Bari Weiss ‘Meddles’ With ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ Story on Palestine
Good evening, and welcome to this week’s ‘Ragebait.’
Justin Baragona here, bringing you the latest media dispatches from the right-wing industrial outrage complex and Bari World. In tonight’s edition, I devote the bulk of the newsletter to a ‘CBS News Sunday Morning’ story about the West Bank that sparked outrage from one of its interview subjects – and how Bari Weiss fits in all of this. Also, Donald Trump weighs in on the passing of Ted Turner – and gets everything wrong.
“I am deeply troubled by my portrayal and the omission of key facts in the segment in which I participated in good faith,” Zaid Azhari, in a message reviewed by Zeteo, wrote to CBS News producer Sari Aviv last month.
A cultural heritage researcher and leader of the “Save Sebastia Campaign,” Azhari was upset over a ‘CBS News Sunday Morning’ story that aired on April 5 and centered on the political turmoil surrounding Israeli archeological digs in the occupied West Bank, asserting that his interview for the piece was “selectively edited to falsely portray me as someone who erases Jewish history.”
According to four sources, the report was subjected to last-minute edits and script changes by self-avowed “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss, the CBS editor-in-chief who has made sweeping changes at the network since her hiring last fall. The story had been in the works for months, and prior to Weiss joining CBS.
“We aim to inform audiences, not satisfy story subjects. That’s what this piece did. We encourage everyone to watch it and judge for themselves,” a CBS News spokesperson said in a statement.
“Oh yeah, she definitely meddled,” one CBS News senior staffer told me, while other sources noted that this represented a new front in Weiss’s editorial “interference” at the network.
“Bari found out about the story and made changes to the script. She has never jumped in editorially on a ‘Sunday Morning’ story until this one,” one CBS insider said, while a network reporter noted that “this piece is the first time she’s pulled like a CECOT on the show.”
Related Knowledge Center: The CBS submission
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Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
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