Bari Weiss, the controversial media figure hired by billionaire Larry Ellison and his son David to lead CBS News, is facing significant turmoil in her new role. Tasked with transforming the network into a platform aligned with right-wing interests under the guise of „restoring trust in journalism,” Weiss has instead overseen a series of failures. Her inaugural town hall with right-wing commentator Erika Kirk drew poor ratings, her nightly news broadcast has been plagued by errors, and her handling of sensitive stories—including allegedly censoring a *60 Minutes* segment on Trump-era immigration policies—has sparked internal revolt among CBS journalists. Amid mounting criticism, Weiss has blamed her staff for both operational failures and her damaged public image, leading to such dysfunction that she has paused her popular „Honestly” podcast to focus solely on managing the crisis at CBS.
Weiss’s struggles highlight a deeper issue: her inability to effectively produce the ratings-driven propaganda she was hired to deliver. Unlike predecessors such as Roger Ailes, who mastered the art of blending ideology with entertainment, Weiss has failed to attract audiences while alienating both viewers and her own team. This incompetence comes at a costly time for CBS’s parent company, Paramount, which has seen its stock drop 40% following Larry Ellison’s attempted hostile takeover of Warner Bros. and its assets, including CNN and HBO. Ellison’s broader ambition—to dominate both traditional and new media, creating a U.S. version of state-controlled media akin to models in Russia or Hungary—appears jeopardized by Weiss’s mismanagement and the ensuing chaos at CBS.
The situation underscores a pattern of hubris and dysfunction among those driving this media transformation. From David Ellison’s nepotistic appointment to the hiring of „contrarian culture war trolls” like Weiss, the effort to reshape CBS into a propaganda arm has been marked by strategic blunders and a lack of self-awareness. Ironically, the greatest threat to this project may be its architects’ own incompetence. As the article notes, if U.S. media and democracy are preserved from such zealous overhauls, it will likely be due not to organized opposition but to the „raw, blistering hubris” of figures like Weiss and the Ellisons. For now, CBS remains a case study in how ideological capture, when executed poorly, can accelerate institutional decline rather than consolidate power.
Ez a cikk a Neural News AI (V1) verziójával készült.