Running a major news outlet that is trying to placate a president few Americans like is a very hard job, writes columnist Ross Barkan.
from the air detailing horrific conditions in CECOT, the El Salvadoran prison to which Donald Trump has been deporting Venezuelan immigrants. Sharyn Alfonsi, the segment’s correspondent, said in an email to colleagues that she learned Saturday that Weiss had spiked the story after Trump officials declined to be interviewed.
It didn’t matter that the story was factually correct and had undergone a legal review. The timing made it appear that was Weiss was covering for her boss, David Ellison, who along with his father, Larry, controls CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance. The Ellisons, who are among the very richest men in the world, purchased Paramount earlier this year and are now after an even bigger fish: They are hoping Trump wields his antitrust power to scuttle Netflix’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery and allows Paramount, instead, to consume WB, creating a new entertainment-and-media juggernaut. The Ellisons, who also boughtand installed Weiss as the head of CBS News, are not yet on Trump’s good side, though. He isand how it’s still not sycophantic toward him — not in the way he’d like. It pursues, even under the Ellisons, the watchdog journalism it’s known for. How long that will last is anyone’s guess. Weiss, who was made extremely wealthy by Paramount’s purchase ofhas demonstrated, repeatedly, that her professed commitment to free speech and heterodox thought is mostly nonexistent once money, power, or her own political obsessions become part of the equation. An unabashed Israel hawk, she has championed clamping down on the speech rights of the pro-Palestine left; these days, she barely tolerates opposition to Trump. She is not an especially deep thinker. But she is an adept mogul. She knowsCBS could be her Waterloo. Saving broadcast TV in the cord-cutting era would be hard for any executive, and Weiss has yet to prove herself an innovator. There’s no grand digital strategy at CBS, and her early moves, like a town hall for Erika Kirk have been a flop. CBS lacks a clear identity. Making it MAGA-flavored will alienate its core audience while failing to attract conservatives, who will still prefer Fox News. There is no obvious demand for a news network that is not overtly right wing but also seeks to curry favor with Trump. The news organizations that prize their independence, like the New York, have fared well in the Trump era. He is an unpopular president, and most news consumers simply aren’t hunting for MAGA propaganda. There are many valid reasons to bemoan the fractured media landscape and the inability of reliable news organizations to reach Americans like they once did. Yet it’s easy, in the wake of Weiss strangling ofto see an upside: Since corporate media is less powerful than it once was, it’s far harder for a strongman president like Trump to control the flow of information. Theacross the internet anyway. Even if Trump, the Ellisons, and Weiss succeed in transforming CBS News into a network that is overly deferential to the White House, there will be many other competitor outlets, along with social media, to disseminate a counternarrative. And it’s not entirely clear CBS will go this way. Weiss and her boss may come to understand, as with Disney’s decision to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel, that capitulating to the president is a poor public-relations strategy. Disney, under fire, eventually brought Kimmel back, and now he has a new contract. The spikedsegment will probably air in the U.S. eventually. If, however, Weiss and Ellison continue to weaken a famed journalistic institution, they will find themselves with even less credibility and, likely, with less money. Once trust with an audience is broken, it’s very difficult to get it back. For Weiss, a larger challenge looms: her market, or how she imagines dominating a battle for the attention and dollars of an audience. She was highly successful building outwhich began as a Substack exploiting a particular market inefficiency. In the early 2020s, social-justice or woke politics was far more dominant, and there were a large number of disaffected centrists and liberals who hungered for a news outlet and commentary site that bent rightward on culture but didn’t seem explicitly MAGA. Now anti-woke has won — it is— and those liberals who might have been alienated from woke are far more unsettled by Trump. There are plenty of people who are anti-woke and left-leaning; there are far fewer people who would describe themselves that way and claim any sympathy for Trump. Weiss is now in a very lonely place: operating a major news outlet that is attempting to placate a president few Americans, beyond hard-core Republicans, now like. Maybe Weiss can chart a path forward; she was counted out when she quit the New Yorkand look at her now. Maybe she knows how to make CBS great again. More likely, though, is that she’s finally found a challenge she can’t really meet. She’s out of ideas.Margaret Hartmann Why did the notoriously private First Lady film a Brett Ratner–directed documentary? It might have something to do with the $28 million paycheck.While Trump can’t unilaterally create permanent federal holidays, he did give federal workers Christmas Eve and December 26 off this year.In his Turning Point speech, the VP blamed the left for Charlie Kirk’s murder and portrayed fighting for MAGA causes as a religious obligation.The conspiracy theorist has pissed off Turning Point, alienated Trump, shed her Republican identity — and is gaining more listeners than ever.Discharge petitions that bypass the Speaker’s control of the House were once rare. But they’re becoming common under Johnson.The DOJ is blowing past its legally mandated deadline to release everything it can, and what it has released on time is hard to parse.Is the NFL canceling Bad Bunny? What’s up with the Turning Point show? Here’s what we know about the halftime-show headliner and the MAGA backlash.It’s the VP’s way of helping Trump’s failure to deal with affordability and keeping his coalition united as he looks to 2028.Her obsequious efforts to prosecute Trump’s enemies aren’t just doomed to fail, they’re a terrible embarrassment for her and the Justice Department.Karoline Leavitt announced the possibly illegal move by saying Trump and the deceased JFK will be a ”truly great team.”He made his “Presidential Walk of Fame” even more stunningly stupid by adding plaques insulting Biden, Obama, and his other predecessors.Trump announced a bonus for troops, but otherwise last night’s address was a warmed-over tirade meant to convince Americans they’re not struggling.New York
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