Bari Weiss Is a Perfect Fit For CBS News
But only for the worst possible reasons.
It can be hard, if you were born any time after about 1963, to remember that broadcast television news still exists. But, fun fact, it does. Other fun fact: millions of people still watch it. And the biggest beast of them all is still 60 Minutes, which has been the top-rated TV news program for 51 straight years.
But recently, 60 Minutes and its parent company, CBS News, have been going through some hard times. Paramount, which owns CBS, threw 60 Minutes under the bus earlier this month, paying Donald Trump $16 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit that was standing in the way of a corporate merger with Skydance Media. Paramount’s willingness to all-but-openly bribe Trump had already cost CBS News its president and the showrunner for 60 Minutes, both of whom left over the tawdry affair. Meanwhile, the network is bracing for new rounds of job losses if the Skydance merger takes place.
In other words, things are not great. Time for some smart people to come in and shake things up!
Or, alternatively, to do whatever this is. From CNN on Friday:
Paramount’s owner-in-waiting, David Ellison, met with journalist entrepreneur Bari Weiss on Friday about a possible tie-up between CBS News and her startup The Free Press.
[…]Ellison has been tight-lipped about his vision for CBS, so his interest in The Free Press is a significant signal about his plans to invest in reporting and analysis.
Ellison is said to be interested in infusing Weiss’s editorial perspective into CBS News, as the media newsletter Status first reported last month.
Just what we were all craving: for a major news network to be “infused” with Bari Weiss’s stream of constant bullshit.
Weiss is a sleazoid grifter who cozies up to Nazis and routinely publishes harmful nonsense dressed up as legitimate journalism. Asking her to help shape an entity like CBS News—which, whatever its myriad flaws, is still several tiers above the crap Weiss puts out—is an obviously insane thing to do. Which is why it’ll probably happen.
Why would Weiss be so attractive to someone like David Ellison? Well, there are a few key reasons—none of them good.
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