\n<\/p>\n
\n\tJohn Oliver used his main segment on Sunday\u2019s Last Week Tonight<\/em> to take a close look at Bari Weiss, the newly appointed editor-in-chief of CBS news.<\/p>\n \n\tEarlier this month, Paramount announced that it had officially acquired The Free Press<\/em>, the digital publication founded by Weiss, and would bring Weiss into the fold of CBS News, which, as The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> recently reported, had been expected but also was greeted with dread inside the news division. Weiss works outside of the current org chart by reporting directly to Paramount CEO David Ellison, while The Free Press<\/em> will remain a stand-alone business outside of CBS News.<\/p>\n \n\tOliver began his segment on Weiss by noting: \u201cLet\u2019s start with the fact that she\u2019s been given editorial control of a massive news organization, even though she\u2019s never run a TV network, has no experience directing television coverage and, as one 60 Minutes<\/em> producer pointed out, is not even a reporter. That is true. She didn\u2019t come up through the news site of a newspaper, but through the opinion pages, which are a very different thing.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tAs Oliver noted, Weiss \u201cmade a big name for herself\u201d after being hired by The New York Times <\/em>as a columnist.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Last Week Tonight<\/em> showed a clip of Weiss explaining: \u201cMy job explicitly was to bring in voices that wouldn\u2019t otherwise naturally appear in The New York Times,<\/em> either because other editors wouldn\u2019t think to commission them, or the writers themselves would think, you know, The New York Times <\/em>would never accept me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHis response: \u201cYeah, she was apparently tasked with finding voices that The Times\u2019<\/em> op-ed page would never accept, which is already a big claim given that before she got hired there, it published op-eds from, and this is true, Muammar Gaddafi and Vladimir Putin. If The Times<\/em> had been around in the 15th century, I\u2019m guessing they would have given an opinion piece to Vlad the Impaler. \u2018Drinking the blood of my enemies isn\u2019t disgusting; it\u2019s beautiful and courageous.’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOliver noted that some of the columns Weiss wrote at The Times <\/em>included \u201cone in which she argued that the left had gone too far in policing cultural appropriation,\u201d another that was \u201ca largely sympathetic profile of the intellectual dark web, a term that she popularized for people like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro\u201d and another one \u201csuggesting progressives were so focused on labeling fellow Americans fascists, they missed opportunities to call out real fascism, which is just some weapons-grade whataboutism.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat latter column, Oliver noted, got attention due to the fact that it contained links to posts from the official Antifa Twitter account, which that was actually a \u201cwell-known hoax site, which is pretty embarrassing. You don\u2019t expect a Times<\/em> writer to fall for online hoaxes like they\u2019re your 75-year-old aunt on Facebook who keeps posting that message saying, \u2018I hereby state that I do not give my permission to use any of my personal data or photos.’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut her time at The Times<\/em> came to an end after it ran an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, who argued that federal troops should be used put a stop to protests against police brutality. After the op-ed was published, many staffers argued that The Times<\/em> shouldn\u2019t have published it.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAnd Bari Weiss wrote a series of tweets about a supposedly heated staff meeting characterizing it as a civil war between the mostly young wokes and the mostly 40 and up liberals,\u201d Oliver explained. \u201cThat claim was strongly disputed by others at the paper, with one editor saying, \u2018I\u2019m in the same meeting that Barry appears to be live tweeting. This is inaccurate in both characterizations. It\u2019s not a civil war, it\u2019s an editorial conversation, and it\u2019s not breaking down along generational lines.\u2019 So to be fair, it seems Barry Weiss does have some reporting experience, specifically trying to report what was happening in the meeting, only to have our own co-workers say, \u2018Hey, what the fuck are you talking about?’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe resigned soon afterward and founded The Free Press.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIts first motto was \u2018Honest news for sane people,\u2019 which feels scientifically engineered to trigger an eye roll,\u201d Oliver quipped, adding: \u201cIn the five years since, it\u2019s grown to roughly 1.5 million readers, although only around 1 in 10 actually pay to subscribe, meaning it generates subscription revenues of about $15 million a year, which isn\u2019t nothing, but I would argue also not quite enough to justify someone spending $150 million to acquire it, as that is a revenues to valuation ratio that would make Mr. Wonderful [Shark Tank<\/em>\u2018s Kevin O\u2019Leary] start vomiting blood.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOliver noted that Weiss has repeatedly insisted she\u2019s only interested in the truth, but then played a clip of her talking about The Free Press<\/em>\u2018 process for finding out the truth: \u201cThe identity of our brand is truth-seeking, and our premise is you cannot get to truth in an echo chamber. The only way that you get to truth is by sitting next to someone \u2014 this is what makes it so different from any newsroom I\u2019ve ever worked in \u2014 witting next to someone who disagrees with you, who you still respect, admire them and collaborate with them.