CBSNN

We'd better get used to that acronym.

Netflix and Paramount-Skydance, as you might recall, had been in competition for taking over Warner Brothers-Discovery, the parent company of CNN, whose ratings have slipped dramatically since Trump returned to power in early 2025 - most likely because of Scott Jennings and Jake Tapper.  Both companies expressed a desire to take over Warner Brothers-Discovery and CNN and seek to improve its stand in the increasingly irrelevant cable-news sweepstakes.  Then Netflix capitulated and withdrew its bid for Warner Brothers-Discovery.

So?  So, David Ellison and his father David - the benefactors of both Donald Trump - own Paramount-Skydance.  Paramount-Skydance owns CBS, which is run by Ellison beneficiary Bari Weiss.  

This news came out a day before Trump decided to blow up Iran.  So of course not too many people noticed.  But I did, and I credit former New York TV newswoman Sheila Stainback for bringing the news to my attention.  Note the word "former."  Sheila Stainback, who used to be an anchorwoman on the ten o'clock newscast on WPIX-TV in New York, quit the news business and turned to acting.  I learned about this news from her because I follow her on both Instagram and Threads.

These days, of course, a former TV journalist has more credibility than current TV journalists, and even non-journalists like actress Andrea Thompson, who was a CNN Headline News "anchor" for nine months, have more credibility than noted non-journalist Bari Weiss, who will likely become the editor-in-chief for the entire CBS-CNN news enterprise.  Given her inability to know the difference between reporting and editorializing (why else would CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil verbally salute Marco Rubio on the air?), the potential for misinformation across two massive platforms (CBS News also includes the CBS News 24/7 streaming channel) should be spectacularly gargantuan.

The combined news outlets will control, I have been led to understand, roughly two-thirds of  news reporting on legacy media.  And with a war between the U.S. and Israel and Iran well underway - which has led to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - you can expect the Ellisons, one of the country's most wealthy Jewish families, and that yenteh Weiss to slant the news in favor of Trump and Netanyahu, two septuagenarians who cling to power to avoid going to prison, and frame the narrative to present the two globally isolated leaders as being quite noble.  I don't mean to be anti-Semitic in my characterizations of Weiss and the Ellisons, because, quite frankly, painting Trump and Netanyahu as the good guys in a war against a Muslim theocracy that is as wretched and as murderous as people say is not only a good way to rouse MAGA and Christian nationalists anticipating the Second Coming; it's also good for business.  They would have covered the Troubles in Ulster with a bias toward the British if they'd thought they could make a profit from it.

Also, you can expect more favorable coverage of Trump's tariff policy and immigration policy, less coverage at all of the Epstein files, and plenty of shady deals in the Middle East. Oh yeah, did I happen to mention that the Ellisons are being supported by significant investment from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, including the Qatar Investment Authority?  Everyone involved in this merger, like every defense contractor involved in this new war, is poised to make lots of money while the American people are poised to eat lots of crap.  After all, the only people that get hurt in situations like these are the innocent.

I haven't been able to write or report for the hyperlocal news site I worked for until this past June, which suits me just fine, and I don't care if I never work as a straight reporter ever again.  I'm comfortable mouthing off right here.  And I am pleased to join my fellow Fourth Estate alum Sheila Stainback into early retirement. 

America Hates Itself and It Wants To Die

The Trump regime's efforts to flood the zone worked.  They're committing more crimes against humanity than I can keep up with, and I have to squeeze different stories into a single post, as i have to do here.  There are also some stories I don't have time, room, or patience to talk about here at all.

For today . . ..  First of all, the ACA is DOA.  The Republican majorities happily left Washington for the Christmas break without extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that allow the law to work and allow people to, well, get health insurance.  The subsidies expire this coming Wednesday, and come Thursday, January 1, and so people with no health insurance will not be able to get the care the need, while those who do have insurance will pay much higher premiums.  Which group to I fall in?  What's my situation?  Never you mind!  Suffice to say that the Republican health care policy first proposed in 2009 - don't get sick, and if you do, die quickly - is very much back in force, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is certainly paying more attention to the latter half of said policy.

And once again, I am forced to return to the unpleasant subject of Bari Weiss . . . 

Just two hours before "60 Minutes" was to air this past Sunday, Weiss pulled a Sharyn Alfonsi story about the CECOT prison in El Salvador and the abuse migrants arrested in the United States suffered at that facility, a story that had been heavily promoted in advance, and substituted twin savant classical musicians - one of those feel-good stories "60 Minutes" always likes to do not as the main course but as the dessert that comes after the main course - in its stead.  Alfonsi defended the CECOT story, saying it had been fully vetted, but Weiss stood firm, saying it was biased against the administration and adding that the administration's top aide on immigration had the right to respond.  

That would be Stephen Miller.

Stephen . . . Miller. 

Yeah.  You know how "60 Minutes" correspondents always ask the government to explain its side of an unpleasantly and inconveniently true story and the government denies to respond?  Because what Weiss was apparently suggesting is that if the government declines your request for a comment to your story, than you must . . . kill the story. 

