MAGA Tested, Trump Approved NewsA conservative opinion writer is now leading CBS News
The new owners of CBS, billionaire Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison, believe CBS News is broken. And like their friend Donald Trump, they’re convinced the cure for a fracture is a sledgehammer. Let’s call it restoration by disruption. Enter Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss has been called a provocateur and is one of the most polarizing figures in today’s American media landscape. She has been praised for her Rolodex, her energy, and relative youth — she is 41 years-old. Weiss is unabashedly anti-woke, anti-DEI and pro-Israel, though she calls herself a “politically homeless” moderate. The former opinion writer for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times is not a reporter. She has never worked in television news and she has never led a staff larger than a few dozen. That all changed this week when David Ellison, whose Skydance Media recently acquired CBS, installed Weiss in a position created for her. She will not report to the president of CBS News — as one might expect — but to David Ellison directly. Weiss’s management style has been called abrasive and disorganized. “It is chaos. She would admit that she can be difficult to work with. Even for people who totally agree with her,” a former Weiss staffer told Oliver Darcy of “Status.” She is known to curse — a lot. At one of her first meetings at CBS News she told the assembled staffers to “cover the f*****g news.” According to some who witnessed this opening, it was met with smirks and eyerolls. My friend, Tom Bettag, a former executive producer at CBS News said of Weiss, “An editor-in-chief is the leader of the newsroom. A leader is only as effective as he or she has been able to win the respect of the newsroom.” It will take more than salty language to win over CBS News. It will take integrity and a spine. The Ellisons got more than just Weiss and her attendant baggage in the deal; they also got her hugely successful Substack platform, “The Free Press,” which she started in 2021. It is considered a conservative online political commentary and opinion site, not a hard-hitting news outlet as David Ellison himself described it. It is known for contrarian opinions and critique of “the woke left.” What Weiss lacks in journalistic bonafides, she makes up for in influence. Weiss has the ear of the billionaire class. “The Free Press” is reportedly a daily must-read for the uber-wealthy who want to know what’s happening in American politics. David Ellison wanted it and wanted her clout. For $150 million, he got both. Though “The Free Press” is one of Substack’s most lucrative newsletters with a large readership, it is not worth $150 million. But that price tag is pocket change for David Ellison and his father, whose estimated net worth is north of $300 billion. Though Ellison can afford to overpay for “The Free Press,” he is demanding massive layoffs at CBS News, 10% across the board. The threat of layoffs will do nothing for morale, which has to be at its lowest point, and will make the staff compliant. In a piece on “The Free Press” announcing her move to CBS, Weiss wrote, “If the illiberalism of our institutions has been the story of the last decade, we now face a different form of illiberalism emanating from our fringes. On the one hand, an America-loathing far left. On the other, a history-erasing far right. These extremes do not represent the majority of the country, but they have increasing power in our politics, our culture, and our media ecosystem.” While one must keep an open mind, it is hard to do so when such a statement portends a push for “bothsidesism” and arguments reliant on false equivalences. There can be no equivalences drawn between the two political extremes in this country, especially when one extreme is led by a man who rarely speaks without lying. But Weiss’s modus operandi is giving the fictitious illusion of fair and balanced coverage through such mechanisms. It is also hard to believe Weiss will be an equitable steward of the storied news division in light of how the Ellisons acquired it. In July, Skydance Media bought Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, for $8 billion. The deal had to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, which it did after Paramount settled a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump for $16 million. As part of the deal, Skydance had to agree to appoint an ombudsman. Kenneth Weinstein, an ally of Trump and a head of a conservative think tank, was chosen. That deal and the hiring of Weiss signals to everyone, especially to the man in the Oval Office, that CBS is no longer independent, but under the tutelage of a conservative billionaire who is putting more than his thumb on the scale. Another example came last month when, after complaints from the White House about an interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on “Face the Nation,” CBS agreed not to edit taped interviews on the show. The American people will pay the price for this move, as will the journalists of CBS News who can no longer credibly serve as watchdogs because the ones they are meant to hold to account are signing their paychecks and hobnobbing with the president. Rather than doing their jobs as sentinels of democracy, who independently cover the news and hold the powerful accountable, they now have to be concerned about how their pitches, their stories, and their scripts will be received by someone with a clear political agenda. They will be dogged by worry that anything they do, any question they ask, will be scrutinized to ensure that it suits the political powers. Anything that runs afoul of Trump’s agenda may be flagged and is unlikely to be aired unaltered, if aired at all. No journalist or their work can remain unaffected by toiling in such an environment. The ones who remain at CBS will work hard and do the best they can under the circumstances. But they now are being forced to deal daily with this new reality. I wish I had been wrong decades ago when I warned about the corporatization and politicalization of the news media. But in Weiss’s ascension, it is clear that CBS News has tipped over the precipice: that corporate overlords in concert with an autocratic president are demolishing support for independent journalism in favor of financial gain, and in so doing undermining a key foundation of our democracy. I have a deep and abiding love for the institution and the people of CBS News whose hard work made it, and continues to make it, something to be immensely proud of and a service to the nation. Their sacrifices, including some who gave their lives in far corners of the world, have long shined a light on the truth. It is a dark day in the halls of CBS News, where the portraits of television news pioneers once hung — Cronkite, Murrow, Sevareid, Collingwood. They were journalists who made television a trusted source of information. Whom and what are we to believe today? This is the lens through which the new, unfortunate reality at CBS News must be seen. This is why it should matter to every American who believes in the importance of free and independent journalism.
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