Pondering How Much Magic Bari Weiss Can Work at CBS News
Top O' the Briefing
Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. The Sine Qua Non Sequitur is on a brief woodlands retreat, pondering the essence of "hullabaloo."
When I first heard the news that new media renegade Bari Weiss might be given the reins to the propaganda mill CBS News, I triple and quadruple checked it just to make sure I wasn't dreaming. After more than two decades of writing about the biased mainstream media behemoth, the thought of such a huge change at one of the biggest offenders seemed too good to be true.
Once the news was official, those of us who were excited about it wondered just how much change she could effect. My friend Ed Morrissey speculated that the situation might change Weiss. The culture at CBS News is very entrenched and corrupt, after all.
Weiss didn't show up to work with a flamethrower and a fistful of pink slips, but her arrival has made all of the right people nervous. There's been a lot of grumbling from people who are worried about having to be honest and responsible for the first time in their "journalism" careers. The first person who left was someone I'd never heard of. Things are getting a little juicier over at the news division of the Tiffany Network, though. My good friend and day-drinking companion of 15 years Stephen Green wrote this yesterday:
My decades-old dream for a shakeup at the World's Most Pretentious and Least Informative Infotainment Program™ might be about to come true, according to a story in the New York Post on Monday evening.
Hot on the heels of yesterday's news that new CBS News chief Bari Weiss might poach CNN's token conservative (and not in a bad way!), Scott Jennings, comes word that the high-priced talent — propaganda is a talent — at 60 Minutes might want to make sure their LinkedIn profiles are all up-to-date.
Calling Weiss a "41-year-old newshound," the Post's sources claim that "insiders say she believes '60 Minutes' has drifted too far to the left."
And I've been known to sip at the occasional martini.
DON'T TEASE ME.
As Weiss casts her eyes about for what needs to be fixed at CBS News, 60 Minutes would be the most obvious place to start. It's the clogged toilet of bias at CBS News, and it needs to be addressed. The program has been awful since, well, forever. I honestly can't remember a time when 60 Minutes wasn't merely a televised fan club for the Democratic National Committee.
It's important to note that Bari Weiss is no conservative. She's just not a whacked-out lefty. What she wants to do is rein in the bias that plunged off the leftist cliff decades ago. During Weiss's first week on the job, Mr. Green and I hosted Ed Morrissey on "Five O'Clock Somewhere." We were discussing how little it would take in the way of a culture shift at any old guard MSM outlet to make conservatives happy. We don't need 60 Minutes to become a MAGA drum circle; we'd just like some self-proclaimed journalists who don't lie all the time. Once in a while, it would be nice to have a conservative position not be labeled "extreme."
Baby steps, that's all we want.
If Weiss can manage to do that, she'll get nothing but props from me. She is rather fearless. After leaving The New York Times, Weiss became ever more successful and built a brand by not caring if anyone liked her. She's serious about what she's doing and isn't interested in winning any popularity contests.
Oddly, that's made her quite popular.
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