Gheorghemas Media Interlude

We interrupt the holiday jollity to remind you that it was always a matter of when, not if. When CBS News’s parent company, Paramount Global, installed right-wing masseuse Bari Weiss as head of the news division this fall, staff anxiety spiked about how heavy-handed she would be and if she would permit the network’s veteran reporters and producers to do their jobs. 

Weiss inserted herself into the lineup recently when she hosted Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative mouthpiece and flamethrower Charlie Kirk, for a mostly forgettable CBS town hall short on both journalism and substance. Separately, longtime “60 Minutes” reporter Scott Pelley said that the show had experienced “no corporate interference” thus far. Sunday evening, however, Weiss pulled a scheduled “60 Minutes” segment about the Trump administration’s practice of shipping immigrants to a notorious El Salvador prison known for torturing and abusing prisoners. 

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. 

Apropos of nothing really

I speak from experience when I say that reporters can be thin-skinned and defensive about their stories, often believing them complete and above reproach. I can’t tell you the number of times editors improved my stuff by requiring extra voices or more reporting. That said, the 41-year-old Weiss is the furthest thing from a respected, veteran editor and steward. Her experience is mostly as a whiny, sloppy opinion writer who left the NY Times in a snit because she didn’t feel that she was sufficiently valued and then as a figurehead of a supposedly “independent” news startup bankrolled by mostly conservative money. 

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. 

Get a load of these cartoon villains

The Warner Bros. board has urged shareholders to accept a $72-billion, cash-and-stock offer from streaming giant Netflix. But Ellison and his newly minted Paramount Skydance conglomerate are angling for a hostile takeover, sweetened by a promise from dad Larry to be personally responsible for $40.4 billion of equity financing that supposedly pushes their bid to $77.9 billion total. 

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.]