Bari Weiss era begins at CBS News • FRANCE 24 English

Bari Weiss era begins at CBS News • FRANCE 24 English

[Music] From the opinion pages to the news, from railing against mainstream media to joining it, Barry Weiss is a new head of CBS News after David Ellison’s Paramount acquired her upstart digital commentary site, The Free Press, for $150 million. Here she is making the announcement. I’m now editor-inchief of CBS News, working with new colleagues on the programs that have impacted American culture for generations. Shows like 60 Minutes and Sunday Morning and also shaping how millions of Americans read, listen, watch, and most importantly understand the news in the 21st century. We would not be doing this if we didn’t believe in David Ellison and the entire leadership team who took over Paramount this summer. They are doubling down because they believe in news, because they have courage, because they love this country. And it might be hard to overstate how much of a shakeup this is. John Alup wrote on the New Yorker that quote, “Weiss arrives at a moment that feels almost existential for CBS News, whose owners have been widely and credibly accused in recent months of cowtowing to Trump. On July 2nd, CBS agreed to settle in what was widely seen as a winnable and risable lawsuit that Donald Trump filed over edits to a 60-minute segment about Kla Harris. On July 15th, comedian Steven Colbear called that settlement a big fat bribe. Two days later, his show on CBS was cancelled. One week later, the Federal Communications Commission approved Ellison’s purchase of CBS Paramount Company uh CBS parent company Paramount. Now, here’s journalist David Cleon on Democracy Now. We’re talking about an unprecedented level of media consolidation by an unprecedented level of of wealth. Um, Larry Ellison is a known Trump supporter. David Ellison is at least suspected to be, and both are known to be extremely fervent supporters of Israel. Uh, and David Ellison has gotten very close with Barry Weiss. Barry has uh presented herself as a champion of free speech, but in reality, she has a a 20-year history of suppressing speech that she finds objectionable, especially when it’s uh speech championing the rights of Palestinians. This is an ideological power play by them. It’s about elevating her political ideology over one of the most important uh and storied news brands in the United States. Weiss is a registered independent, calls herself politically homeless or even at times a disaffected liberal. But scrolling through the free press, and it’s easy to find some controversial articles consistent with right or hardight politics, like this one called the Gaza famine myth. It’s also much harder to find a piece that is contrary to Weiss’s own positions on DEI or Israel. Now, her pitch has always been to be focused on the facts and to give it equally to both Democrats and Republicans, but media analysts say she is often guilty of a false balance. Here is Oliver Darcy on MSNBC. She’s not like a MAGA propagandist, and I think that’s accurate, but I think that the reality that she paints for her audience is also not what we see today. in and that she talks about how she wants to apply equal scrutiny to both parties as if, you know, some liberal who’s tweeted something a little edgy or whatever is the same as Donald Trump assaulting uh, you know, free speech principles, warping the DOJ and the FBI. These things are not equal, but the way Barry Weiss and the free press often uh, portray America, they are. And regardless of what you think of her, there’s a massive difference from running a commentary news site like the Free Press, to heading CBS News, one of America’s biggest media outlets. And it is this byproduct of the latest in a string of Trump friendly billionaires consolidating control over American medium. Here’s John Oliver. This isn’t the first time an outsider billionaire has tried thumbming the scale of a news organization. We’ve seen Jeff Bezos increasingly meddle with the Washington Post and Patrick Sunong do the same at the LA Times. But this feels like the most sweeping change yet and at one of the few remaining prestige names in new start with the fact that she’s been given editorial control of a massive news organization even though she’s never run a TV network has no experience directing television coverage and as one 60 Minutes producer pointed out is not even a reporter. That is true. She didn’t come up through the news side of a newspaper, but through the opinion pages, which are a very different thing. Now, of course, Weiss is entitled to her opinion like anyone else, but having a career as a provocator, as Vanity Fair put it, does not exactly lend itself to running a news station. So, how to explain Barry Weiss’s meteoric rise and U-turn, and what does it mean for the US media and its consumers? Let’s speak now to our guest, journalist Jim Bartholomew. uh for our viewers. He just wrote an excellent thorough piece for Columbia Journalism Review titled Weiss Goes Mainstream. Hello to you Jim. Thank you for speaking uh to Scoop. Uh first of all, why does CBS have this storied past in American journalism? Yeah, great to be here, William. Thank you for having me. Um well, you know, CBS is is one of the big four networks, the others being NBC, ABC, and and Fox. Um it’s almost 100 years old and it’s it’s had a long and storied history from you know sort of Walter Kronhite the anchor man of of CBS evening uh from the 60s to the 80s was widely considered uh one of the most trusted um men in the US to you know brilliant journalistic shows like 60 minutes um which which have broken big stories. Um, all that is to say that, you know, giving the keys to Barry Weise, someone with not a great amount of experience on on reporting um is is a huge and and controversial decision. And the the first CBS News executive to leave since the appointment of Weiss is Claudia Mil. She was the standards and practices chief. How have other CBS staffers been reacting to Weiss in her first few days on the job? Yeah. Well, you know, this this past few days has been a real frenzy for media reporters. We’ve seen sort of every memo, every email, every meeting getting picked over. Um, and a lot of the reporting is has focused on sort of dissatisfaction or, you know, depression among um CBS News staff. So, the Guardian and the Independent have um run pieces about the sort of dire mood inside. I think one staffer told the Guardian that the feeling was akin to a throwing up emoji um of the feelings there and and Claudia