About half a decade ago, Bari Weiss followed up her legendary flounce from the New York Times by founding The Free Press (originally title Common Sense).
Excellent post, Peter! š Great analogy of Musk takeover of Twitter/X and Bari takeover of CBS (without having to spend billions!). Iām hopeful that Bari can break the left wing stranglehold on legacy media news distribution and Iām moderately optimistic that she will, particularly since she will have financial security. The battle will be fierce, as you point out - humans rarely give up their power willingly. š¤š¤š¤
I doubt Weiss will prove us wrong because the era of curated journalism is over. That is, with the internet bursting with a cornucopia of articles from unlimited sources and viewpoints, we all tend to curate our own information. Americans no longer need, nor trust, "news" organizations to selectively decide what they will or won't see in brief encounters on the web or TV. I will, however, not automatically discount CBS News, for a while at least, as hopelessly biased. I'll give her that chance.
Even back in the 70s, when I briefly did some debating club in HS, we were advised by our coach on which news sources we could reliably cite, and which contained too much bias to rely on. NYT and USNews were among the former, Newsweek was among the latter.
If we can get back to some sources reaching "reliable" status, and people recognizing this, we might see some break out of their confirmation silos. *some*.
I attribute media downfall more to agenda-driven malice, than confirmation bias. They've discarded objective journalism for advocacy - which is far more insidious than mere bias.
Oh, for sure. Somewhere along the way, journalism school started telling students that their job was to guide the narrative toward preferred outcomes, and subordinate notions of "the whole truth" to that priority.
Great article! I am excited at the possibilities with Bari at the helm of CBS News. Only time will tell how she will do against some powerful headwinds. But, I like and respect her. I wish her the very best and hope she will be given the freedom to pursue her vision and apply her beliefs to the monolith. If she is successful, she could spawn changes in the legacy media as a whole. I am also eager to see if CBS News can affect the worldview of the U.S., possibly by bringing a more positive and proud style of reporting. Ah, one can wish......
I think the continued presence of Substack and its miriad number of authors will be a prod to Bari to keep her eye on the ball and do as she says she will. If she mis-steps, the backlash could and should be immediate and severe. Like you, Peter, I tend to not agree with the authors of many of the articles on The Free Press but I read them because I appreciate the honesty and (mostly) thoughtfulness with which they're written. It's about time that someone in the legacy media gives, as you so ably put it, a flying rat's ass about the truth.
Iāve been a subscriber to the Free Press since it was Common Sense, and I greatly admire Bari Weiss, but sheās missing an opportunity to more thoroughly reject the culture of the New York Times.
I wish she and her team would pay more attention to copy editing. I would volunteer to come in for a couple of hours and teach them how to diagram a sentence, which none of them can do.
Bari could have avoided the dangling participle in her letter to her new colleagues: āGrowing up, CBS was a deep family tradition.ā (Who grew up? CBS? Her family?) Nellie could have avoided confusing subject and object in todayās TGIF: āTune in today to watch Will Rahn and I talk TGIFā¦ā And Bari could revolutionize contemporary journalism by reinstating the word āwhom,ā which is easy to use correctly if one knows how to diagram a sentence.
After Dean Baquet became editor in chief of the New York Times in 2014, he declared that the paper would pay less attention to copy editing and proofreading, because those were uneconomical. And standards declined thereafter.
Bari could bring back those ancient standards. (I imagine AI could help with grammar.) People would call her conservative, but sheās used to that.
That āTune in today to watch Will Rahn and I talkā¦ā darn near gave me hives when I read her article. How hard is it to remember to drop the other person to see whether āIā or āmeā is correct? Would Bowles say āTune in today to watch I talkā¦ā?!? One certainly hopes not.
Not to mention unless one is a lip reader, one doesnāt watch people talk.
Which is a long hop down a grammatical bunny trail.
Great piece, Peter! You are, as usual, quite right. š
Huh? The whole point of the Abe Rosenthal approach is to separate news from opinion, to be as unbiased as possible in telling us the who what when where why.
