See? BS.
When I was a young reporter, there was a joke most journos knew some variation of. It went like this: “Young exec goes to his boss, says the good news is CBS wants to interview you! The bad news is that it’s ‘60 Minutes.’ ” (Laugh follows.)
Now the joke is shorter. The joke is just “60 Minutes.” (Laugh follows.) Broadcast news’s biggest ass-kicker is now its biggest ass kisser. Did you see the show’s interview with Donald Trump yesterday? Did you manage to hold it down?
Background: In the summer, Paramount-owned CBS was purchased, body and soul, by Skydance Media, which became Paramount-Skydance, and which is helmed by David Ellison — 42-year-old nepo firstborn of the second richest person in the world. Ellison the Younger immediately engineered a deal where the company paid Donald Trump a bribe tribute payoff act of largesse cash inducement settlement of $16 million, ostensibly to dispense with a lawsuit by Trump against “60 Minutes.” This was a civil action that every competent corporate attorney declared meritless and un-winnable by Trump. (The lawsuit charged that the show had dared to condense a disparaging quote by Kamala Harris, even though cutting quotes is as banal and normal in the news industry as cutting throats is in the meat-packing industry.)
Stay with me, here.
Next, under Ellison, CBS announced that it will no longer condense quotes at all from interviews conducted by journalists on the network’s venerable public affairs program “Face the Nation.” That came after Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, whined, a la Trump, that the program had dared to quote her incompletely. (Again, editorial trimming is routine and uncontroversial in journalism. If we didn’t cut anything, politicians would go on for hours, like Fidel Castro used to do in front of his state-run toady camera crews. Andrea Mitchell says that, once, a one-sentence question she asked Fidel elicited a 45-minute answer. But we digress.)
Then Ellison hired a man named Kenneth R. Weinstein to be the network’s ombudsman, the person whose job is to be an honest broker for the viewers — an internal advocate for journalistic integrity, transparency and balance. Weinstein is the former head of the Hudson Institute, a hard-right think tank for whom Stephen Miller was a chief speechwriter. Weinstein is also a major financial donor to Republican and pro-Trump causes. He has denounced the mainstream media’s “liberal bias.”
Next, Ellison hired Bari Weiss to be head of CBS’s news operation. You probably already know about Bari Weiss. No?
In an effort to find the most concise possible summary of the criticisms of Bari Weiss, which are voluminous and wide-ranging, I consulted the noted Consiglieri of Concision, AI, who produced the following dingleberry of bullets:
Views on “Wokeness” and DEI: Weiss is a vocal critic of what she terms “woke” culture, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and certain aspects of the #MeToo movement. Critics argue she focuses disproportionately on these issues while downplaying the importance of systemic issues like racism and misogyny.
Transgender Issues: She has faced significant backlash for her editorial stance on transgender issues at her media company, The Free Press, which has included publishing content described as “anti-trans” and reportedly declining to use individuals’ preferred pronouns.
Israel and Palestine Coverage: Critics have accused her of initiating campaigns to target the careers of Arab and Muslim professors who were critical of Israel while she was a student at Columbia University.
Hypocrisy on Free Speech: Some critics allege hypocrisy in her condemnation of “cancel culture” and support for free speech, pointing to her past activism against professors whose views she opposed and her complaints about colleagues at The New York Times who criticized her.
Role at CBS News: Her recent appointment as editor-in-chief of CBS News following the acquisition of The Free Press by Paramount has been met with significant internal and external concern. Critics question the wisdom of placing an opinion journalist known for her polarizing views in charge of a traditional news operation, raising fears about the network’s potential for political bias.
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So, returning to the point at hand:
CBS Reporter Norah O’Donnell, under the corporate thumb of Ellison, engaged in this back and forth with the president of the United States:
O’Donnell: “[Changpeng Zhao] pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering laws. the government at the time said that he had caused significant harm to US national security, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon Changpeng Zhao?”
Trump: “Are you ready? I don’t know who he is … I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”
O’Donnell: “His crypto exchange Binance helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin [a business associated with the Trump family] and then you pardoned him. How do you address the appearance of pay-for-play.”
Trump: “Here’s the thing — I know nothing about it, ’cause I’m too busy doing the other.”
Doing the other? What other?
O’Donnell did not follow up on this. She did not ask Trump how he could have pardoned a man he knew nothing about. She did not ask why this didn’t amount to a gross dereliction of duty, malfeasance, an abandonment of his oath of office. Because why? Because she didn’t.
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Then there was this moment. An astonishing moment. You have to watch it to believe it:
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See, Trump made a list! He ended a whole bunch of wars on his own in less than a year. CBS allowed him to make this claim unchallenged on the air, even though it was palpably absurd: Some of these were not “wars;” some that were wars have not actually “ended”, and in some of them the participants had extended him fawning credit simply to massage his infantile ego. Moreover, he was allowed to make the preposterous assertion that he maneuvered these great successions by exercising tariff extortion. O’Donnell hears this blather and essentially accepts it as true. How do we know that? Because she just flounces off onto this followup: Well, why didn’t that tactic work with Putin?
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Trump made at least 12 other bloated brags that were flatly untrue, and scooted away unchallenged.
We learn from subsequently published outtakes that Trump felt he was giving O’Donnell permission to use some things he said and to not use other things, and that she had complied. Trump was right: He was in charge of this interview. O’Donnell and CBS had ceded that to him.
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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Pools. Take only the poll that applies to you. I will reveal the percentages for both groups an hour after posting.
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