A CBS News star who abruptly exited the network has slammed his old bosses’ decision to invite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner.
Scott MacFarlane spent five years at the network but announced his departure last month, joining a staff exodus after the network’s rightward turn under its Trump-friendly editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.
He said at the time, “I look forward to some independence and finding new spaces to share my work in line with my personal goals.”
MacFarlane, now the chief Washington correspondent for independent news company MeidasTouch, was asked about his former network inviting Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to sit at the CBS News table for Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Former Fox News host Hegseth has attempted to cherry-pick which media can cover the Pentagon and filter the information they will receive, while Saturday’s dinner is meant to celebrate the First Amendment and highlight the vital role of a free press in democracy.
“I think it’s a bad look,” MacFarlane told Status on Thursday. “At least it’s distracting... I know the sentiment of journalists can be all over the map. We’re not a monolith.”
MacFarlane noted that there was now a petition signed by over 300 journalists (“including former network journalists”) who have urged the people speaking at the dinner to “not hold back, to push back where necessary” and highlight how they believe the First Amendment is “in jeopardy at this moment in time.”
Broadcasting legend Dan Rather and former ABC White House reporter Sam Donaldson are among those to have signed the petition, while other journalists have suggested a visible protest like lapel pins touting the First Amendment at the event.
This Saturday’s dinner will see Donald Trump attending for his first time as president, although he will leave after making a speech and miss the presentation of awards to reporters.
When asked if he would attend the dinner if he was still at a network which had a table at the event, MacFarlane declared he “would not.”
“I just don’t think it’s a good look,” he said. “And I’ll admit to you that I would worry about losing sources and credibility with sources if I were seen in the prism at least perceived to be hypocritical.”
The reporter also questioned other journalists attending the event given Trump’s assault on the First Amendment, including calling a female journalist “piggy” and asking another why she never smiles as she was asking him about survivors of Jeffrey Epstein.
“The president has sued media organizations,” MacFarlane said. “He has sued them for millions, if not billions of dollars. He has menaced reporters, name-called reporters. He has executed a media strategy that demeans journalism... ”
He pointed out that Hegseth’s removal of Pentagon credentials from New York Times reporters wound up as a federal court case this month.
“This is in federal court and being challenged by reporters who believe it’s onerous, especially at a time of war, and it has led to people being moved out of the building, literally,” MacFarlane said. “So, it feels a little bit odd to be celebrating the First Amendment and championing education of young journalism students by having an event that has guests of honor of that sort.”
The journalist told Status he no longer feels “aligned” with legacy media outlets like CBS due to how they cover Trump and his often unhinged comments.
“They may have to, but they still choose to platform unfiltered the president and lies. You don’t have to carry the remarks live if they’re going to be dangerous misinformation.... You don’t have to carry malignant information unfiltered,” he said.
“I don’t know that we need to platform lies, whitewashing or sane washing and that’s where I felt disaffected, not with CBS, just with the entire enterprise of legacy linear media.”
CBS News’ editorial independence has been questioned under nepo-billionaire media baron David Ellison’s Skydance, which took over Paramount, the parent company of CBS.
Shareholders of Warner Bros Discovery voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the company’s $110 billion merger with Paramount Skydance on Thursday.
