On Friday, the Independent reported that staffers at CBS News are in an uproar over reports that Bari Weiss may be about to take over the organization:
The imminent arrival of anti-woke and stridently pro-Israel “heterodox” pundit Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News has left the newsroom’s staff “literally freaking out,” with sources telling The Independent that the Tiffany Network is “not a good place right now.”
News reports indicate that CBS will pay Weiss $150 million to acquire The Free Press, and Weiss will assume a leading role at CBS News as part of the deal. As editor in chief, she will report directly to David Ellison, CEO of the new entity, Paramount Skydance, while Tom Cibrowski will stay on as president of CBS News.
Weiss seizing the reins of the network’s vaunted news division – which has been months in the making – comes as staff have grown increasingly disgruntled with Ellison’s transformation of CBS News, with many feeling that the new owner “lied” to them when he insisted he didn’t want to “politicize” the network.
The network has been politicized for decades; the staffers’ fear is that Ellison may take it in a different political direction.
Additionally, the belief among network insiders and staffers is that Weiss is being hired to tamp down on pro-Palestinian coverage of the Gaza War, which was already a central sticking point with former Paramount chair Shari Redstone.
Let’s hope that is true. Network coverage of the war that Gaza started, and lost, has generally been disgraceful.
Major layoffs are in the offing, and CBS News has been under fire for its biased news coverage, as in the case of the deceptively edited Kamala Harris interview. This strikes me as the most salient point:
[F]or the most part, sources stated that morale is extremely low and there is no real appetite among most of the staff to see Weiss take charge of the network and potentially squander its credibility, as well as that of 60 Minutes, its legendary and long-running newsmagazine.
Credibility? What credibility? CBS News is a joke, and has been for many years. 60 Minutes, “its legendary…newsmagazine,” published the George W. Bush Texas Air National Guard hoax, based on obviously faked documents, that we helped to expose more than 20 years ago. That was just one of a number of instances where 60 Minutes and CBS News have not just been biased, but have disseminated misinformation on behalf of the Democratic Party. The idea that CBS News has a reputation left to lose is delusional.
Holdover staffers are gearing up for battle. They will try to drive Weiss out:
Network staffers also told The Independent that Weiss would have a tough time gaining the respect of the newsroom because they see her as something of a “political operative,” adding that CBS News is already “not a welcoming place for outsiders.”
“There are so many people who’ve come in here and been chewed up and spit out that the idea that somebody that we don’t want is going to come in here and somehow manage to survive this is, I think, laughable,” the CBS reporter declared. “So she’s in for, I would venture to guess, a rough ride.”
Again, a total lack of self-awareness: Bari Weiss, a heterodox liberal, is much less a “political operative” than most of the reporters who now work for CBS News. But she is not a member of the “woke” cult.
The Independent story says that some CBS staffers think that Weiss doesn’t have the experience necessary to direct a substantial news room. They may have a point; she was a member of the news staff at the New York Times, but hasn’t had that kind of executive authority until now. Unless, of course, you count the fact that she developed The Free Press from nothing into a $150 million property. But, in any event, the track record of the experienced hacks who have been running CBS News is so bad that in all probability, Bari Weiss will be, in operational terms, an improvement.