Milan her you know departure we don’t quite know all the details of that at this time um but you know the head of of standards leaving at this moment um potentially could be indicative of of where CBS News is going. Yeah, Jim, you covered this. I mean, Weiss is kind of hard to peg down at times, but she describes herself as a leftleaning centrist, but so much of her career has been dedicated to tearing down the left and almost never criticizing the right. How would you try and peg her politically? Yeah, it’s such an interesting question because I think part of her appeal uh to people on the right, to conservatives or to to media moguls like the Ellisons comes from her kind of intentionally ambiguous um political nature. But, you know, I think you can define her views um pretty solidly. And I would do that by, you know, pointing to the fact that she’s really defined herself as this kind of anti-woke crusader, someone hovering from the center to the right and and using her publication, the free press, um, to forward that kind of view. Um, obviously anti-woke is is not the most helpful term because, you know, everyone has a different definition of of anti-woke. But I think for me, in my analysis, we can define that as on the one hand, a sort of unblinking commitment to to defending Israel. She’s had a hostility to um diversity, equity, and inclusion drives. Uh she’s called out kind of so-called council culture um as well as rights for for trans people in public spaces. And she’s done all of this kind of uh as one person put it in the coverage last week, sort of um giving space and platforms to conservatives while avoiding that label herself, which I think has made her quite useful for for the Ellison’s um as they as um David Ellison takes over CBS News. Yeah. And about uh Ellison and Weiss, a lot have been made has been made of both of their um pro-Israel stances, but I’m curious, public opinion in the United States is, you know, pretty firmly against Israel. Not entirely, but there’s a strong opposition to Israel. So, how big of a gamble would it be for Ellison and Weiss to perhaps try and change that public opinion? And do you think that’s really their ultimate goal? Yeah, it’s a really interesting question. I think uh in terms of the reporting that’s come out about her appointment, you know, the Financial Times has said that a huge reason why David Edison was drawn to her um and he was courting her for months for this role was because of her her pro-Israel stance. Um and yeah, you’re also right to point out that, you know, now 59% of people hold an unfavorable opinion of the Israeli government in the US according to to Pew. um as well as surprisingly uh and interestingly um as many as 39% of American Jews believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza according to a Washington Post poll which is really interesting. Um is is their goal to try and change move the dial on that? We can speculate maybe yes. Um they have a track record of um pro-Israeli uh defending the actions of the Israeli government. Will they be successful in that? I think that’s a hard question to ask. Um, and you know there’s there’s all sorts of other sources particularly coming out of social media and places like Tik Tok which are showing another side of the story. Tik Tok which Larry Ellison might also also buy. Jee, I just want to step in real quickly. Um, a little bit of uh press solidarity on Wednesday. Uh we saw um dozens of reporters uh turned in their Pentagon uh press badges walking out and protested these new government imposed restrictions on their work. Now at the same time, Jim, you you’ve talked about this before. You have CBS and you have ABC settling lawsuits. Trump also sued the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, a latter a judge throughout that case. Um what would you say is a state of the press in America? I’d say we’re at a very worrying moment. Um, you know, on the one hand, the Trump administration has been trying to step on the neck of of the press. Um, you know, these institutions that they’re they’re suing or they’re going after, and on the other hand, they’re trying to surround the administration with kind of uh friendlier um right-wing news influencers or organizations. But I think interestingly with the uh restrictions that they tried to impose at the Pentagon um as you alluded to there, this was even one step too far for many of those friendly outlets and you see places like Fox and Newsmax um saying no to this um this pledge that defense secretary Pete Hedth tried to get them to sign essentially stopping them from news gathering activities. Um, so seeing them stand up together, hand in their badges, and say we’re not going to stand for this, I think was a really important moment. Uh, and very quickly, Jim, running out of time. Do you think the Ellison’s will make a move to try and buy CNN? Yeah, we’ve seen them make a first move for Warner Brothers, according to reporting, which which owns CNN. Um, that was pushed back as far as we can tell, but you know, Larry Ellison is the second richest individual in the world. is worth almost 400 billion according to Forbes. I’m sure he can spare the money and come back with another bid, you know, in terms of what that might mean for CNN going forward that that remains to be seen, but I think watching what Barry Wise does at CBS um will give us some indication and you know employees there will definitely be nervous to find out too. Jim, thank you so much for your time. Jim Bartalamute joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And that brings us to our quote of the week and it comes from the Guardian’s US correspondent Margaret Sullivan wrote, quote, “As independent media gains influence, it may not matter very much anymore who leads a major TV network. Certainly, it matters far less now than in the years when CBS ruled the airwaves. But it is telling that Weiss, such a polarizing provocator herself, has been chosen to reinvent the most mainstream of legacy networks at this fraugh and dangerous time in the US.” That’s it for this edition of Scoop. Thank you for watching and please stay tuned to France 24.

This week, FRANCE 24’s media show Scoop looks at Bari Weiss, who has made the leap from the opinion pages and railing against mainstream media to running one of America’s biggest media outlets. She is the new editor-in-chief of CBS News after Paramount acquired her site The Free Press for $150 million. Our guest is journalist Jem Bartholomew.
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