Black Eye for CBS

Turns out that former “60 Minutes” executive producer and CBS news hound Bill Owens was more correct than he knew. He resigned from the network last April, you might recall, citing increased corporate meddling toward the long-running news magazine show. In a note to staff, he wrote that it became “clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.” 

Less than three months later, CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, agreed to pay $16 million to Donald Trump’s foundation* to settle a lawsuit the president filed against the network and “60 Minutes” alleging election interference over an interview with Kamala Harris. Didn’t matter that most legal experts thought the lawsuit frivolous and that CBS would have won. What mattered was that Paramount Global was working on a deal to be sold to mega-corporation Skydance Media and needed approval from Trump’s hand-picked FCC for the new conglomerate, which would be run by a gent named David Ellison, son of billionaire Oracle founder and Trump buddy Larry Ellison. 

[*Ed Note: the fund for his cosmetics, not any sort of philanthropic venture, for as we know, that prick wouldn't lift a finger for someone else]

Bari Weiss is German for Barry White

Sixteen mil is sofa cushion change in an $8 billion merger. Now comes word that CBS News will install Bari Weiss, 41, as editor-in-chief as an offshoot of Paramount’s nine-figure purchase of Weiss’s digital media outfit, The Free Press. Prior to TFP, Weiss did three-year stints as a columnist and opinion writer at the Wall Street Journal and then the New York Times. She left the Times in 2020 and on her way out the door dropped a public resignation letter in which she claimed she was subjected to a hostile work environment and harassed for her views by liberal colleagues. 

Weiss calls herself a centrist liberal who is “politically homeless” due to intolerance Left and Right, but many media knowers describe her as right-leaning and chummy with conservatives. Curiously, conservative Times voices David Brooks or Bret Stephens haven’t been similarly offended or constrained, yet we’re supposed to believe that a centrist was heckled out of the building because “intellectual curiosity is a liability at the Times,” she said. 

Weiss attracted millions of dollars from mostly anonymous donors for The Free Press startup, which began in 2021 as a newsletter but whose subscriber list and valuation grew quickly. Its purchase has been reported in the $150 million range, down from a reported $200 million ask this summer. It bills itself as “Honest. Independent. Fearless.” Yet she and it are heavy pro-Israel and routinely anti-“woke” and skeptical of social justice in society and academia. They regularly call out the worst excesses of the Left, while thinner on criticism of the Trump administration and conservative positions. 

Jay Michaelson, a respected author, rabbi, activist and blogger, wrote recently that there’s little evidence that she’s liberal or even centrist. He said that she tracks conservative and has long been guilty of stoking societal divide with questionable conclusions and sloppy logic and editing, all under the guise of free speech. 

Weiss’s appointment comes on the heels of Paramount recently naming a former Trump appointee and conservative think tank leader to be CBS ombudsman. The network’s long-running Sunday morning show Face the Nation also was instructed to change editing practices after Homeland Security Secretary and animated sack of hair Kristi Noem complained that she didn’t like the way her answers were edited and presented in a segment. 

Weiss’s Zionist leanings have left many to wonder how that will affect coverage of Israeli action and Palestinian suffering in Gaza. With Ellison openly talking of massive layoffs, many CBS News staffers are reportedly somewhere between concerned and freaked. 

If much of this comes across as a lot of newsroom inside baseball, that’s understandable. But as the site’s media grump, I’d argue that Weiss’s leadership may present not only a major shift in tone and practice at a marquee network, it also further chips away at the myth of a monolithic liberal media. Certainly, there are left-leaning sites and publications and plenty of liberal voices at various outlets. But corporate acquisition and consolidation have created huge umbrellas under which newspapers and news organizations work. Decisions are made now for bottom line reasons, irrespective of what they mean for newsrooms and journalistic standards and independence. News organizations are corporate commodities, not an essential component for a functioning democracy. 

Consider that last December, ABC’s parent company, Disney, also settled with Trump for $16 million after private citizen Trump sued ABC for defamation over George Stephanopolous’s imprecise language in discussing the E. Jean Carroll verdict. G-Steph said that Trump was “liable for rape” when the verdict was that he was liable for sexual abuse. The presiding judge said that the distinction between the two was semantic, but Disney settled and issued an apology anyway for several reasons, according to the New York Times: Disney feared that its brand would take a further hit after jousting with Florida governor Ron DeSantis and subsequent criticism and boycotts from conservative officials and customers; the Mouse Empire was also concerned that a Trump FCC would go after ABC’s news license; and it didn’t want to risk a trial that might go to the Trump-friendly Supreme Court. Disney’s a $200-billion brand, and again, $16 mil is pocket change. 

Seven months later, Paramount settled, rather than stand behind a First Amendment defense, signaling that government bullying is an effective tactic for squeezing free speech in general and journalism in particular when spread sheets rule the day. When Stephen Colbert called it for what it was, he was told that his late night show was going to be cancelled. Purely a financial decision, Paramount execs said, because the show loses money. Uh huh. Then, after Jimmy Kimmel’s fairly innocuous remark about MAGA attempting to score political points following conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing, FCC chair and Trump crony Brendan Carr talked about going after Kimmel and ABC’s broadcast license, and the network suspended him for a week. 

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Trump has done exactly what he promised, using the Presidency to go after those he considers enemies and those he thinks crossed him. He has banged the “fake news” drum for a decade over unflattering coverage, and with a weaponized justice system and a pliant regulatory structure, sometimes all it takes is the threat of government action or scrutiny to affect news decisions and slant reporting. No one knows what CBS News and “60 Minutes” will look like in six months or a year. Change is coming, with new corporate oversight and a hand-picked, conservative provocateur in charge of a thinned work force. The stopwatch is still tick-tick-ticking, but is it marking time or a more ominous countdown?