Liberal media outlets clashed with CBS and The Washington Post over anti-Trump coverage
CBS News Under new owner David Ellison and hand-picked editor-in-chief, Barry Weiss became a hot topic again this week when Weiss held an all-staff meeting to clear the air with all the anonymous sources trashing her behind her back. The Daily Beast’s headline captured their slant: “MAGA-nosy CBS boss dares defiant staff to resign in nervous hands.” Their headlines of new evening news host Tony Dokoupil describe him as “MAGA-coded.”
Critics of this new system like to predict impending doom. The Ringer literally cartooned Weiss’s CBS show as “splayed out, Wile E. Coyote-style, on the side of a mountain.” Variety’s CBS sources described the network as being on the verge of a “death spiral” that is “difficult to reverse.” CBS News has been in third place for decades, and its audience continues to decline, but just adding diversity of viewpoints is the stuff of a “death spiral.”
Weiss has been frank about the decline in the appeal of traditional media. “We’re not producing enough product that people want,” she said. She’s very similar to other network leaders in recognizing that most young Americans don’t watch TV news or listen to traditional radio. They’ll have to grab it in another format. The “graying” of the public is a difficult reality.
Barry Weiss suggests the 60 Minutes delayed segment was “unfair” in a memo to staff
Barry Weiss, a handpicked by CEO David Ellison, was officially named editor-in-chief of CBS News in October after Paramount acquired its outlet, The Free Press. (Michelle Crowe/CBS News via Getty Images)
But liberal hardliners cannot afford to keep trying to find new audiences by including dissenting opinions, or a “news verdict” that is not vehemently anti-Trump. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik relied on eight anonymous CBS complainants. Some were outraged that the “CBS Evening News” swept the fifth anniversary of January 6 in less than a minute, but they ended the program with a light-hearted segment about Secretary of State memes. Marco Rubio. Dokoupil offended insiders by saying: “Marco Rubio, we salute you.”
CBS’ traditional approach could be seen on its “Sunday Morning” program a year ago, on Jan. 12, 2025, when CBS correspondent Martha Tishner celebrated the then-President. Joe BidenUnited States Secretary of State Antony Blinken under the title “Man of the World.” Teichner, a classmate of Hillary Clinton at Wellesley University, gushed over Blinken’s “photo bomb”—a photo of female foreign ministers at a NATO meeting—and celebrated Blinken as a square. He “promoted music diplomacy – by performing the Muddy Waters blues standard ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ in a suit and tie.” Democratic salutes are the norm.
Bias-enhancing media reporters are also upset about Washington Post CEO Will Lewis, who is expected to announce mass layoffs any day now, along with expected cuts to sports and foreign coverage, which is not profitable. Making a newspaper less broad may be the wrong strategy, but it’s astonishing to see journalists blaming owners and the “business side.”
Former Washington Post reporter Ashley Parker tweeted: “I don’t see how laying off a group of talented, hardworking journalists fundamentally solves a problem for publishers and businesses. The Washington Post deserves better.” “The newsroom is being punished due to the sheer incompetence of the owner and publisher,” an anonymous posty claimed.
It is best for journalists to remain anonymous when they accuse a self-made billionaire of incompetence. All of this makes journalists look like an entitled class of children. When people stop buying the newspaper and they lose $100 million a year, don’t blame the “talented journalists”, it’s a “business side problem”.
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Glenn Kessler, a former fact-checker at The Washington Post, spoke to reporters when he told Fox News Digital: “Many have dedicated their careers to the newspaper and are concerned about the dismantling of an important American institution.” But could it be “dismantled” through layoffs, or by appearing more Trump-friendly?
The same internal panic occurs at the Public Broadcasting networks in the aftermath Abolish Trump and the Republicans Taxpayers fund them. PBS just canceled “PBS News Weekend” and instead created two weekend programs that required no weekend staffing.
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But liberal hardliners cannot afford to keep trying to find new audiences by including dissenting opinions, or a “news verdict” that is not vehemently anti-Trump.
National Public Radio (NPR) published a long, scathing article by 19 reporters about how Trump is engaging in a “sweeping expansion of executive power while eroding democratic norms.” Under a propaganda graphic of Trump pulling an electrical plug from the wall, NPR charged, “Trump has targeted freedom of expression, attempting to control and change information,” including defunding public media.
These media activists equate their offensive journalism with “democratic standards,” as if “democracy” is defined as crushing Republicans and helping Democrats win as many elections as possible. No one should challenge their ideological “control” of information, otherwise they are a bunch of tyrants.
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