When right wing billionaire Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby son David) hired blog-troll Bari Weiss to run CBS News, Weiss arrived with the promise of “balanced, fact-based news,” “independent, principled journalism,” and a unique “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” that would modernize the network and reach the “everyday Americans” they claimed were “traditionally ignored by mainstream media.”
As we noted at the time, that was all bullshit code for turning CBS into yet another outlet that panders to global autocrats, normalizes far right wing extremism, coddles corporate power, and generally shits all over the kind of popular progressive societal reforms (like an equitable tax code) that terrify rich people.
Obviously none of this has gone well, with Weiss “new” CBS seeing some of the worst ratings in a quarter century. Apparently, people don’t have much of an appetite for authoritarian-coddling, “anti-woke,” low-effort agitprop crafted by unqualified people with little actual journalism experience.
Thanks to feckless California Democrats, Ellison is close to also acquiring CNN and doing the same thing courtesy of Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers. While initially there was some thought that Weiss would see her management role extended to include “modernizing” CNN, there are growing rumblings that Paramount may ultimately jettison Weiss entirely:
“Everyone is wondering how soon it will take the Ellisons to pull the plug once the merger goes through,” one industry insider told Radar. “CBS is desperately trying to spin these abysmal launch numbers as a win when the entire industry is laughing at yet the third failure on Bari’s record.”
Radar’s sourcing is pretty thin, and doesn’t extend much beyond insider gossip. But the same growing Ellison dissatisfaction is bounding around right wing media outlets like the New York Post (for whatever that’s worth) suggesting that at least — it’s unlikely that Weiss’ shaky authority extends to CNN. A lot seems to be hinging on just how bad the ratings are for the looming new season of 60 Minutes.
It’s not surprising that Bari Weiss can’t do journalism — because she was never a journalist. She was a right wing substack troll focused on editorially punching left against “woke” concepts like empathy, diversity, democratic norms, popular progressive reforms, and broad public opposition to genocide.
But apparently Weiss isn’t good at propaganda either. Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, and countless other right wing agitprop mainstays have mastered the art of trolling about homelessness, drug use, crime, and immigration in a way that captures the interest of the frightened, racist, and elderly. But, thankfully for the public interest, Weiss doesn’t really actually seem to know how to modernize broadcast TV agitprop for this new era.
Of course the Ellisons don’t really know what they’re doing — so it’s very possible they just keep doubling down on the same mistakes. The problem is that the CNN deal saddles them with significantly more debt, which always results in more layoffs, higher prices, and corner cutting, all of which are only likely to expedite the “tiffany network’s” precipitous collapse in the marketplace of ideas.
I often hear Bari Weiss was a “success” and “is doing what she was hired for” because the Ellisons hate journalism and want to see CBS destroyed. And while I doubt they’d lose much sleep if CBS journalism did die; I genuinely do think they thought they could “modernize” CBS as an effective propaganda tool, and it’s abundantly clear Weiss isn’t capable of it.
Which suggests it’s very likely she’s replaced by somebody more competent, at least as so far as rank propaganda is concerned. One thing will be sure: whatever happens to Weiss she’ll absolutely continue to fail upward.