Bias beware
BBC News , Issue 1667 AS IF BBC News did not have enough problems in its dealings with Donald Trump as it attempts to have the US president's $5bn defamation lawsuit over Panorama thrown out, now comes a fresh challenge in the form of the corporation's official "US news partner" suddenly taking a sharp turn in the administration's direction.

CBS is not the network it was in July 2017 when the two broadcasters agreed "a new editorial and news-gathering relationship". James Harding, then the Beeb's director of news and current affairs (now editor of the Observer), heralded a partnership that would deliver audiences "news that is reliable, original and illuminating".

Nine years later, the BBC finds itself in league with an American network that is prostrating itself before Trump.

Weiss noise
Paramount's acquisition of CBS, backed by the White House last year, has led to a revolution at the New York HQ of CBS News. There, former New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss now rules the roost as "editor in chief", despite lacking broadcast journalism experience.

What she offers in spades is a demonstrable willingness to turn the storied network of Edward R Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather into a White House mouthpiece.

Recent CBS News coverage fronted by new anchorman Tony "Lord Haw Haw" Dokoupil has featured a gushing profile of secretary of state Marco Rubio ("Marco Rubio, we salute you!"), and a softball interview with secretary of war Pete Hegseth, booked personally by Weiss, that one CBS insider branded "State TV".

Missing Minutes
Weiss also halted the broadcast of an investigation by documentary strand 60 Minutes into Trump's illegal deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a notorious terrorism detention centre in El Salvador, declaring just hours before its scheduled transmission that it required a Trump administration voice.

The fact that multiple high-level Trump officials had declined requests to appear on the programme left the report – cleared for air by five separate editorial and legal internal reviews – in limbo for a month until it finally aired on 18 January.

New editorial guidelines written by Weiss declare that at CBS News, "we love America. And we make no apologies for saying so." Even more laughably, the network now proclaims that "our foundational values of liberty, equality and the rule of law make us the last best hope on earth".

In a bind
The BBC is now in a bind. Efforts to untangle itself from its pro-Trump partner will embolden the president in his lawsuit over Panorama's clumsy edit of his 6 January speech to supporters before their deadly rampage on Capitol Hill. But if the BBC continues airing CBS News material without disclosing the bias of its "US news partner", it will surely fall afoul of its own promise that "news in whatever form must be treated with due impartiality".

One more problem for the new director-general's in-tray!