Boosting Bari Weiss, Part 2
The Media Research Center continued to serve as right-wing media's biggest cheerleader of the new CBS News chief -- though it did strike a discordant note when she hired someone from ABC.
The Media Research Center’s meltdowns over criticism of Bari Weiss as head of CBS News continued in an Oct. 14 post by Alex Christy:
HBO’s John Oliver had a nearly 40-minute long meltdown on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight as he denounced Paramount CEO David Ellison’s decision to name Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News. Despite Weiss being a liberal who simply thinks the left has gone too far on things like DEI, transgenderism, and Israel, Oliver lamented that Ellison has inserted “right-leaning opinion journalism into an American icon.”
Towards the end of his Moddowian lament, Oliver played a clip of Weiss denouncing DEI and followed up by declaring, “Yeah, and that itself is a whole worldview right there. “You know this DEI thing we’ve been trying, where we acknowledge not everyone’s been getting equal access to opportunity? Let’s just roll back the clock on that. Also, let’s be anti-anti-racist, and not think too much about what that might make us.’”
Much like how some people want you to think anti-fascism is simply opposition to fascism, Oliver wants you to think anti-racism is simply opposition to racism.
Christy then moved to whatabnoutism:
Earlier, Oliver denounced Weiss for criticizing those who have sought to smear Israel, but Oliver has never devoted a 40-minute address to the CBS journalists who attacked colleague Tony Dokoupil for daring to challenge leftist writer Ta-Nehisi Coates nor CBS hiring Sen. Ted Kennedy’s former chief-of-staff or the brother of Obama’s deputy national security advisor to be its president.
He then got upset that Weiss’ billionaire boss was called out:
However, Oliver then moved to Ellison, “It’s not just about Bari Weiss being at CBS. It’s about the fact CBS is now under the control of someone who thinks she, and her editorial sensibility, make her a good fit for the job, and who, incidentally, is reportedly preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, home of CNN and—uh-oh!—HBO. Which isn’t ideal! Although I’ve got to say, if what he likes about Bari is that she forces him to have hard conversations that get a bit uncomfortable, maybe he’ll like this!”
Seeing a trend, Oliver added, “But the thing is, it’s not just about Ellison, either. Again, he’s just the latest in a string of billionaires who’ve taken over our journalistic institutions, from The Washington Post to The LA Times, and started making worrying changes. And whatever complaints I might’ve had with their coverage before, and I’ve had plenty! My solution would never have been this.”
Oliver claims to differentiate between news organizations and opinion websites, but it is the Post’s opinion section that has shifted towards free markets.
Curtis Houck cheered more layoffs at CBS News in a Nov. 4 post:
Late last week, a new wrinkle emerged in the CBS News layoffs. Reports revealed South Africa-based foreign correspondent Debora Patta – whose anti-Israel tilt made her an ill fit with the network’s new vision under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss – may sue the network after supposedly having not been on the list of layoffs but made it to the final list in place of Rome-based foreign correspondent Chris Livesay, who lobbied Weiss to keep his job.
Houck’s alleged evidence for Patta’s “anti-Israel tilt” is an August interview with Israel ambassador Mike Huckabee, where she asked questions about things like starvation in Gaza and allegations of genocide. It was not explained how merely asking such questions made Patta “anti-Israel.”
Houck then cheered that another producer had been fired for the offense of caring about non-white people:
Separately at the Post, they highlighted a social media meltdown from a producer who was laid off from his posts at CBS Evening News Plus as well as the far-left Race and Culture Unit, which represented the epitome of the woke, race-obsessed virus that’s come to infect American culture and journalism.
Without a shred of evidence, the producer claimed every single layoff in his team “was a person of color” and their replacements would be exclusively white people.
Good on CBS and Bari Weiss for ensuring such virulent hate was kicked to the curb.
It wasn’t explained how caring about the plight of non-white people equated to “virulent hate.”
Houck continued his cheering in a Nov. 21 post:
In the latest media rumblings about Bari Weiss’s tenure thus far as CBS News editor-in-chief, The New York Post dished on the finale of CBS Saturday Morning with Dana Jacobson and Michelle Miller while The Wall Street Journal revealed “a rallying cry” Weiss has clung to thus far in meetings in stating, “I wanna blow this up.”
First, the Post’s great Alexandra Steigrad said the final episode of the current Saturday show would air on November 22, but the real news nugget was the fact that “no replacements have been revealed to staffers” with CBS News executives remaining “tight-lipped on who would replace the hosts…or what the vision for the show will be — an information vacuum that has left employees on edge, sources said.”
Houck didn’t detail how hating non-right-wing media supposedly makes Steigrad “great.”
