I won’t say I told you so, but I did.
On October 12th, in a column entitled “Eye On Weiss”, I told you the rubber would hit the road for Bari Weiss and her takeover of CBS News when…
Let’s say Scott Pelley, the head correspondent on 60 Minutes, does an interview with let’s say, Bibi Netanyahu. And let’s say, during the screening of the piece, Bari Weiss objects to a question Pelley asked, or the way he asked it, or the way he edited Netanyahu’s answer.
And she turns to Pelley and says, “Scott, we have to change that.” Or, “we have to cut that.” And Pelley says, “over my dead body.”
What will Weiss do? Will she confront Pelley to make the point she’s the boss and he’d better not mess with her? Will she tell Pelley, if he doesn’t like her call he could walk out onto West 57th Street and keep on walking? Or, will she let the piece air as is and deal with Pelley’s pique at another time, in another way?
Well, the rubber indeed hit the road this past week and it left skid marks all over Bari Weiss’ back.
Granted, Weiss didn’t crash into Scott Pelley, but she did collide with 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.
After screening Alfonsi’s report on illegal Venezuelan immigrants who were deported by the Trump administration to an infamous max security prison in El Salvador, after it went through the regular CBS approval process and after it was promoted for broadcast, Weiss
declared the piece “was not ready.” She said it “did not advance the ball” since other news outlets have already reported on the abuse and torture at the prison. She said “we need to do more…and we need to be able to get the principals [in other words, the administration] on the record and on camera.”
Oh baby! You know what Bari Weiss did? She breached the temple walls and defiled the sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies of CBS News, 60 Minutes.
You have to understand the space 60 Minutes occupies in the CBS News universe. It is a planet unto itself.
In the 47-year history of the broadcast, there have been only four executive producers. The first two, Don Hewitt and his self-anointed crown prince Jeff Fager, ran the show for four decades between them. They acted like the high priests of TV journalism, answering only to themselves. Even the show’s staff is hermetically sealed from the rest of the CBS News employees in a building across the street from the main CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in Manhattan.
No one ever dared question a 60 Minutes story, unless the lawyers told them they needed to change something.
So, when Bari Weiss, that 40-something social media opinion monger challenged their journalism, those self-appointed descendants of Edward R. Murrow shall I say, lost their shit.
Sharyn Alfonsi in particular, went nuclear. Brazenly and without evidence, she sent an email saying Weiss’ decision was “not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
Even though the piece was plucked from the broadcast, in this age of nothing can ever be kept secret, it made it to social media. I watched it and you can watch it too by clicking this link. Determine for yourselves if it was good to go or if it needed more work.
But let me say this. If Weiss killed the Alfonsi piece due to real or perceived pressure from the White House, then she deserves to be publicly tarred and feathered. Short of that, she has every right to comment, criticize, green-light or kill any story she wants. Whether the people at 60 like it or not, she is their editor-in-chief. This is now the age of Weiss at CBS, the days of Hewitt and Fager are over.
Now that Weiss has dared put her hand into the hornets nest that is 60 Minutes, she cannot pull it out so fast. She has to complete her takeover. She has to show all those big-J journalists that she’s tougher than they are. Writing in an email that the fallout from her decision was due to a “slow news week” is b-s and isn’t going to cut it.
If Bari Weiss is really serious about sending a robust message to the staff at 60 Minutes and to CBS News in general, you know what she has to do?
She should do what NBA Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley has written about leadership and team building. A key theme in Riley’s book, The Winner Within, is that everyone is accountable, including stars and leaders. Riley warns that protecting high-status individuals from criticism undermines credibility and team culture.
This past week, in spiking the Alfonsi immigration story, Bari Weiss took one, important step in piercing the force field around 60 Minutes that’s been impenetrable for decades. Now she needs to drive a Mack truck through it.
Weiss should make an example of the insubordinate Sharyn Alfonsi. She should fire her. If the lawyers won’t let her, then at the very least, Weiss should suspend her for a period of time. That will send the message loud and clear to the reporters, producers and editors in the news division and they’ll realize there is a bright red line they’d better not cross. If any of them dare to publicly accuse their boss of being a toady to Trump or to any other influencer, that she is less of a journalist than they are, then their jobs will be in serious jeopardy.
Oh, the screaming, the rending of garments, the outcry within and outside CBS News will be something to behold. Sackcloth and ashes will be distributed in the lobby. But you know what? Weiss won’t get CBS News under her complete control any other way. She will die a death of a thousand cuts and leaks if she doesn’t come down hard on someone who dared accuse her of being a corrupt journalist. Most importantly, her boss, David Ellison, who paid her $150 million to “fix” CBS News, will give her the cover she needs.
Hearkening back to the column I wrote in October, I said, for Bari Weiss, getting to CBS News was a big bucks no-brainer. Now that she’s is in the pit with the cobras, let’s see how good she is at playing the pungi, that flute-like instrument that allows snake-charmers to defang those deadly serpents and to milk their venom.
I stand corrected. Those snakes at CBS News cannot be charmed. And she’s so deep into that pit she can’t back away. For Bari Weiss, it’s now time to kill or be killed.