Welcome back to In the Room. I’m Dylan Byers.

Greetings from Los Angeles, where seemingly everyone is talking about the excellent New York profile on Puck’s own Matt Belloni, “the must-read columnist for Hollywood’s executive class.” Matt’s What I’m Hearing email “has steadily become the go-to chronicle of Hollywood, a must-read among the entertainment power elite, those who aspire to join its ranks, and many whose livelihood depend on that elite,” Nick Quah writes. “‘They are like religion to me,’ says Mark Shapiro, Endeavor’s president, of Belloni’s missives.” Amen. If you haven’t yet seen the light, subscribe here.

In tonight’s email, news and notes on the collateral damage stemming from the slow erosion of Paramount Global. Alas, included in Bob Bakish’s recent 800-person elimination were 20 journalists, including one whose reputation as a First Amendment Warrior is causing all sorts of green room trouble.

But first…

🥊 Ackman vs. Axel, cont’d: As anticipated in my note on Wednesday, Bill Ackman has refrained from suing Axel Springer over Business Insider’s plagiarism allegations against his wife, Neri Oxman, and instead sent an extremely long “demand letter” seeking corrections and a retraction of the allegation. The 77-page letter, addressed to Axel C.E.O. Mathias Döpfner and general counsel Konrad Wartenberg, is Ackman’s attempt to win concessions from Axel and claim victory without pursuing litigation—though Ackman is still threatening to “convert the demand letter into a complaint and file a lawsuit” if Business Insider doesn’t acquiesce.

This still isn’t great for Döpfner, of course: If he agrees to the corrections, he risks appearing like he appeased a powerful and well-connected bully. Still, it may be wiser than going to court to defend a hill that really isn’t worth dying on—especially given that B.I. co-founder and executive chairman Henry Blodget himself acknowledged “a big difference between clerical oversights and intentional theft and misrepresentation.” Either way, I wonder if he regrets picking up that check at Daniel.

💥 The Vice coda: Vice Media has announced that it will cut “several hundred” jobs and stop publishing on Vice.com, the final coda for the ad-supported, traffic-dependent digital media era. Going forward, Vice will effectively function as a slimmed-down studio seeking to license its content to other media companies. One intriguing idea I heard this week was that CNN was in talks to establish such a relationship—Mark Thompson is a Vice fan, as I’ve noted before—though that turns out to be a totally specious rumor likely being pushed by Vice’s owners to gin up interest. In any event, we’re a long way away from the days when Shane Smith proudly declared he was creating “the next MTV, ESPN, and CNN rolled into one.”

🥾 Fox’s Baier necessity, cont’d: Finally, Bret Baier continues to demonstrate his value to Fox News in the post-Tucker, post-Dominion era. On the heels of Tucker’s fawning interview with Putin and grocery store propaganda tour in Moscow, Baier traveled to the front lines to interview Zelensky, who is making a desperate plea to G.O.P. lawmakers blocking Ukraine funding. As I noted last summer, Baier is crucial to Fox’s effort to maintain its reputation as a serious network, even as it continues to gleefully tickle the MAGA erogenous zones (albeit not as recklessly as it did in the Tucker era). What’s notable is how well Baier is executing: the M.B.S. interview, the Netanyahu interview, the myriad G.O.P. town halls, etcetera. Knock Fox all you want, but I guarantee you CNN and NBC would have loved those exclusives.

Macroeconomic challenges, of course, magnify even micro-scandals and headaches. Among those aforementioned 800 employees, for instance, were 20 journalists at CBS News, which faces an uncertain future in the post-linear era, despite its proud legacy as the House of Cronkite. And among those 20 journalists was one Catherine Herridge, a former Fox News investigative correspondent whose exit warranted notice due to her longstanding refusal to reveal sources to a U.S. District Court judge, which has earned her a reputation in certain circles as a First Amendment Warrior.

But for Herridge, the CBS layoffs would have become just another data point in a dismal season of severe cost-cutting across American news media, from The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to Business Insider and BuzzFeed and, most recently, Vice Media. Alas, the Herridge layoff is instead metastasizing into something far more melodramatic, thanks to the interpersonal dramas of a few outsize egos, bad management, conspiratorial thinking, the creative weaponization of the right-wing echo chamber, and, frankly, the fact that some troublemakers don’t have anything better to do.

