In news sure to rankle the progressive press, CBS News, the Tiffany-plated network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, and Dan Rather, has a new editor-in-chief. The “Tiffany network” associated with the CBS television network was earned during the tenure of William S. Paley for its reputation of high-quality, prestigious programming and news coverage. In recent years, the network has become synonymous with liberal ideals, left-leaning journalists, and biased reporting. The News Division’s recently hired Chief, Bari Weiss, will be shaking things up to return the network’s journalism to a high standard. Weiss, age 41, has a story worth telling and has burst upon the scene as a voice of reason in a profession hooked on reporting President Donald Trump’s latest harangue or perceived violation of norms. How Weiss attained her position and why it has stirred such controversy requires some background.
Weiss worked at the New York Times from 2017 until 2020 as an op-ed staff editor and writer on culture and politics. She left the Times because they treated her horribly, with a woke mob attacking her within the organization and threatening her. A woke mob chased her out, and the Times still refuses to accept the circumstances under which she left. In her resignation letter, published widely, Weiss explained that she wanted to help the paper improve its coverage. One of its shortcomings was clear as she put it in her letter: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. She mourned the paper’s unwillingness to understand all Americans, instead of just progressive ones. As she described the emerging consensus in the paper: Truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else. In other words, ideology trumped facts.
Weiss reported the constant bullying of her colleagues, who called her a Nazi or a racist for challenging liberal orthodoxy. The harassment of co-workers who befriended her, the unlawful discrimination, the hostile work environment, and constructive discharge all contributed to her departure. But the tipping point occurred when Tom Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas, wrote what most would have considered a sensible response to rioting in American cities, calling for the National Guard to be called in to restore order. The Editorial Page Editor and his deputy were fired or demoted as collateral damage, leading Weiss to conclude that the paper had abandoned its mission from the famous 1896 statement of Adolph Ochs (owner of the New York Times who built it into a journalistic institution of great renown), “to make of the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”
Weiss’s departure from the Times took her into undiscovered territory. She began a Substack called the Free Press with investment from some very wealthy and very smart people who saw the potential of the idea (Mark Halperin). CBS has purchased what Weiss has built at the Free Press. She hired independent writers who covered issues with no agenda and a willingness to report the truth, not a narrative fit to serve a readership committed to one point of view. She wanted the best people, liberals and conservatives, old and young, experienced and lacking experience. She has an eye for talent, as Halperin observes, and CBS desperately needs that. The old guard is howling; the protectors of the status quo do not want things upset, but Weiss wrote out her ten principles vital for a good news organization. Read them carefully and be glad that CBS, a proud network now in last place in the ratings, obligated to pay millions to left-wing journalists who have no interest in reporting news without bias, and burdened with a reputation for favouring ideology over facts, will now have a serious journalist as its head. Weiss’s Ten Principles of Journalism:
- Journalism that reports on the world as it actually is.
- Journalism that is fair, fearless and factual.
- Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly wherever it leads.
- Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing world.
- Journalism that explains things clearly without pretension or jargon.
- Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny.
- Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of the debate.
- Journalism that rushes towards the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their unpopularity.
- Journalism that uses all of the tools of the digital era.
- Journalism that understands that the best way to serve America is to endeavour to present the public with the facts first and foremost.
As Halperin summarizes, “Anyone who knows Bari Weiss’ career and has looked at it seriously will not be surprised by those 10 rules or how sensible they are or how needed those exact rules are, not just by CBS News but by pretty much everybody in the legacy media.” And yet the response from within the news division at CBS and amongst many of those in the dominant media betrays their supposed objectivity. Some at CBS are freaking out. Words like depressing and doomsday are being used. A guy named Walker Bragman, some independent journalist at the network, said everyone at CBS should quit in protest because Weiss is a right-wing operative peddling misinformation. Weiss will probably be happy for people like Bragman to quit. It will save her the time of firing him.
The Free Press has lots of material that people on the right would not like. How about Nicole Hanna-Jones of 1619 fame? Commenting on Weiss, Hanna-Jones said, “In case it wasn’t clear, the anti-DEI crusade has never been about merit. Zero news experience, never been a reporter. Elevated to editor-in-chief of CBS News, one of the most storied institutions in the nation.” Hanna-Jones ignores the three years that Weiss used to build a successful news organization from scratch, a game-changer that has attracted a million and a half subscribers. And, of course, Keith Obermann. Who else better misunderstands the failure of the left to grasp why half the country voted for Trump? On X, “I’d like to congratulate CBS on hiring as editor-in-chief the dumbest person in America, Bari Weiss.” He goes on to argue that there is no recovering from this hire. Nonsense taking flight. The august position that CBS once held has been lost. Good for them for bringing in someone who might bring a different perspective. Who will hear other voices, who will return journalism to a place where fact-finding once again reigns, even if those facts reveal truths the left does not want to hear or prove those on the right innocent when the left has already tried, convicted, and sentenced them.
No better words conclude this piece than those of Mark Halperin on his Next Up program on Oct. 7. “Bari Weiss has an opportunity to not just fix CBS News, which needs fixing, but to set an example for all of the legacy media, all the people who own those places and run those places to say, don’t listen to the people who say this person’s too inexperienced or too right-wing or too unqualified. Find great people, bring them in, and empower them. Fix these great places, once great places, and make them, put them in service of profit and potential and the capacity to appeal to the whole country.”
Dave Redekop is a retired elementary resource teacher who worked part-time at the St. Catharines Courthouse as a Registrar until being appointed Executive Director at Redeemer Bible Church in October 2023. He has worked on political campaigns since high school and attended university in South Carolina for five years, earning a Master’s in American History with a specialization in Civil Rights. Dave loves reading biographies.