Tim Graham huffed in his Nov. 28 podcast: “the Left is disturbed at any expression of moving major media outlets one tick toward the center — see Bari Weiss at CBS.” He offered no evidence that Weiss cares one whit about moving CBS “toward the center” and is largely interesting in making it a Fox News clone.
Rare criticism
The MRC’s usually fawning coverage of Weiss thit a rare discordant note in a Dec. 8 post:
CBS News remained in the headlines last week vis-à-vis comings and goings as editor-in-chief Bari Weiss further having a look under the proverbial hood. This time, we saw a date for the expected departure of CBS Evening News co-anchor Maurice DuBois and a reported desire to sign CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil to the PM chair, but most notable was a questionable decision to bring over longtime ABC correspondent Matt Gutman.
Yes, the same Gutman who said the texts between the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination and his transgender lover were “heartbreaking,” “intimate” and “touching” (which he was forced to offer a mea culpa one day later):
[…]
Earlier this year, he whined about the actions of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) in California, defended Los Angeles rioters, and carried water for Harvard in its fight against the Trump administration.
Thus, it has to be asked: What in the world is Bari thinking?
It should be noted that Houck did not ask the same question fo Weiss regarding “longevity influencer” Peter Attia, whom Weiss brought on a month ago as a contributor for CBS. After his name came up in emails he wrote to Jeffrey Epstein, Weiss refused to fire him, and he was ultimately forced to quit.
The MRC has completely censored all mentions of Attia, let alone the fact that he was hired by Weiss. Yet Houck devoted an entire post to whining about Gutman — whose offense was nowhere near as severe as Attia’s relationship with Epstein — further huffing: “We’ll reserve further judgment for how Gutman reports with CBS News, but the first read on this would leave us calling this a miss.” Houck has been silent on how Attia reflects on Weiss and CBS.
Two days earlier, however, the MrC was eager to push the idea that Weiss hadn’t changed anything at all. Alex Christy wrote in a Dec. 6 post:
There is something about the podcast world that encourages former network journalists to let the mask slip and reveal that they really were the liberal activists critics alleged they were all along. Former CBS anchor Connie Chung was the latest example, as she joined former ESPN and current Morning Joe talking head Pablo Torre on his Pablo Torre Finds Out Thursday show to discuss the alleged demise of CBS since David Ellison and Bari Weiss have taken over, despite any lack of significant changes.
[…]
Chung also claimed that “CBS is a whole different realization that I had worked for. CBS has now been taken over, thanks to greedy owners: Shari Redstone, partnering with David Ellison, Larry Ellison’s son. And their greed has caused the venerable CBS to actually disassemble, to crash into crumbles, and then they’ve hired this—I don’t know what to call Bari Weiss.“
Still, Christy effectively admitted that Weiss had pulled CBS to the right after all:
It would be nice to say that the liberal meltdowns about Weiss are well-founded and CBS has reformed itself, but the new management has had mixed results. On one hand, Weiss has gone after CBS’s woke excesses by sacking the Race and Culture unit, but on the other, CBS is still making Trump-East Germany comparisons, and Weiss is reportedly hiring Matt Gutman, the ABC reporter who said that Tyler Robinson’s texts with his trans furry lover were “very touching” after multiple other suspensions.
Christy did not explain why he’s attacking anyone who criticizes Weiss as “liberal activists” — unless he wants to admit that Weiss is a right-winger … or why covering race and culture automatically makes one “woke,” whatever that means.
Still defending Weiss
The MRC continued pretending nothing much has changed under the leadership of Weiss in Tim Graham’s Dec. 19 podcast:
CBS News hasn’t changed much so far under new Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. Scott Pelley recently boasted at the Walter Cronkite Awards that no one’s been messing with 60 Minutes as it continues to rail against Trump. But Weiss’s Saturday night town hall with Erika Kirk was attacked by the Brian Stelter Brigade of media reporters as a “lackluster” performance in the ratings. But was it?
A quick Google search told us CBS Saturday nights, especially at 8 p.m., typically draws around 2 million viewers, and the Weiss show came in at 1.9 million. Their magazine shows like 48 Hours also draw modest numbers, around 1.5-2 million for specials/repeats, though ratings fluctuate with programming. Wherever Weiss puts on conservative views in this town-hall format — whether alone or paired with a liberal — the media reporters hate it. These are the same people who wanted to deplatform Fox News.
Graham devoted a Jan. 1 post to complaining that Weiss’ hiring was criticized:
There’s something hilarious in the lefty Hollywood trade magazine Varietychanneling George Clooney attacking CBS News as falling apart and apparently not holding Donald Trump accountable. The leftist press never holds George Clooney and his fellow Hollywood Democrats accountable.
