A student journalist who won a scholarship named after a celebrated CBS news reporter bravely called out the network’s MAGA-fication during his fiery acceptance speech.
Santiago Campos received the $10,000 Mike Wallace Memorial Scholarship at Wednesday’s National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ 47th Annual News and Documentary Awards in New York.
Having received his award from former CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, Campos, a senior at the District of Columbia International School in Washington, D.C., thanked the network for “funding his generous gift towards my education.”
He immediately added, “I want to also acknowledge how the recent direction of the outlet stains the legacy of Mike Wallace, the namesake of this scholarship.”
Applause and cheers could be heard coming from the audience. Media reporter for The Guardian, Jeremy Barr, also said there was “some surprise in the room” at the bold remark.
Campos kept firing, stating, “As corporate elites take hold over the very pipes through which our information flows, journalism that serves people becomes increasingly harder to come by, yet ever more crucial, and what the people want is the truth.”
He finished by saying, “So, if at any time you hesitate to utter the word ‘genocide’ or remain silent in the face of blatant lies. Remember to ask yourself, Who is this for? I hope you choose us.”
Pelley, 68, applauded Campos’ speech, saying, “God, we need young people like you right behind us. I know that Mike Wallace is looking down at you with pride at this very moment.”
Wallace died in 2012, at the age of 93. He was a stalwart of CBS’s flagship news show, 60 Minutes, from its debut in 1968 until 2008.
During his presentation, Pelley also noted 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi was in the audience, on the same day she announced she had been iced out of the flagship CBS news show following political interference.
MAGA-curious CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss shelved an Alfonsi report that was critical of President Donald Trump at the eleventh hour last year.
The report, on the grisly conditions at an El Salvador megaprison where Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration were being held, was pulled by Weiss in an early act of editorial control.
Revealing that CBS did not renew her contract, which expired on Saturday, Alfonsi referenced the “editorial dispute” over the yanked 60 Minutes episode when talking to The New York Times.
“It sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom,” Alfonsi said. “It was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting.”
Alfonsi, 53, suggested that the show has already gone downhill since Weiss, 42, entered the fold last fall.
“There’s a feeling that the wall has come down between editorial independence and corporate interests,” she added. “The concern is we’re going to end up with a broadcast that looks like 60 Minutes but doesn’t have the courage or the character to produce 60 Minutes journalism that actually matters.”
Alfonsi said that while she does not expect to return to 60 Minutes, she is still employed by CBS.
“I’m not resigning,” she told the Times. “If they want me gone because I did my job, they’ll have to fire me.”
60 Minutes veteran Pelley has himself been critical of CBS. At the National Press Foundation’s annual journalism award in March, Pelley took aim at CBS for paying $16 million to settle a lawsuit with President Donald Trump.
Introducing former 60 Minutes chief Bill Owens, who resigned from his role as executive producer of CBS News’ 60 Minutes in April amid growing pressure from both Paramount and the Trump administration, Pelley referenced the circumstances that precipitated Owens’ departure.
“Our previous owners at CBS faced political pressure and crumbled‚” Pelley told attendees, according to The Guardian.
