Weiss said that the story needed additional reporting, which is standard newsroom practice, while correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said the decision to pull the piece wasn’t “editorial” but “political.” In a note to colleagues obtained by multiple outlets, Alfonsi said that the story was screened five times and vetted by network attorneys and the company’s Standards and Practices department.
Weiss said that she wanted Trump administration voices as part of the story. Alfonsi had sought to interview officials from the White House, State Department and Dept. of Homeland Security but none chose to discuss the subject.
“If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Alfonsi wrote. Weiss said that the New York Times had already reported on the prison’s conditions and abuses, as if somehow that disqualified a venerated television news magazine from, ya know, doing its own reporting and talking to prisoners and victims on camera. Also, the most cruel and mendacious administration in our lifetime has pretty much forfeited any imprimatur of supposed balance or fairness, particularly if officials decline to talk.
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| Apropos of nothing really |
You’d think that someone who publicly blasted the Times on her way out the door would be only too happy to plant a flag with visible, visceral images that the Gray Lady cannot match. Again, her justification rings hollow and is a tell on where she stands.
Just beneath the surface of this newsroom taffy pull is billion-dollar mergers and acquisitions and the Orange Oaf’s ego.
Paramount Global’s boss, David Ellison, is the son of gazillionaire Oracle co-founder and Trump supporter Larry Ellison. David Ellison and by extension, Weiss, have implemented layoffs and restructuring at CBS, including the insertion of a former Trump appointee and loyalist as the network’s ombudsman.
Ellison the younger also seeks to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, though the prize is Warner Bros. movie and TV vaults.
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| Get a load of these cartoon villains |
The Wall Street Journal also reported that David Ellison conveyed to Trump that if he and his compliant FCC do not approve the Netflix bid and instead sign off on the PSKY deal, he would overhaul CNN. Such a move would appeal to the president, since he still consumes cable news and has long viewed the network as unfairly critical.
Per usual, everything with TFG is a transactional, zero-sum equation predicated on power – the diametric opposite of good governance. He enriches himself and gets his way because he sits in the Oval Office and has staffed his Cabinet and regulatory agencies and the courts with loyalists and suck-ups. He traffics in grievance and outrage at a time when media corporatization neuters, if not entirely removes, accountability. Compromised national news organizations such as CBS and, if it comes to pass, CNN further erodes any hope of an informed electorate and with it, a functioning democracy.
[Coda: In what could only be described as an entirely predictable outcome, Weiss's inexperience and incompetence came back to bite her and CBS, and she failed to consider the network's significant non-U.S. broadcast arrangements when she spiked the 60 Minutes story. Almost as if on cue, the full piece began airing via Canadian streaming outlets, and despite CBS' efforts to stop it, the full story is now widely available, including here. Weiss has "succeeded" in ensuring millions of people who wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to it will now see it. Well played.]
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