The Problem With CBS...
Bari Weiss is the symptom, not the disease.
CBS, the once-noble and seasoned television network, has been suffering of late.
Its news division, formerly considered respectable, has suffered under the leadership of Bari Weiss, a hack with no experience with broadcasting and whose resume lists op-ed editor and book reviewer positions. She replaced seasoned news anchors for the CBS Evening News and replaced them with someone who is… not. Then she began gutting the crown jewel of the news division, the Sunday news magazine “60 Minutes”. Producers and news personalities replaced. Scott Pelley unceremoniously fired after a reported tense meeting.
The result has been devastating. Viewership declining. The cherished ratings collapsing worse than an economic bubble burst.
The call is out there to remove Weiss. It’s been out there since she put Tony Dokoupil in the Nightly News chair. It’s been out there since she decided to kill a “60 Minutes” segment just minutes before it could air. It’s out there now that Pelley was fired for simply arguing with her and questioning her decisions.
Unfortunately the problem is not just Weiss, and even if she were to be removed tomorrow, it would not solve the problem that plagues the business of news reporting.
The real problem is who owns the business of news reporting.
CBS is a subsidiary of Paramount, now known as Paramount Skydance Corporation, and now owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison. The move to install Weiss into CBS News starts with him, and was suspected to appease a certain convicted felon who infests the White House in order to green-light his assimilation of Paramount. CBS News and “60 Minutes” have been a thorn in the felon’s backside for years, and they weren’t the only ones. CNN, once the jewel of the late Ted Turner, was another thorn of the felon. CNN is now owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, and now nepo-billionaire Ellison wants that network as well, and with the blessing (and suspected help) from said felon.
That would be two national networks owned by one person. A nepo-billionaire who doesn’t accept the word “no”.
But even if somehow the deal is destroyed tomorrow, the neo-billionaire would still own Paramount Skydance, and thus CBS and thus CBS News. He would still be free to gut CBS and CBS News and turn the network into nothing but entertainment pablum for the masses to digest.
Remember Rupert Murdoch? He was the Australian-born owner of a British tabloid magazine who then created News Corp, and eventually created the ill-named “Fox News” and the "Fox Network” (not to mention a few other “Fox” channels). He also owns the Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones. He and his cronies were the ones that replaced reporters with “personalities”, that put commentators over journalists, and had been doing everything possible to control the news to favor a certain political party and a certain convicted felon for years.
Who owns ABC News? Disney. Who owns NBC News? Comcast.
All across America, newspapers are being bought out by corporations, their local staff gutted, and replaced by generic news reporting. No, your local op-ed article is not crafted by someone in-town. It’s usually a syndicated columnist on contract with the corporation that now owns your local paper. The only things truly consider “yours” are the local ads, the occasional police report, and the classifieds.
And unfortunately it’s not the first time the news is manipulated by the wealthy.
Ever hear of William Randolph Hearst? He was the tycoon and one-time congressman who created “yellow journalism”, the style of reporting that is heavily used today by people like Murdoch. A century ago, he owned twenty-eight major newspapers and thirteen magazines, including some you might recognize today.
Hearst was the one that drove us into the Spanish-American War of 1898. When he sent a reporter to Cuba to document the alleged hostilities there, the reporter told him all was quiet. Hearst then allegedly said “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Hearst then ginned up the readers of his various publications to demand war against Spain so that it would happen, truth be damned.
No different, one might say, than when Murdoch used his “news” network to gin up the masses for the Iraq War. Or to claim that a certain Hawaiian-born President wasn’t “born in America”. Or to claim that the 2020 Election was rigged.
Without resorting to my old tagline… the truth is that the business of reporting the news - and, yes, I recognize that it is a business - is the responsibility of those that own the media platforms, be it print, broadcast, online, or streaming. It is their responsibility to make sure that the news they present is accurate, not biased, and certainly not fabricated. It is not “opinion”. It is not “entertainment”. It is it not propaganda. It is simply the news. And when you cannot tell the difference between the news and “opinion” or “entertainment”, then you as the owner of that media have an obligation to get out of that business, or else be divorced from ever calling it news.