It would be nice if the government could offer its side of the story, but sometimes, as with the case of CECOT, where migrants are tortured simply for being migrants, sometimes, as CBS legend Edward R. Murrow once said, there is no side of the story.

Weiss killed this story because she not only knows that Trump would object to it being broadcast, she knows that David Ellison, who runs CBS, and his dad Larry Ellison, who owns CBS, would object to its airing because Trump would object - which would kill, in turn, the Ellisons' efforts to buy Warner Bros./Discovery.  But because Weiss has no experience in news, she somehow allowed the story to be aired in Canada, and it appeared on politically liberal YouTube channels for as long as YouTube would allow it.  

Awk-ward!

Hey, Bari, you wanted CBS News to simply "do the fucking news," right?  Well, Sharyn Alfonsi did her fucking job and, you fucking scrapped her story before it was to air.  What happened to pursuing the fucking news?  We want to hear the fucking truth!  And hear it out loud!  As Kiss once sang, "I want to hear it loud, I want to hear it fucking loud!!" 

Oh, what?  What?  That's not how that Kiss song from the early eighties goes?  No F-bombs in that song?  Oh, sorry. 

Well, so much for my Star Child photobomb . . . 😝 

I already stopped watching "60 Minutes" when Norah O'Donnell interviewed Trump and let him get away with everything.  I have even less desire to watch it now. 

Hostility To Free Speech

This business deal in the media is so convoluted - most likely by design - that I had to consult AI to understand it.

The bottom line is this: Paramount, which recently merged with Skydance with the blessing of federal non-regulators and owns CBS, is pursuing a hostile, all-cash bid in December 2025 to buy all of Warner Brothers-Discovery (WBD), for $30 per share, to prevent Netflix's offer for WBD's studio and streaming assets.  The deal not only has the support of Donald Trump but also his son-in-law Jared Kushner; the Plastic Man is providing funding for the possible Paramount/Skydance deal from interests in the Middle East, as well as support from MBS - I don't mean the Mutual Broadcasting System, which went off the air over a quarter century ago.   

Paramount claims that the acquisition of  WBD would mean "more content, better linear networks (CBS and CNN), and significant cost savings," while a Netflix takeover of WBD would mostly focus on streaming.  Paramount, by contrast, is apparently promising miracles.

When a media conglomerate promises miracles, just remember - Jesus is the only person who can promise a miracle and deliver.

Paramount doesn't want to control WBD to provide more and better content.  It wants to take over as many media outlets and make them as Trump-friendly as possible.  Larry Ellison, who runs Paramount, and his son David want to turn CNN into a mouthpiece for Trump (although, to be honest, many CNN anchors appear to be auditioning to be Trump mouthpieces already) and do to CNN what Bari Weiss is doing to CBS News - make it an outlet for government-friendly spin, lightweight features, and whatever Weiss calls "the fucking news."  Now she might get to perform the act of fucking CNN.  And with so many broadcast and entertainment media under one umbrella, the Ellison family can and would make sure that nothing that could actually inform or enlighten folks gets through.

The good news is that there is still freedom of the press in These States.  The bad news is that the corporate media - already vacuous and intellectually bankrupt - is seeing to it that only a handful of rich people actually own the press.  Freedom of speech?   You can speak out, good luck if anyone hears you.  Heck, you can write a letter to the editor of whatever newspapers and magazines are still putting out print editions, but that doesn't mean it will be published.  And if you speak out against the Saudis through a possible Ellison-owned media establishment - well, goo luck, you're going to need it. 

Knowyour rights in These States/  just be extremely careful how to use them.

No, No, Norah

I am so glad I ended my beautiful-women picture blog.

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I ran that blog was including TV newswomen among my subjects - not just because I was prioritizing them for their looks as well as for their skills (which is why I excluded Fox News personalities, as if that made it any better), but because the same TV newswomen I featured whom I thought had professional scruples turned out to be sellouts to Trump.  First, Kaitlan Collins.  Then Kristen Welker.  Last Sunday, on CBS's "60 Minutes," Norah O'Donnell's number got called.

I touched on this earlier this month,  but I have to return to this issue.  Norah O'Donnell interviewed Trump for "60 Minutes," and the interview was pared down to fill two of the program's three main blocks between commercials.  (The name of the program is a gross misnomer; anyone who records it and watches it later will zip through the commercials and can watch "60 Minutes" in 45.)   Thus, the Trump interview took up the bulk of last week's broadcast.  In all of that time, O'Donnell either asked Trump softball questions or asked tougher questions that he provided fudged answers to without any pushback or challenge.  That is, based on what I read and heard about the interview.  I didn't have the stomach to actually watch it.

It gets worse.  In going over the full transcript of the interview, voting-rights attorney and  activist Marc Elias found that O'Donnell had not only failed to challenge Trump in the footage that was actually broadcast, she had not challenged Trump in the parts of the interview that weren't included in the on-air version. "When I read the full transcript of the interview," Elias wrote on his own Web site Democracy Docket, "I realized there had been no pushback, no corrections, no challenging follow-ups. The entire interview had been an open-ended opportunity for Trump to tell rambling lies, only to have them cleaned up into a more polished product."