Executive Editor Brent Lang is a typical cozy kitten in this Clooney cover story, channeling his view that Trump’s lawsuits against the media were “frivolous.” Variety is frivolous.
Variety‘s headline emphasized Clooney’s “GFY” bravado: “If CBS and ABC had challenged those lawsuits and said, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ we wouldn’t be where we are in the country. That’s simply the truth.”
[…]
Clooney has energetically pushed the leftist myth of CBS News standing up against McCarthyism under Edward R. Murrow, and constantly comparing that hackneyed leftist crusade to the present day, and who cares if the Soviet Union actually infiltrated the country with spies after World War II? Who cares about The Truth again? Not Clooney. He’s naturally pissed at Bari Weiss for daring to move CBS one inch toward the center.
“Bari Weiss is dismantling CBS News as we speak,” Clooney says. “I’m worried about how we inform ourselves and how we’re going to discern reality without a functioning press.”
For her part, Weiss handled Clooney by inviting him in, sending Variety this statement: “Bonjour, Mr. Clooney! Big fan of your work. It sounds like you’d like to learn more about ours. This is an open invitation to visit The CBS Broadcast Center, where I’m spending the holidays working to relaunch the Evening News with my colleagues. Tune in January 5.”
Rather than actually address Clooney’s claims, Graham raged at him instead:
To the Clooneys, a “functioning press” means going Full Jim Acosta all the time. It’s in the pose and in the lunge at The Right-Wing Enemy, not in the facts. Clooney thinks the Glory Days at CBS apparently include Dan Rather’s Fake News about George W. Bush’s National Guard record, not to mention Rather screaming at his father about Iran-Contra. But he let Robert Redford embarrass himself with the Fake News Movie on that front.
When the Rathers and the Steve Krofts cuddled up to the Clintons or the Obamas, well, that was not “dismantling CBS News.” Because its purpose is to advance the “right side of history,” not holding that side accountable.
Remember that last year, Graham and the MRC had a meltdown when CNN brodcast a performance of the Clooney-starring Broadway show “Good Night And Good Luck,” and columnist Christian Toto personally attacked Clooney.
We documented how Curtis Houck tried to rage on Weiss’ behalf in a Jan. 3 post, touting alleged “messages of support” for the “reimagined CBS News” without saying who made them.
He went on to huff that Status writer Joe Passanatino’s idea of rebuilding public trust “sure seems to be one of authoritarian submission and forced acceptance of liberal progressive narratives where all that ails the country is the fault of moronic, uneducated conservatives.” As if Houck’s idea of public trust is for networks to push right-wing narratives where all that ails the country is the fault of liberals. Indeed, Houck accused both Passantino and UK Independent writer Justin Baragona of launching “mean girl smears” at Weiss and Dokoupil.
Graham returned to grouse in his Jan. 7 column:
The British socialist newspaper The Guardian is upset that CBS News might become less radical, publishing an article provocatively titled “‘Blood in the water’: Bari Weiss’s chaotic first three months in charge of CBS News.” They want Bari to bleed.
This spin announces an agenda: Weiss Must Be Stopped! The Left cannot stand any outlet on their side moving two degrees toward the center. Any tiptoe to the middle is “anti-journalism.” Any hint at an opposing conservative view is a slippery slope to “misinformation.”
Guardian “media & power reporter” Jeremy Barr quoted a pile of anonymous CBS staffers in service to his anti-Weiss agenda. He referred in this story to a previously unreported November 6 “blow-up among staffers about language choices when writing about transgender individuals.”
[…]
Now this is where the rubber meets the road. Wokeness dominates the elitist media. “Style books” are surrender manuals to ideological manipulation of terminology. Facts are shredded in favor of feelings. So you get Orwellian terms like “gender-affirming care” to describe trying to erase your actual gender.
Graham didn’t explain why he opposes such terms — instead, he ranted that non-right-wingers say such things:
Don’t mention biology. “Noun phrases like biological men, biological males, biological women, or biological females are often used by anti-trans groups to invoke a person’s assigned sex at birth as their ‘real’ gender, in contrast to their gender identity.” You have to love “real” in quotes.
Don’t say the ideologues are ideological. The term “gender ideology” is described as “a charged term commonly deployed by anti-trans commentators and activists that implies trans people, merely by being trans, are participating in a political activity or have a political agenda.”
They are. That’s obvious. That’s why they are intimidating the media into a political lingo.
Of course, Graham is trying to do the exact same thing — intimidating the media into a transphobic political lingo. He’ll never admit that, of course.
Meanwhile, the MRC refused to mention things that don’t reflect positively on Weiss, such as her claim that President Trump used “anti-Jewish tropes” in a 2020 interview.