Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!
CBS’s new owners have bought The Free Press and are putting its founder, rebel New York Times reporter Bari Weiss, in charge of the news division. Weiss fled the Times with a manifesto condemning her former employer for unethical progressive bias, which, of course, was an accurate assessment. If you have read or listened to Weiss you know that she is a Democrat and a liberal/progressive, just one who does try to keep her biases from tainting her reporting (though not always succeeding).
She is the best that any reasonable person can expect from today’s rotting journalism; it is a field that has disproportionately attracted those from the left end of the political spectrum for more than a century. Journalism ethics demanded that practitioners concentrate on objectivity, but that goal has been almost entirely jettisoned by “advocacy journalism,” which is a euphemism for “Leftist propaganda.” To her credit, Weiss strives to be what journalists are supposed to be: honest, fair and trustworthy.
The fact that CBS staffers are reportedly furious and frightened that a real journalist like Weiss will be their new boss should tell you all you need to know about CBS, and, by extension, broadcast news generally.
Here’s the funniest section of the Independent’s report on the matter:
Meanwhile, Weiss seizing the reins of the network’s vaunted news division – which has been months in the making – comes as staff have grown increasingly disgruntled with Ellison’s transformation of CBS News, with many feeling that the new owner “lied” to them when he insisted he didn’t want to “politicize” the network.
Hilarious. CBS is as politicized as any of the networks, which means “unforgivably politicized.” Here’s the second funniest paragraph:
Following a politically tainted $8.4 billion merger between Ellison’s Skydance Media and Paramount Global, which saw Paramount agree to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle a “meritless” lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, the new leadership team has made several moves to seemingly appease the right and the president.
The merger was only “politically tainted” because apologists for CBS insisted—and still insist, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that “60 Minutes” did not intentionally stealth edit its interview with Kamala Harris late in the campaign to try to make her sound less like the babbling idiot she is. It was a straight up attempt at illegal election interference, even more blatant than the Axis media’s routine efforts to somehow drag Harris into the White House.
That CBS staffers are so opposed to a proven ethical journalist who is likely to block similar schemes reveals how deep the corruption of values at CBS is, and also Weiss’s chances at changing the culture there to something faintly resembling journalism.
They aren’t good, but Ethics Alarms wishes her well.
Ethics Alarms 
My goodness. Bari Weiss heading up CBS News? I guess she’s the mouse that roared and got let inside and put in charge. That’s just amazing. I can’t imagine it won’t go to her head, and she’ll revert, and CBS news will revert to the norm, or never actually leave it. Too much institutional stasis. Running a website with her girlfriend is a little different from being Bill Paley or Walter Cronkite. And now she’s probably rich if these guys have bought the Free Press and are paying her multiple millions in salary. She’ll never be the same. Plus, she was, at heart, a basic Park Slope progressive. What a mess.
That’s fair. I’ve read elsewhere that CBS culture is so entrenched and fear-driven that the long knives will be out for her before the paint is dry on her office drawer.
OTOH, Weiss DOES have a track record of at least trying to be fair. And furthermore, her new boss will be Larry Ellison, who appears to be something of a fan of free markets…
I just think she’s been thrown to the wolves, or at least into the deep end of the pool and she’ll be annihilated and won’t even know what hit her. She has no management experience. I see it as analogous to what the swamp did to Trump in his first term. She’s the nominal head of an organization composed entirely of people who despise her and what she kind of stands for. She won’t have anyone reporting to her she can trust.
I think this is fascinating. I disagree that she has no management experience — that may have been true but organizing and running The Free Press will have given her a big boost in that direction.
I suspect part of the opposition to Weiss is that she is pro Israel and not afraid to speak out about that. Wasn’t it CBS that had that pro Hamas book author on and there was a big kerfuffle when one of the hosts actually asked some questions?
What do we know about Weiss? She is a liberal, but more of an old time liberal than current progressive. She had the gumption to give up a cushy job at the NYT — pretty much her dream job, I think — over matters of principle.
She has had the initiative and spark to put together news organization that seeks out diverse views on matters and doesn’t kow tow to the current progressive orthodoxy.
I don’t think she is going to abandon all her principles because she’s been hired by a legacy media organization.
I suspect there are likely a handful of people at CBS News who would welcome being a real news organization again. And….if there are layoffs coming, well, good. It doesn’t preclude her from hiring a few good men and women.
While this move seems to come out of left field, I think it has the potential for being a ‘brilliant’ move. I hope so.
I will be rooting for Bari Weiss in her new role.
This may be a move of the owners of CBS to distinguish CBS from other leftwing broadcasters and cable news networks such as NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC, as the TV market for left wing news is saturated. At the right you have Fox News, which viewership is as large as that of all the others combined. So CBS’s new owners may see a business need for making CBS different from ABC, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC.
I wonder whether this is enough to save mainstream media. As the 2024 elections have demonstrated, the influence of the mainstream media is in decline. One factor is that a lot of people have ditched cable altogether in favor of various streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu. A lot of people ignore the news altogether, or get it from generic on-line platforms such as YouTube, X, and TikTok. The algorithms of these platforms present news content based on history and user preferences (subscription), causing people with differing political views to see completely different news. These algorithms are therefore a significant contributor to political polarization.
In addition the MAGA right has a thriving ecosystem of podcasters, influencers, media companies and blogs (Townhall, Daily Wire, The Federalist). The Joe Rogan podcast had at least an impact on the elections in 2024 comparable to all the MSM reporting combined. Representatives of the new media are already present at White House press briefings. My understanding is that the media are not beholden to traditional ethics codes for journalists.
My gut feeling is that we Ethics Alarms spend too much time on the ethics of newspapers and TV stations. My gut feeling is that this is related to the average age of the EA host and EA commenters. Younger generations such as Millennials and Gen-Z have moved on to different platforms, accessible via mobile phones and laptops.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/12/the-mainstream-media-will-lose-its-last-grip-on-relevancy/
The issue isn’t that CBS is going to be politicized – it was obviously politicized with stuff like Rathergate in 2004 (remember that?). The issue is that the left-wing politicization is not going to be as dominant.
Here’s Bari’s announcement: The Future of The Free Press – by Bari Weiss