Excellent post, Peter! š Great analogy of Musk takeover of Twitter/X and Bari takeover of CBS (without having to spend billions!). Iām hopeful that Bari can break the left wing stranglehold on legacy media news distribution and Iām moderately optimistic that she will, particularly since she will have financial security. The battle will be fierce, as you point out - humans rarely give up their power willingly. š¤š¤š¤
I doubt Weiss will prove us wrong because the era of curated journalism is over. That is, with the internet bursting with a cornucopia of articles from unlimited sources and viewpoints, we all tend to curate our own information. Americans no longer need, nor trust, "news" organizations to selectively decide what they will or won't see in brief encounters on the web or TV. I will, however, not automatically discount CBS News, for a while at least, as hopelessly biased. I'll give her that chance.
Even back in the 70s, when I briefly did some debating club in HS, we were advised by our coach on which news sources we could reliably cite, and which contained too much bias to rely on. NYT and USNews were among the former, Newsweek was among the latter.
If we can get back to some sources reaching "reliable" status, and people recognizing this, we might see some break out of their confirmation silos. *some*.
I attribute media downfall more to agenda-driven malice, than confirmation bias. They've discarded objective journalism for advocacy - which is far more insidious than mere bias.
Oh, for sure. Somewhere along the way, journalism school started telling students that their job was to guide the narrative toward preferred outcomes, and subordinate notions of "the whole truth" to that priority.
Great article! I am excited at the possibilities with Bari at the helm of CBS News. Only time will tell how she will do against some powerful headwinds. But, I like and respect her. I wish her the very best and hope she will be given the freedom to pursue her vision and apply her beliefs to the monolith. If she is successful, she could spawn changes in the legacy media as a whole. I am also eager to see if CBS News can affect the worldview of the U.S., possibly by bringing a more positive and proud style of reporting. Ah, one can wish......
I think the continued presence of Substack and its miriad number of authors will be a prod to Bari to keep her eye on the ball and do as she says she will. If she mis-steps, the backlash could and should be immediate and severe. Like you, Peter, I tend to not agree with the authors of many of the articles on The Free Press but I read them because I appreciate the honesty and (mostly) thoughtfulness with which they're written. It's about time that someone in the legacy media gives, as you so ably put it, a flying rat's ass about the truth.
Iāve been a subscriber to the Free Press since it was Common Sense, and I greatly admire Bari Weiss, but sheās missing an opportunity to more thoroughly reject the culture of the New York Times.
I wish she and her team would pay more attention to copy editing. I would volunteer to come in for a couple of hours and teach them how to diagram a sentence, which none of them can do.
Bari could have avoided the dangling participle in her letter to her new colleagues: āGrowing up, CBS was a deep family tradition.ā (Who grew up? CBS? Her family?) Nellie could have avoided confusing subject and object in todayās TGIF: āTune in today to watch Will Rahn and I talk TGIFā¦ā And Bari could revolutionize contemporary journalism by reinstating the word āwhom,ā which is easy to use correctly if one knows how to diagram a sentence.
After Dean Baquet became editor in chief of the New York Times in 2014, he declared that the paper would pay less attention to copy editing and proofreading, because those were uneconomical. And standards declined thereafter.
Bari could bring back those ancient standards. (I imagine AI could help with grammar.) People would call her conservative, but sheās used to that.
That āTune in today to watch Will Rahn and I talkā¦ā darn near gave me hives when I read her article. How hard is it to remember to drop the other person to see whether āIā or āmeā is correct? Would Bowles say āTune in today to watch I talkā¦ā?!? One certainly hopes not.
Not to mention unless one is a lip reader, one doesnāt watch people talk.
Which is a long hop down a grammatical bunny trail.
Great piece, Peter! You are, as usual, quite right. š
Reset? Trading one ideology for another when it comes to bias in the media does not seem like much of an improvement to me.
Huh? The whole point of the Abe Rosenthal approach is to separate news from opinion, to be as unbiased as possible in telling us the who what when where why.
What bias is there in that?
None at all but I am convinced that much of this realignment amounts to little more than caving to Trump. I wish Weiss well.
Caving to Trump? How so?