The decision was made to conduct an interview that didn't so much resemble Mike Wallace's hard-hitting one-on-one talks with national and world leaders as it resembled MTV interviews of the early eighties, in which the on-camera hosts would ask rock stars perfunctory questions about irrelevant topics (like the time Elton John discussed his role as a co-owner of the Watford soccer team - hardly anything to do with his music or anything most of his fans didn't know about).  O'Donnell, in interviewing Trump, seemed to have more in common with MTV host Martha Quinn than with ABC journalist Martha Raddatz.  But the decision on how to conduct the interview wasn't made by O'Donnell, or "60 Minutes" producer Tanya Simon.  It was made by new CBS News chief Bari Weiss, whose conservative politics jibe nicely with Trump's reactionary agenda, and whose motto for CBS News  - "Do the fucking news" - suggests that all she's doing is the fucking of the news.  Which is news in and of itself.

I don't think I can watch "60 Minutes" anymore.  Not even the arts and entertainment pieces, like Lesley Stahl's engaging story of Rob Reiner's long-awaited sequel to This Is Spinal Tap earlier this season, because those stories will likely skew more toward entertainers whose work has no value and who prosper largely for being good at self-promotion or savvy enough to do what it takes to stay hip.  In other words, people like Trump.  As for Norah O'Donnell, she has forfeited any right to be mentioned in the same sentence among pioneering CBS newswomen like Nancy Dickerson and Marlene Sanders.

And to think she might get rewarded for this MTV-style sham interview by being returned to the CBS Evening News anchor desk.

Idle Weiss

Diversity, equity and inclusion are essential to giving people who are not straight, white, male or Christian representation.  It's a way that non-heterosexuals, women, and Jews get a seat at the table.

But after seeing noted non-heterosexual Jewish female journalist Bari Weiss take over CBS News as editor-in-chief, even the most die-hard progressive might want to reconsider DEI.

Weiss is a smart-ass conservative opinion writer who, in addition to, ironically, opposing DEI, is against "wokeness" (formerly called common decency), is tolerant of white people appropriating cultural touchstones of racial minorities, does not believe that a credible rape accusation should be a barrier to public office, and is also a staunch Zionist, believing that the Palestinians ought to just step aside and let Israel take over the Holy Land.  Her stewardship of CBS News means more favorable coverage of the Israeli government's Gaza policy (imagine an anti-Catholic Beacon Hill WASP as editor-in-chief of the Boston Globe during the Troubles in Ulster and you get the idea), more room for incendiary commentary on programs like "Face the Nation," and a general disregard for stories that might present the country's leaders in an unfavorable light.

Weiss is best known as an opinion-editorial woman, having been an op-ed editor at both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  She caused many a stir in the latter role, where she not only promoted her own right-leaning opinions but also defended in 2020 an op-ed column from Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) that advocated the use of military force against people protesting the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  Weiss resigned from the Times, as did her boss, op-ed editor James Bennet, brother of Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO).  Weiss then went on to found Free Press, a right-leaning online publication that, among other things, has questioned COVID lockdowns and sex-affirming health-care procedures.  A huge success after only three short years, Free Press was just recently bought by CBS owner Paramount for $150 million, making Weiss and her cofounders - her sister and her wife - rich women, and Weiss has found common cause with Paramount CEO David Ellison, himself a rich guy, to recast CBS News as they see fit.  

They will say it's not about money.  But as H.L. Mencken once said, that's exactly what people say when it is about money.

It's certainly not about relevant experience.  Weiss is taking over a news organization that involves gathering stories on current events and presenting them on television.  Weiss has no experience in either news gathering or TV,  and the sight of such a politically polarizing provocateur taking over the house that Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather built and remodeling it into a faux-opulent McMansion is enough to make real news junkies want to vomit.  At least Murrow and Cronkite aren't around to see this; Rather, at 94, isn't so lucky.

Weiss says that her mission is to restore straight reporting with minimal editorializing, keeping what editorializing there is evenly balanced between both sides - forgetting that Murrow once said that sometimes there is no other side, like in Gaza where Israel has no defense of its atrocities.   But media critics are not fooled.  "Like [Elon] Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the deal can be understood as part of a broader elite project to smudge the lenses through which many people see the world," wrote the Defector's Patrick Redford of Weiss's promotion. "By installing Weiss, the richest people in the world have taken another step toward ushering in the toothless, acquiescent future of mainstream media they've always wanted."

Which, of course, jibes nicely with the recent merger between Paramount and Skydance that the current regime in Washington approved  - and the new ombudsman's position at CBS to make sure the regime gets a - ahem - fair shake.

So far, as the 2025-26 television season is getting underway, "60 Minutes" hasn't been terribly affected by CBS News's decline, and it likely has plenty of stories filed and ready to air before Weiss puts her stamp on the network's news division.  But in the long term, I don't hold out much hope, and I am speaking as someone who has abandoned legacy broadcasting so thoroughly that "60 Minutes" is the only program I still watch on television.