because they didn’t want the show to die. (CBS News has denied the allegations of editorial meddling.)

Many newsrooms have done away with their ombudsmen. Some, like the New York Times, which dropped the position in 2017, argued that they were anachronisms in an era of instant online criticism. Others have cited dwindling resources. In addition to the Times, the Washington Post, ESPN, and the Boston Globe did away with their in-house critics in the last quarter-century; NPR and PBS are among the last remaining U.S. news organizations that employ a full-time public editor.

The FCC announced the creation of the CBS News ombudsman when it approved Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount in July. The agency’s chair, Brendan Carr, had been investigating a complaint about a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris from the previous fall, but allowed the deal after the company agreed to employ, for two years, an ombudsman who would evaluate claims of bias. (President Donald Trump sued Paramount over the interview. Press freedom advocates said the controversy was baseless.)

Carr said the move would “promote transparency and increased accountability.”

In September, Paramount announced that it had found its pick: Weinstein, a veteran of the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning Washington think tank. Though he had no experience overseeing news coverage, Weinstein had served on the board of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independent federal agency that oversees U.S. government-supported civilian media such as Voice of America. There, he worked alongside Jeff Shell, who would become Paramount’s president.

Though Weinstein does not respond to complaints publicly, he is easy to reach. CBS News set up a website where viewers can submit their concerns, anonymously or by name. One of the people said that many of the notes Weinstein received focused on the network’s coverage of the war in the Gaza Strip.

At least one inquiry to Weinstein has been made public. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) sent him a letter in December to ask for a full accounting of the network’s decision-making around a November interview with Trump.

But Weinstein did not reply. Instead, Paramount’s general counsel sent a letter to Raskin explaining that the interview had been edited for length.

In December, after a 60 Minutes correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, accused Weiss of meddling in one of her stories, media critics mused publicly about whether Weinstein would weigh in.

“I wonder if the CBS News ombudsman will have anything to say about this,” Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media analyst, wrote on social media. Eric Deggans, the Knight professor of journalism and media ethics at Washington & Lee University, posted: “Wonder if Weiss will ever say exactly why she pulled the story? Or if CBS News new ombudsman will somehow surface?”

Carr, at least, does not seem concerned by the public silence from Weinstein.

This month, after Weiss fired the three 60 Minutes correspondents, Carr was asked directly whether Weinstein would look into their complaints of editorial interference.

Jake Tapper, an anchor on CNN, sat down with Carr and pointed out that the FCC had pushed for an ombudsman to evaluate claims of bias, and asked whether Weinstein should investigate.

“I don’t think so,” Carr said.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

An Iranian court has sentenced an outspoken female singer to 74 lashes for performing at a concert without wearing a hijab, according to a family member and state media news reports. The punishment indicated a possible tightening of religious rules for women under an Iranian political order reshaped by war.

The singer, Parastoo Ahmadi, was sentenced last week at a closed trial in Qom province along with eight band and crew colleagues.

A video of the 2024 performance, in which the singer’s hair, arms, and shoulders are uncovered, in defiance of Iranian law, went viral on YouTube.

Ahmadi and her colleagues were also banned from performing or leaving the country for two years, said the family member who asked to remain anonymous, fearing reprisal for speaking to the media. Two of the nine individuals sentenced were not in Iran when the verdict was announced, the family member said.

The sentencing came just days after Iran and the United States tentatively agreed to end a monthslong conflict that has killed thousands across the Middle East and sent shock waves throughout the global economy.

The government’s crackdown on artistic expression and women’s dress has dampened hopes among some Iranians for a more moderate postwar order.

“Besides being an inhumane and humiliating punishment, the 74-lash sentence against Parastoo Ahmadi simply for singing without compulsory hijab is a dangerous signal that the regime, emboldened by the peace deal with the U.S., may intensify its crackdown on women,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights.

The strikes against Iran by the United States and Israel that began in February killed several key figures, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who oversaw the violent and repressive theocracy over nearly four decades.

President Donald Trump justified the war, in part, by saying the United States intended to help Iranians overturn their leaders. “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he wrote on social media in January.

That month, Iranian authorities responded to widespread protests by killing thousands of people. Raha Bahreini, a lawyer and an Iran researcher at Amnesty International, called it a “state-orchestrated massacre.”

Now, it is not clear that the war has left Iran in less restrictive hands than before. Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has succeeded his father as supreme leader, and a group of hard-line senior members of the Revolutionary Guard has assumed an expansive role in running the country.

In 2022, there were also hopes that change might come for Iranian women. Large protests erupted after the death of a young woman who was in the custody of the country’s morality police for violating the hijab law. The state responded by killing hundreds of people.

During the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement that followed, more Iranians decided to flout the hijab rules, and violent crackdowns appeared to abate slightly, according to a U.N. report documenting the aftermath of the protests.

It was in that context that the video of Ahmadi’s 2024 performance, in which she crooned a set of patriotic folk songs while wearing a simple black dress, went viral. The caption read: “I am Parastoo, a girl who wants to sing for the people I love. This is a right I could not ignore; singing for the land I love passionately.”

Ahmadi and two of her collaborators were briefly detained after the video was posted.

Now, with a postwar political order appearing to solidify in Iran, some in the country are looking at the sentencing of Ahmadi and her bandmates and wondering what it may mean for the future.

“Will this country ever be fixed one day?” said Mariam, 30, a teacher in Mashhad who asked that her last name be withheld for fear of reprisals. “Where in the world is a woman’s singing punishable by lashes?”

Iranian authorities have attempted to “project an image of normalcy” after the war, said Bahar Ghandehari, director of advocacy at the Center for Human Rights in Iran. But, she said, “cases like Parastoo’s expose the reality of the human rights situation in Iran: Women continue to face profound discrimination under the law, and defiance results in punishment and state violence.”

It was unclear when the authorities planned to lash Ahmadi and the other defendants. Since the 2022 protests, there have been multiple documented cases of the authorities whipping women accused of violating hijab rules or speaking out against them.

Court documents related to the trial have not been made public.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.