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tResponded Oliver: \u201cI mean, maybe, maybe that is how you do it as an opinion writer, but that is not how you get to truth as a reporter, is it? You do that by leaving the newsroom and reporting. \u2026 And I\u2019ll be honest, there\u2019s not a ton of hard journalism on The<\/em> Free Press<\/em> site. There\u2019s really not much of anything there. There\u2019s usually just a handful of new posts a day which can even include weird shit like editorial cartoons from David Mamet, the playwright. And if you\u2019re thinking, \u2018I didn\u2019t realize David Mamet could draw\u2019 \u2014 fun fact, he can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOliver then went through a list of headlines on Free Press <\/em>stories, including: \u201cI Can Explain Why the Nazi Salute Is Back,\u201d \u201cI Criticized BLM. Then I Was Fired,\u201d \u201cI Took Religion Out of Christmas. I Regret It,\u201d \u201cI Want People to Have More Kids. Does That Make Me Far-Right?,\u201d \u201cI Was Called an \u2018Inbred Swine\u2019 at Princeton Last Night,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m 17. And I\u2019m Immunized From Woke Politics,\u201d \u201cMy Family Was Hunted by Nazis. But I Was Fired For \u2018Defending Hitler,\u201d \u201cMy Husband Wants to Be Cremated. I\u2019d Ignore His Dying Wish\u201d and \u201cI Used to Hate Trump. Now I\u2019m a MAGA Lefty.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tJoked Oliver: \u201cIt feels like we\u2019re just two weeks away from an article titled \u2018I Dressed My Dead Wife up as Hitler for Her Funeral, and Now Her Woke Family Is Mad at Me.’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe said that a look at The Free Press<\/em>\u2018 homepage might not give the impression that the outlet is conservative. \u201cBut once you start reading its articles, the pronounced theme that starts to emerge is the left has gone too far,\u201d Oliver said. \u201cBasically, whatever issue you feel like that is true for \u2014 Israel, campus politics, DEI or police reform \u2014 you\u2019ll find articles there to reinforce that opinion. And look, I\u2019m not saying the left never goes too far or that it\u2019s immune from criticism at all, but it can sometimes feel like The Free Press\u2019 conclusions can get out ahead of its evidence, which brings us to the fact that some of its pieces can be pretty poorly fact checked and in ways that feel important.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOliver then brought up examples of stories reported by The Free Press<\/em> that other outlets had contradicted with their own reporting, including accusations that the Transgender Center at the St. Louis Children\u2019s Hospital\u00a0was prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy without appropriately conducting mental health assessments; another on crime in Austin; and a third on starvation in Gaza.<\/p>\n \n\tAs for that latter story, it was shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his social media account with the caption \u201cFacts matter.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThis \u201cis terrible for multiple reasons, including if Netanyahu ever shared one of our stories, I think I\u2019d burn this place to the fucking ground,\u201d Oliver quipped.<\/p>\n \n\tHe added of his decision to focus his main segment on Weiss: \u201cThe truth is, we wouldn\u2019t even have done this story were it not for the fact Bari Weiss has just been named editor-in-chief of CBS News, and that feels different because there are many opinion-heavy outlets out there from left to right and with low to high editorial standards. This show [Last Week Tonight<\/em>] is, among other things, an opinion outlet, and while our staff works incredibly hard to research stories before we write something and vigorously check our facts afterwards, we\u2019re also not the news. And I wouldn\u2019t want anyone who led a pure opinion outlet, not even one that I happen to agree with, to suddenly be running CBS News. But it is especially alarming to have someone doing it who has spent years putting out work that, in my opinion, is at best irresponsible and at worst deeply misleading.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOliver then criticized Ellison for \u201cthink[ing] that she and her editorial sensibility make her a good fit for the job.\u201d He also noted that Ellison is reportedly planning to make a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of HBO, home to Last Week Tonight. <\/em>That \u201cisn\u2019t ideal, although I\u2019ve gotta say, if what he likes about Bari is that she forces him to have hard conversations to get a bit uncomfortable, maybe he\u2019ll like<\/em> this,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \n\tThe host went on to note that the future of CBS News is unclear under its new editor-in-chief. \u201cMaybe Bari Weis will completely reshape CBS News,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe she\u2019ll flame out.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut he cautioned his viewers to pay attention to any differences at the news organization going forward: \u201cIt is worth keeping an eye out for subtle changes there because, while I\u2019m sure many of CBS\u2019 good journalists will continue to do great work, if you start seeing people resigning or getting fired, or you start seeing stories that seem off in some way, especially if it involves the left going too far on a topic Bari Wise cares about, it\u2019s worth asking yourself why that might be, because unfortunately the much bigger answer might be that a billionaire has chosen to inject contrarian right-leaning opinion journalism into an American icon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" John Oliver used his main segment on Sunday\u2019s Last Week Tonight to take a close look at Bari Weiss, the newly appointed editor-in-chief of CBS news. Earlier this month, Paramount announced that it had officially acquired The Free Press, the digital publication founded by Weiss, and would bring Weiss into the fold of CBS News,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[5310,4699,2965,262,150,1899,15758],"class_list":{"0":"post-27705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bari","9":"tag-cbs","10":"tag-criticizes","11":"tag-john","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-oliver","14":"tag-weiss"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}