CBS dispute with Bill Belichick latest controversy to hit embattled network

Bill Belichick's back-and-forth with CBS News over his girlfriend Jordon Hudson shutting down a question about their relationship became the latest dispute for the network, as CBS and Paramount are also battling a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump.

The former New England Patriots coach, now head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels football team, spoke to "CBS News Sunday Morning" about his new book, and was asked by CBS host Tony Dokoupil about how he and Hudson met. 

Hudson, who was sitting off to the side as Belichick was questioned, shut down the question about their relationship and said, "not talking about this."

After the moment was widely criticized, Belichick released a statement, accusing the network of creating a "false narrative" with "selectively edited clips." CBS News fired back at Belichick on Wednesday.

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"When we agreed to speak with Mr. Belichick, it was for a wide-ranging interview," CBS' statement read. "There were no preconditions or limitations to this conversation. This was confirmed repeatedly with his publisher before the interview took place and after it was completed."

CBS News published a lengthy article on the interview, which included discussion about the book and his football career. The show's X account published a clip focused on Hudson's interruption. 

"I agreed to speak with ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ to promote my new book, ‘The Art of Winning — Lessons from My Life in Football.’ Prior to this interview, I clearly communicated with my publicist at Simon & Schuster that any promotional interviews I participated in would agree to focus solely on the contents of the book," Belichick said in his statement.

The coach said in the statement that he was surprised when non-book-related topics were introduced and said Hudson jumped in to reiterate that the discussion was supposed to be about the book.

"She was not deflecting any specific question or topic but simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track. Some of the clips make it appear as though we were avoiding the question of how we met, but we have been open about the fact that Jordon and I met on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021," he said.

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"The final eight-minute segment does not reflect the productive 35-minute conversation we had, which covered a wide range of topics related to my career. Instead, it presents selectively edited clips and stills from just a few minutes of the interview to suggest a false narrative — that Jordon was attempting to control the conversation — which is simply not true," the statement added.

Dokoupil faced internal backlash at CBS after a contentious interview he did with anti-Israel author Ta-Nehisi Coates in October 2024. The CBS anchor pressed the author on his book, which he said read like something you would find in "the backpack of an extremist," as well as whether he felt Israel had a right to exist. 

CBS staffers were upset by the grilling from Dokoupil and network leadership, according to the Free Press, concluded that the interview did not meet the company’s "editorial standards."

Paramount CEO Shari Redstone later acknowledged CBS made a "mistake" in its response.

"As hard as it was, frankly, for me to go against the company, because I love this company, and I believe in it, and I think we have a great, great executive team, I think they made a mistake here," Redstone said during a panel discussion in October 2024.

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CBS' parent company, Paramount Global, was sued by Trump ahead of the 2024 election over a "60 Minutes" interview they did with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Trump is seeking $20 billion in a lawsuit against CBS, alleging election interference over its handling of the interview. The president accused CBS of aiding his 2024 Democratic opponent through deceptive editing just weeks before the presidential election. Paramount Global agreed to mediation, signaling the courtroom showdown would result in a settlement. 

The raw transcript of the interview, which the network released in February 2025, showed CBS News had aired only the first half of her response to "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker's question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not "listening" to the Biden administration in a preview clip that aired on "Face the Nation," but aired only the second half of her response during a primetime special on the network. 

"As the full transcript shows, we edited the interview to ensure that as much of the vice president's answers to 60 Minutes' many questions were included in our original broadcast while fairly representing those answers. 60 Minutes' hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves," CBS News said when they released the transcript.

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There was speculation Paramount was hoping to settle the suit ahead of a planned merger with Skydance Media in hopes of preventing potential retribution by the FCC, which has the authority to halt the multibillion-dollar transaction.

Trump feuded with "60 Minutes" while running for re-election in 2020 as well, and released a video of his full interview with Lesley Stahl, conducted in October of that year, which he described at the time as a "vicious attempted ‘takeout.’"

Trump declined to do a "60 Minutes" interview during the 2024 election, citing Stahl's dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 interview. 

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CBS was also accused of editing a clip of Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., during an exchange between the Florida governor and a reporter aired on "60 Minutes" in April 2021.

Reporter Sharyn Alfonsi accused DeSantis of a "pay-for-play" scheme over allegations that he rewarded Publix, a Florida supermarket chain, with COVID vaccines after the company made a sizable donation to his campaign. 

"That's a fake narrative," DeSantis said during the interview. Conservative writer A.G. Hamilton pointed out at the time that the CBS program "cut out several minutes" of the governor's comments explaining what led to the deal with Publix. 

"First of all, the first pharmacies that had [the vaccine] were CVS and Walgreens, and they had a long-term care mission, so they were going to the long-term care facilities. They got the vaccine in the middle of December. They started going to the long-term care facilities the third week in December to do LTCs," DeSantis told Alfonsi. 

"So that was their mission. That was very important, and we trusted them to do that. As we got into January, we wanted to expand the distribution points," he added.

CBS stood by the reporting despite the criticism it received from two local Democrats in addition to Publix and DeSantis rejecting the narrative. 

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CBS News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Fox News' Ryan Gaydos, Joseph Wulfsohn and Brian Flood contributed to this report.