Routing of the culture police to follow!
The biggest news story of the day: Bari Weiss is hiring on to run CBS News.
Reason magazine, libertarian in its politics, summed it up: “Bari Weiss Has Won the War on Wokeness in Media.” It’s that big.
Ms. Weiss co-founded an on-line publication called “The Free Press” after giving “a blistering kiss-off” (in the words of the Wall Street Journal) to the New York Times, where she had been an opinion writer until cancel culture came for her.
Her 07-14-2020 letter of resignation from the publication that inflicted The 1619 Project on America resounded like 95 theses pounded into Big Brother’s door:
The lessons that ought to have followed the (2016) election — lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society — have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else. …
The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people.
The culture of cancel
Weiss took her exit shortly after the Times forced out the opinion page editor who published an op ed from U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (Harvard Law, Army Ranger, chair of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee). It argued that the Constitution permitted military force to be used against rioters in American cities. Rather than debate the point, Times staffers played the race card.
Her Free Press published a head to toe evisceration of National Public Radio by longtime staffer Uri Berliner: “Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” (“The network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.”) Congress agreed: taxpayers should not subsidize NPR agitprop.
While not exactly MAGA, neither does Bari Weiss suffer TDS. She is pro-Israel and anti-DEI. The lady is also a millionaire, after Paramount/CBS purchased her publication for $150 million. If one is known by the company one keeps, Ms. Weiss (it is reported) hobnobs in person and on-line with the likes of David Mamet, Bill Maher, Marco Rubio, Woody Alan, and Amy Coney Barrett. A most convivial table!
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Heading up CBS News, Bari Weiss may make legacy media — if not Must Watch TV — at least less insufferable. If CBS (and other news media like the Washington Post under Jeff Bezos) can win back the trust from the one-half of America they have been guilt-shaming the last couple of decades, they may again have the moral capital that Walter Cronkite spent when he reluctantly stepped into commentary and turned against LBJ’s war.
7 responses to “Woke just got canceled in prime time”
Let’s see what happens if she reports something negative about Dementia Don. Your media darling will become a “low rating, scum of the earth, commie, editor of lefty lies and a peddler of hoaxes. That’s if she ever says something negative about your fearless leader.
Anyone who reads The Free Press would know that they’re plenty critical of Trump.
Bari Weiss sounds like a keeper. Any regular readers of The Free Press out there?
I have. It’s still a bit left-leaning, but refreshingly diverse in viewpoints, including MAGA-critical at times. Liesak has clearly not read it– there are no cartoons or pictographs.
I’ve been following Bari Weiss since she told the NYT what to go do with themselves in her resignation letter. She’s one of the biggest contemporary beacons of real journalism out there. I’m just hoping that The Free Press stays true to its values and that Paramount doesn’t dilute it.
Dear Uncle Walter Cronkite, Just when this country needs him the most.
“Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”