CNN media analyst Brian Stelter touted a “remarkable guest essay” in The New York Times from Paramount owner David Ellison about the proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. Ellison discussed how this merger wouldn’t translate to some antitrust nightmare in Hollywood, but he cut to the real point that Democrat attorneys general are trying to delay the merger, if not kill it over CNN:
I believe a plainer worry sits beneath the briefs and the news releases: the news. The issue is whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN. There has been speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions.
I have regularly voted for candidates of both parties; I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans; and when it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views. I believe that news should be based on facts and truth.
This is where perhaps Ellison doesn’t realize how he’s upsetting the elitist media. They don’t believe you EVER vote for a Republican, let along “regularly.” Having any “conservative” views is a flaming red flag.
But wait, his failure to "read the news room” doesn’t stop there. He talks about news going to the middle. Horrors! This is exactly why installing Bari Weiss as an overseer is so wildly controversial. Being in the “middle” where Donald Trump might do something or say something right is unthinkable. It's “normalizing” of the evil emperor:
Great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle. That requires newsrooms that reflect the whole world, not one side of it. And it requires independence. Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause. These were founding principles for both CNN and CBS News, for legends like Ted Turner and Edward R. Murrow, and it is exactly that kind of independence that has always fueled the greatness of 60 Minutes.
In reality, the Scott Pelleys and the Lesley Stahls do not believe 60 Minutes should favor a party and/or cause. They’ve made it plain for decades that this show was designed to lift up the Democrats with syrupy interviews (see Steve Kroft kissing the rings of Barack Obama), and savage Republicans (see Lesley Stahl fighting with Trump). As we often say, CBS under Bari Weiss is not dramatically different. It just threatens to be different. It questions if it should be different.
Then Ellison addressed the cratering of public trust in the media:
There is much ground to recover. By Gallup’s latest measure, just 28 percent of Americans trust the news — the lowest ever recorded. The temptation is to say the problem lies elsewhere. Our obligation is to look inward and say: We can do better. We are in a moment when Americans trust few institutions, but journalists haven’t always helped their case by refusing to engage with critiques.
Trust can’t be argued back, but it can be earned back — story by story, day by day. In an age when so much of what fills our screens is machine-generated or engineered to enrage, journalism from real reporters matters more than ever. That is the work I intend to pay for, patiently, for a long time.
This is another horror-movie passage for die-hards at CBS and CNN. If regaining trust means acknowledging that Trump voters and right-wingers might have reasonable critiques? Forget about it. They prefer journalism “engineered to enrage.” That’s their bread and butter, unless it’s for the Democrats and it’s “engineered like a campaign ad.”
Stelter and his kind think Bari Weiss is failing CBS -- they tout dismal ratings, but they're rooting for it to fail. If they stray from the hard line, they want the leftist/socialist audience to leave, since the conservatives left long ago. They don't care about anyone's profit margin. They want the CBS business model to be a lot like MS NOW, and they want CNN to stay in full-time Evil Lying Trump Endangers Democracy mode, no matter how bad the ratings are.