From there, Turley’s narrative followed its predictable course. Later on that day, a New York Post headline declared: “CBS seizes confidential files of fired reporter pursuing Hunter Biden laptop story in ‘unprecedented’ move.” SAG-AFTRA, the Hollywood union that represents on-air news personalities, issued a statement condemning “CBS News’ decision to seize Catherine Herridge’s reporter notes and research from her office, including confidential source information.”

Finally, on Friday, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a formal letter to Ciprian-Matthews on official Rayburn letterhead stating that the network’s “unprecedented actions … threaten to chill good journalism and ultimately weaken our nation’s commitment to a free press.” Jordan then demanded that Ciprian-Matthews provide his office with the cause and rationale for Herridge’s termination and the reason for its decision to seize her “confidential materials,” as well as “all documents and communications” related to anyone at the company who had access to those materials or may have interfered with them, and to do so no later than 5 p.m. on March 1.

Alas, as is often the case in this business, the true catalyst for this budding public relations nightmare (and now, congressional drama) has more to do with mutual antipathies and personal vendettas than with any legitimate attempt by CBS News to seize Herridge’s documents, or suppress negative reporting on the Biden administration. Indeed, CBS News has broken more news about Hunter Biden than perhaps any other broadcast news organization, including Herridge’s own interview with I.R.S. whistleblower Joseph Ziegler. The network also broke the news of President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, which ultimately resulted in the special counsel investigation that yielded the Hur report—which, itself, indirectly prompted Biden’s uncomfortable encounter with Peter Doocy—that has inarguably become one of the greatest liabilities to Biden’s reelection effort.

The prevailing sentiment among these people is that, in her effort to help diversify a once overwhelmingly white newsroom, Ciprian-Matthews has both denied opportunities to white reporters while also protecting one reporter, Jeff Pegues, whom she allegedly witnessed verbally abusing a female reporter. The reporter in question turns out to have been Herridge herself, though by some accounts Pegues and Herridge were both pretty heated in the exchange. (Coincidentally, Pegues was also among the 20 CBS News employees laid off this month.)

In 2021, Herridge formally complained about Ciprian-Matthews’ racially discriminatory management, prompting Paramount to launch a six-month investigation into the matter, which was recently unearthed by the New York Post. According to the Post, the H.R. probe was “cut short” after the head of employee relations determined that Ciprian-Matthews was merely a “bad manager” with limited resources. Several of the sources I spoke with said they concurred with that sentiment, and confirmed the veracity of the Post report more broadly. CBS News and Stations C.E.O. Wendy McMahon took issue with that portrayal in a statement sent via a network spokesperson: “Ingrid’s record and decades of experience as a highly respected and admired news executive are well known and speak for themselves. Any claims of discriminatory behavior are simply false. Like so many others at CBS News, I not only enjoy working with Ingrid but I am inspired by her care for her colleagues and the culture of CBS News.”

At the same time, Ciprian-Matthews and other members of the CBS News leadership team suspect Herridge of leaking negative information about the network and some of its talent to the press. They also suspect Herridge’s involvement in the Post report about the H.R. probe, as well as the Turley op-ed and the House Judiciary letter. (Reached by phone, Herridge declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding her termination, though she has reposted SAG-AFTRA’s statement on X.)

In any event, the allegation that CBS News “seized” Herridge’s files, the catalyst for all this drama, is in dispute. Several CBS News sources I spoke to said that, after returning some personal effects—clothes, books, awards, etcetera—Herridge’s office had been locked and her files untouched. They also said the company had been trying to coordinate the return of her files via a representative, but that neither Herridge nor said representative had responded. Sources close to Herridge argue that CBS News only agreed to release the files after this public pressure campaign; sources close to the leadership say Herridge is purposely delaying the retrieval of her files in order to advance the idea that she’s being unfairly victimized.

In a statement on Thursday, CBS News spokesperson Christa Robinson confirmed the network was “awaiting a response from Catherine and/or her representative.” She added, “We have respected her request to not go through the files, and out of our concern for confidential sources, the office she occupied has remained secure since her departure.” On Friday, Robinson followed up to put a finer point on it, writing: “CBS News strongly denies any items were seized.”