Tolga Akmen/GETY Images
George Clooney blasted CBS and ABC for settling libel suits brought by the president Donald Trumprather than fight them in court, and said those decisions have purposefully led to “where we are” as a country.
Clooney, whose father Nick Clooney spent decades in television journalism, said Diversity on Tuesday, the network should have instead told the president, “Go to hell.”
Last spring, Clooney played a CBS journalist. Edward R. Murrow in the stage version Good night and good luck just as CBS News was wrapping up work on settlement with Trump, which emerged as the parent company of Paramount seeking regulatory approval for its sale to Skydance. ABC News has achieved its goal settlement with the president in a separate libel suit in 2024.
“If CBS and ABC had fought these lawsuits and said, 'Go to hell,' we wouldn't be where we are,” Clooney said. “It's just the truth.”
The actor said his concerns were heightened by changes within CBS News under new ownership. Paramount is now controlled David Ellisonwhich began to change the editorial direction of the network.
Clooney singled out appointment Bari Weiss to the editor-in-chief of CBS News as a problem.
“Bary Weiss is dismantling CBS News as we speak,” Clooney says. “My concern is how we inform ourselves and how we are going to discern reality without a functioning press.”
Diversity Brent Lang added that the actor became visibly animated when discussing specific people he felt had failed in journalism's core responsibility of holding those in power accountable since Trump returned to office, although the report did not mention any names.
The interview, conducted in New York, was cut short days after Clooney and his wife, a human rights lawyer, Amal Clooneyreceived official French citizenship after living in the country for many years.
