The Media Research Center’s meltdowns over criticism of Bari Weiss as head of CBS News continued in an Oct. 14 post by Alex Christy:
HBO’s John Oliver had a nearly 40-minute long meltdown on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight as he denounced Paramount CEO David Ellison’s decision to name Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News. Despite Weiss being a liberal who simply thinks the left has gone too far on things like DEI, transgenderism, and Israel, Oliver lamented that Ellison has inserted “right-leaning opinion journalism into an American icon.”
Towards the end of his Moddowian lament, Oliver played a clip of Weiss denouncing DEI and followed up by declaring, “Yeah, and that itself is a whole worldview right there. “You know this DEI thing we’ve been trying, where we acknowledge not everyone’s been getting equal access to opportunity? Let’s just roll back the clock on that. Also, let’s be anti-anti-racist, and not think too much about what that might make us.’”
Much like how some people want you to think anti-fascism is simply opposition to fascism, Oliver wants you to think anti-racism is simply opposition to racism.
Christy then moved to whatabnoutism:
Earlier, Oliver denounced Weiss for criticizing those who have sought to smear Israel, but Oliver has never devoted a 40-minute address to the CBS journalists who attacked colleague Tony Dokoupil for daring to challenge leftist writer Ta-Nehisi Coates nor CBS hiring Sen. Ted Kennedy’s former chief-of-staff or the brother of Obama’s deputy national security advisor to be its president.
He then got upset that Weiss’ billionaire boss was called out:
However, Oliver then moved to Ellison, “It’s not just about Bari Weiss being at CBS. It’s about the fact CBS is now under the control of someone who thinks she, and her editorial sensibility, make her a good fit for the job, and who, incidentally, is reportedly preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, home of CNN and—uh-oh!—HBO. Which isn’t ideal! Although I’ve got to say, if what he likes about Bari is that she forces him to have hard conversations that get a bit uncomfortable, maybe he’ll like this!”
Seeing a trend, Oliver added, “But the thing is, it’s not just about Ellison, either. Again, he’s just the latest in a string of billionaires who’ve taken over our journalistic institutions, from The Washington Post to The LA Times, and started making worrying changes. And whatever complaints I might’ve had with their coverage before, and I’ve had plenty! My solution would never have been this.”
Oliver claims to differentiate between news organizations and opinion websites, but it is the Post’s opinion section that has shifted towards free markets.
Curtis Houck cheered more layoffs at CBS News in a Nov. 4 post:
Late last week, a new wrinkle emerged in the CBS News layoffs. Reports revealed South Africa-based foreign correspondent Debora Patta – whose anti-Israel tilt made her an ill fit with the network’s new vision under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss – may sue the network after supposedly having not been on the list of layoffs but made it to the final list in place of Rome-based foreign correspondent Chris Livesay, who lobbied Weiss to keep his job.
Houck’s alleged evidence for Patta’s “anti-Israel tilt” is an August interview with Israel ambassador Mike Huckabee, where she asked questions about things like starvation in Gaza and allegations of genocide. It was not explained how merely asking such questions made Patta “anti-Israel.”
Houck then cheered that another producer had been fired for the offense of caring about non-white people:
Separately at the Post, they highlighted a social media meltdown from a producer who was laid off from his posts at CBS Evening News Plus as well as the far-left Race and Culture Unit, which represented the epitome of the woke, race-obsessed virus that’s come to infect American culture and journalism.
Without a shred of evidence, the producer claimed every single layoff in his team “was a person of color” and their replacements would be exclusively white people.
Good on CBS and Bari Weiss for ensuring such virulent hate was kicked to the curb.
It wasn’t explained how caring about the plight of non-white people equated to “virulent hate.”
Houck continued his cheering in a Nov. 21 post:
In the latest media rumblings about Bari Weiss’s tenure thus far as CBS News editor-in-chief, The New York Post dished on the finale of CBS Saturday Morning with Dana Jacobson and Michelle Miller while The Wall Street Journal revealed “a rallying cry” Weiss has clung to thus far in meetings in stating, “I wanna blow this up.”
First, the Post’s great Alexandra Steigrad said the final episode of the current Saturday show would air on November 22, but the real news nugget was the fact that “no replacements have been revealed to staffers” with CBS News executives remaining “tight-lipped on who would replace the hosts…or what the vision for the show will be — an information vacuum that has left employees on edge, sources said.”
Houck didn’t detail how hating non-right-wing media supposedly makes Steigrad “great.”
Tim Grtaham huffed in his Nov. 28 podcast: “the Left is disturbed at any expression of moving major media outlets one tick toward the center — see Bari Weiss at CBS.” He offered no evidence that Weiss cares one whit about moving CBS “toward the center” and is largely interesting in making it a Fox News clone.