Paramount Formally Hires Bari Weiss To Turn What’s Left Of CBS News Into A Soggy Right Wing Propaganda And Troll Farm

from the fail-upward-brunchlords-run-the-world dept

It’s super curious how the folks most vocal about being cancelled or having their “Conservative viewpoints silenced” now own or control most major U.S. media companies. Almost as if their claims of being silenced have always been a bullshit ploy to dominate the discourse on the back of something other than the quality of their ideas!

As long predicted, Paramount/CBS owners, the Ellison family, formally announced that they’re hiring “contrarian” engagement troll Bari Weiss to run whatever’s left of CBS News after its disastrous and utterly feckless capitulation to the Trump administration. The $150 million purchase of Weiss’ shoddy blog comes as part of a massive Ellison family acquisition spree aimed at dominating what’s left of U.S. media.

Paramount boss David Ellison, son of billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison, sent staff an embarrassing memo claiming the Weiss hire was all about ushering in a new era of “rigorous, fact-based reporting” and “a “relentless commitment to amplifying voices from all corners of the spectrum” at the dying media giant, concepts Weiss historically knows nothing about:

It’s worth noting that the huge cash payout to Weiss comes as Paramount and CBS prepare for a massive wave of layoffs for actual journalists and editors across CBS News to help pay off the huge debt created by these deals.

Larry and David Ellison are on a media acquisition spree with the very obvious goal of turning what’s left of the dying U.S. media into a soggy mishmash of right wing propaganda and corporatist infotainment. As with what Musk “accomplished” with Twitter, the goal is information warfare and this hasn’t been remotely subtle; yet these attacks on the press have left it incapable of explaining this to the public.

Ellison’s platitude-filled missive is particularly amusing if you’ve actually watched Weiss’ career trajectory.

Weiss is a shameless opportunist and troll whose “expertise” (first at the New York Times then at her own Free Press newsletter) has largely involved trolling everyone left of center for engagement clicks with culture war dogshit and dangerously shoddy reporting, then crying like a full-diapered toddler when people criticize her for being generally terrible.

Weiss’ shtick is part of a much broader effort by the extraction class to frame the media’s steady lurch rightward as a necessary anti-woke corrective to mainstream media’s non-existent liberal bias. Its primary function is to punch down against the kind of academics, progressive reformers, and marginalized communities that speak truth to power. The kind of folks that white, affluent, center-right brunchlords clearly view as more dangerous to their wealth and power than violent authoritarianism.

Weiss is not really qualified to run a newsroom; she was a junior NYT editor who occasionally wrote opinion pieces in the NYT opinion section, helping the operation’s slow descent into a troll and clickbait farm that now coddles authoritarianism. Actual journalists have spent the last few weeks disgusted and embarrassed by Weiss’ fail-upward trajectory given her outlet’s past history of dangerous falsehoods.

And most folks seem to recognize that Weiss is the very last person you’d hire if your goal was to actually do good journalism, embrace professional ideological diversity, or lower the temperature of U.S. media discourse:

CBS News employees (or at least the ones who haven’t quit after the network’s relentless Trump ass kissing) are very worried. And they should be:

“The imminent arrival of anti-woke and stridently pro-Israel “heterodox” pundit Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News has left the newsroom’s staff “literally freaking out,” with sources telling The Independent that the Tiffany Network is “not a good place right now.”

On the upside, there’s no evidence that David Ellison (a nepobaby who failed upward into media ownership) and Weiss (a “contrarian” troll and Netanyahu apologist who failed upward into media prominence) have absolutely any idea what they’re doing or that anybody actually wants what they’re making. Which may provide for a healthy dose of entertainment as what’s left of CBS disintegrates:

“Bari Weiss has no idea what she’s doing. CBS News is a newsroom, and Bari has never run a newsroom (The Free Press does publish some real reporting, but the vast majority of its output is punditry). She’s never even really been a reporter. Her editorial output is embarrassing: just recently The Free Press published a piece about an AI “actress” where the author noted that the actress was a good option “if you wish to see a virgin on-screen.”

Larry Ellison clearly wants to buy up Time Warner, CBS, and even TikTok, and turn the entire operation into a modern Fox News that relentlessly attacks anything the planet’s richest people don’t like. This, just as is happening at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and countless other U.S. corporate media orgs, will be dressed up as some sort of noble, corrective dedication to free speech and quality journalism.

But historically, these kinds of media domination plays don’t go that well (just ask the fine folks at AT&T). Media is a pretty unforgiving industry, even for the savvy and competent. And the market for blowing smoke up the assholes of right wing billionaires has limited appeal and is already fairly saturated at this point.

Still, folks like Musk and Ellison are happy to take constant financial losses if they feel it helps them win their ideological war on things like equity, democracy, and informed consensus. For the kind of folks bankrolling this rightward lurch of U.S. media, fairness, opinion diversity, and serious journalism is the very last thing on their minds and money is clearly no object.

Filed Under: bari weiss, brunchlords, david ellison, disinformation, journalism, larry ellison, media, propaganda, trolling

Companies: cbs, paramount, skydance, the free press