CBS wants you fixated on 72-year-old Bill Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend — her age, her interjections, and her sudden screen time. But while everyone is busy psychoanalyzing Belichick’s personal life, CBS is quietly directing attention away from their own legal scandal: doctoring a presidential campaign season interview to make Kamala Harris appear more coherent.
Just before Election Day, Donald Trump sued CBS News for $10 billion for “deceptively doctoring” his Democrat opponent’s 60 Minutes interview. With just a few edits, CBS chopped up Kamala’s word salad answer about Gaza into something more palatable to the voting public — and President Trump, whose margin of victory trounced any attempt at election interference, still wants to hold the misleading media accountable. (RELATED: FCC Pulls a ‘60 Minutes’ on ‘60 Minutes’)
CBS Doesn’t Report the Story — It Creates It
Five days after Bill Owens, the executive producer for CBS News’ notorious 60 Minutes program, resigned, the network ran its Sunday morning interview, sandwiching Belichick’s promo segment between a reporter’s commentary about his holey sweatshirt and “creative muse,” Jordon Hudson. In the now-viral sitdown, CBS painted a picture not of a legendary football coach promoting a new book, but of an elderly man seemingly micromanaged by a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. (RELATED: Bill Belichick, Crossing the Jordon, and My Morning Croissant)
The reporter characterized Hudson as a “constant presence” before asking probing questions about how they deal with tabloid gossip obsessed with their 48-year age gap romance. CBS’s edits created a narrative that Jordon was an overbearing figure, seemingly controlling the entire situation. The internet exploded, and the story sold, leaving hours of daytime news coverage dedicated to picking the couple apart. But here’s the kicker: the whole thing could be a carefully orchestrated PR play to distract from the real scandal brewing in CBS’s locker room.
Follow the Money: Paramount Global Needs a Favor
While we’re watching silly relationship drama unfold, CBS is protecting its own end zone. The network’s parent company, Paramount Global, is pushing for a high-stakes merger with Skydance Media. And guess who has to sign off on that play? The Trump administration. (RELATED: The Bell Is Tolling for Puffed-Up, Arrogant Propagandists at CBS)
The political stakes are mounting, and CBS executives know it. Any significant regulatory approval hinges on their currying favor with the man they tried to cut off from the White House. So why not use the same tactics that got CBS in trouble to sanitize the brand? Just like with the doctored Kamala Harris interview, CBS’s editorial decision-making was once again used as a tool to manipulate public perception.
The media doesn’t just report events anymore — it manufactures them. And CBS, facing heat for potentially tipping the scales in a presidential election, pulled the puppet strings again to manufacture public discourse about a tabloid-ready scandal involving Belichick and his girlfriend.
Would anyone be talking about this if not for CBS’s craftily edited clip? Would the public be debating the age gap between Belichick and Hudson if CBS hadn’t framed the relationship in such a provocative light? The answer is likely no. CBS wanted to make sure the chatter shifted away from their questionable practices in election coverage. After all, who wouldn’t prefer discussing the personal lives of celebrities over the ethics of media manipulation?
Look at the Shiny Object!
CBS wants you arguing about a 48-year age gap instead of election interference. They want you debating Jordon Hudson’s behavior instead of their editing room’s ethics. And they’re banking on the fact that the average viewer will get caught up in off-field drama and forget the fourth-quarter sabotage they ran last fall.
News outlets, including CBS, are independent companies that operate primarily out of financial and power-driven motivations. Their main goal is to capture viewership, which directly impacts their revenue through advertisements, sponsorships, and ratings. In the pursuit of this, they make editorial decisions that shape the narrative — emphasizing or downplaying what aligns with their own agenda, such as cleaning up Kamala’s word vomit, stirring up age gap gossip, and now, as the political tide turns, working toward a settlement with President Trump.
The real story isn’t Belichick’s girlfriend. It’s that CBS rigged the game, and now they’re trying to distract you from the truth so they can gain more power over the American audience.
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Julianna Frieman is a writer based in North Carolina. Her work has been published by the Daily Caller, The American Spectator, and The Federalist. Follow her on X at @juliannafrieman.