The Media Research Center’s usually fawning coverage of Bari Weiss taking over CBS News hit a rare discordant note in a Dec. 8 post:
CBS News remained in the headlines last week vis-à-vis comings and goings as editor-in-chief Bari Weiss further having a look under the proverbial hood. This time, we saw a date for the expected departure of CBS Evening News co-anchor Maurice DuBois and a reported desire to sign CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil to the PM chair, but most notable was a questionable decision to bring over longtime ABC correspondent Matt Gutman.
Yes, the same Gutman who said the texts between the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination and his transgender lover were “heartbreaking,” “intimate” and “touching” (which he was forced to offer a mea culpa one day later):
[…]Earlier this year, he whined about the actions of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) in California, defended Los Angeles rioters, and carried water for Harvard in its fight against the Trump administration.
Thus, it has to be asked: What in the world is Bari thinking?
Ity should be noted that Houck did not ask the same question fo Weiss regarding “longevity influencer” Peter Attia, whom Weiss brought on a month ago as a contributor for CBS. After his name came up in emails he wrote to Jeffrey Epstein, Weiss refused to fire him, and he was ultimately forced to quit.
The MRC has completely censored all mentions of Attia, let alone the fact that he was hired by Weiss. Yet Houck devoted an entire post to whining about Gutman — whose offense was nowhere near as severe as Attia’s relationship with Epstein — further huffing: “We’ll reserve further judgment for how Gutman reports with CBS News, but the first read on this would leave us calling this a miss.” Houck has been silent onhow Attia reflects on Weiss and CBS.
Two days earlier, however, Houck was eager to push the idea that Weiss hadn’t changed anything at all. He wrote in a Dec. 6 post:
There is something about the podcast world that encourages former network journalists to let the mask slip and reveal that they really were the liberal activists critics alleged they were all along. Former CBS anchor Connie Chung was the latest example, as she joined former ESPN and current Morning Joe talking head Pablo Torre on his Pablo Torre Finds Out Thursday show to discuss the alleged demise of CBS since David Ellison and Bari Weiss have taken over, despite any lack of significant changes.
[…]Chung also claimed that “CBS is a whole different realization that I had worked for. CBS has now been taken over, thanks to greedy owners: Shari Redstone, partnering with David Ellison, Larry Ellison’s son. And their greed has caused the venerable CBS to actually disassemble, to crash into crumbles, and then they’ve hired this—I don’t know what to call Bari Weiss.“
Still, Houck effectively admitted that Weiss had pulled CBS to the right after all:
It would be nice to say that the liberal meltdowns about Weiss are well-founded and CBS has reformed itself, but the new management has had mixed results. On one hand, Weiss has gone after CBS’s woke excesses by sacking the Race and Culture unit, but on the other, CBS is still making Trump-East Germany comparisons, and Weiss is reportedly hiring Matt Gutman, the ABC reporter who said that Tyler Robinson’s texts with his trans furry lover were “very touching” after multiple other suspensions.
Houck did not explain why he’s attacking anyone who criticizes Weiss as “liberal activists” — unless he wants to admit that Weiss is a right-winger — or why covering race and culture automatically makes one “woke,” whatever that means.