CBS’ Remaining Journalists Seem Confused As To Why Bari Weiss Sucks At Journalism
from the this-arsonist-seems-bad-at-firefighting dept
We’ve noted repeatedly how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison hired an unqualified troll named Bari Weiss to run CBS News for a very obvious set of reasons: to coddle wealth and power (particularly Trump and Netanyahu), validate and amplify right wing grievance and engagement bullshit, divide and distract the electorate, and undermine real journalism. Even if she fails and CBS is ruined, Larry Ellison wins.
Bari’s problem so far isn’t that she’s not good at journalism or unqualified (which is true and irrelevant), it’s that she’s not doing a particularly good job at the task she was hired for: engagement agitprop and semi-cleverly coddling the status quo.
Her recent town hall with Erika Kirk was a ratings dud, her new nightly news broadcast has been an error-prone hot mess, and her ham-fisted killing of a 60 Minutes story about Trump concentration camps continues to plague the network and cause a continued revolt among remaining journalists:
“Journalists at CBS News say that Weiss still has not laid out a clear strategy for how she wants the network to change and adapt, though she is expected to do so as soon as this week, sources say.
“I’m constantly confused by what her definition of ‘making news’ is,” a second current CBS News staffer said. “It seems like she only cares about big names saying controversial things. That’s not the same as newsworthiness.”
Most of the news coverage of Weiss tends to downplay the fact that she was hired specifically by the Ellison family not to improve CBS journalism, but to either destroy it, or distort it into a right-wing-friendly engagement slop. Even journalists at CBS still seem confused as to why Weiss doesn’t appear to be good at journalism, when it’s very clear that’s not what she was hired for:
“We are a prideful newsroom, and she’s rubbing people the wrong way,” a third network staffer said.”
Weiss will inevitably be a glass ceiling casualty of the new 80s ski-villain movie brunchlord culture at Paramount, who will probably replace her with some younger hustlebro chode better suited for trolling the Internet in order to “sex up” the ratings for their culture war agitprop.
And again, it’s important to remember that contrary to some breathless media missives, CBS was, with spotty exception, not a great news organization before this all started. Network leadership’s very first response to rising U.S. authoritarianism was to hire more on-air authoritarians. The last act of the outgoing CBS leadership was to bribe our authoritarian president to get a terrible new merger approved.
The best outcome for everyone is probably a complete institutional collapse at the hands of the network’s new nepobaby brunchlord leadership, accelerated by the fact that nobody in any position of authority at the new CBS seems to have absolutely any idea what they’re doing. Both in terms of journalism, or in terms of building a modern right-wing-friendly grievance and propaganda empire.
Filed Under: agitprop, bari weiss, cbs news, david ellison, disinformation, journalism, media, network news, propaganda
Companies: cbs
Comments on “CBS’ Remaining Journalists Seem Confused As To Why Bari Weiss Sucks At Journalism”
She was never a journalist she was always an opinion columnist hired because she had the right connextions. Never forget she rose to fame by trying to get professors fired for having opunions other than ‘everything Israel does is kind, justified and legal.’ If she was in a role equal to her actual abilities, she’d have been selling ads at an failing newspaper coasting on it’s unearned legacy, not writing op eds for them and she certainly wouldn’t be killing journalism at CBS.
The mainstream media continues to fail even discussing her, referring to her as ‘Maga curious’ when she happily provided an outlet and a right wing filter to spread the emails Elon selected to release from Twitter, and is actively trying to block anything that portrays the Trump admin as the ghouls they are.
Journalism: tell the truth, present the facts. Some people just cannot do this. Their only goal is to present themselves and to gain influence (something YouTube and others have turned into a dirty word because influence itself has become the goal).
gaslighting
“Journalists at CBS News say that Weiss still has not laid out a clear strategy for how she wants the network to change and adapt…”
Reminder, this is imposed by Trump. Gaslighting is used to dominate and control. Give vague instructions, then blame and fire people when something goes “wrong”. Keep moving the goalposts. The ones with a backbone will rebel (and probably resign or be fired), and the rest will do whatever they are told.
CBS news is dead. There is no longer a reason to watch it. I can watch Faux news if I want right wing ass kissing garbage. Mission accomplished, unfortunately.
Welcome to capitalism, may CBS go down in flames.
Star news
And so many other rags, read over many years. Has had and had not Any real news.
Its fabulous. Attention grabbing, Flash in the pan news. Waiting for more Alien reports.
You worked at VICE dude, one of the trashiest outlets to ever exist.
You have no idea what Journalism is supposed to look like. Fortunately Bari Weiss does.
Re:
And you just earned a “funny” vote.
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snort😆
That Darn Ellison...
Sure sign you have too much money is when you can by a TV network just to run it into the ground
Bari Weiss and CBS
CBS like other legacy networks has to have a thorough house cleaning to get rid of the radical progressives and old guard employees.
Reorganization of this type is always messy. Give Weiss a break and some time to do her job.
Re:
That’s cute, that you think CBS was actually “progressive” in any way beyond not reporting the news in a way that paints your Repugnant Cultural Other of choice as subhuman filth. Seriously, did you ever get mad when CBS talked about gay people without calling them a slur?
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Care to link to some of this radical progressive reporting done by CBS? If you’re going to accuse them of having that bias and it being such a problem the government have to impose a right wing censor to purge it then you must have a mountain of evidence to back it up, right?
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Yeah, she’snot fully staffed with Nazis yet. Lay off, man.