CBS Broadcast Center squats atop an entire city block of midtown Manhattan. It is an aircraft carrier of a building, a labyrinth of weird hallways, miles of exposed cables, elevators that go to one part of the building but not the other, and the ghost of Andy Rooney wandering around complaining about paperclips.
CBS News and CBS Sports are both housed there, the former of which includes the nightly news program and, of course, 60 Minutes. (The building also leases studio space to The Drew Barrymore Show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and my own show, Have I Got News For You.)
The turmoil at 60 Minutes is one of those weird inside-baseball stories that sometimes escape the minor-league ballpark of television news. As you’re no doubt aware, billionaire progeny David Ellison completed his purchase of CBS in August of last year—after receiving the blessing of the Trump administration following a $16M “settlement” of Trump’s ludicrous “election interference” lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris which Trump had deemed “a giant, fake scam.”
Also part of the Ellison deal was an explicit promise to root out “political bias” at CBS News as well as a commitment to end all DEI practices at CBS and Paramount. To oversee these commitments, Ellison hired Bari Weiss, the aggrieved-opinion-columnist-turned-MAGA-billionaire-whisperer. Considering that Weiss had no experience in television news before taking the job, the results to date have been as spectacular as you’d expect.
Had she at least taken her time before overhauling the entire news division, she might have engendered a touch of goodwill and a steady transition. As it happens, though, Weiss came in with a bunch of big ideas and sweeping changes that were rolled out toot sweet. All of them were bad.
Her shiny new primetime anchor, the “MAGA-coded” Tony Dokupil, is currently presiding over some of the lowest ratings for CBS Nightly News ever, and still dropping! This after shutting down CBS radio, overseeing layoffs which CNN reported disproportionately affected women and people of color, and the fun Peter Attia mess, which involved her refusing to fire an Epstein compadre before the medical correspondent resigned. (And though it technically predated Weiss’ tenure, let’s not forget the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a move widely regarded as yet another Ellison bending of the knee to Trump. )
But it’s over at the news division’s crown jewel, 60 Minutes, that things have really started to fall apart.
Wholesale firings, internecine war, a terse Anderson Cooper resignation, and allegations of political interference roiled the program even before Scott Pelley challenged the show’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton—who is reportedly being paid a $2.5 million salary despite having no TV production experience—during a breakfast meeting a couple days ago.
The contentious showdown has been widely reported and featured the introduction of a new euphemism for telling somebody to f–k off: “Enjoy the bagels,” which Bilton apparently said to the room before storming off.
(No word on whether said bagels came with lox or veggie cream cheese spread.)
Pelley’s, well, 60 Minutes were soon up, which surely came as no surprise to him. One generally doesn’t accuse one’s boss of attempting to “murder” their business and expect to keep one’s job.
Which brings us up to date on all things CBS News and, really, provokes the question, why do people care? So a couple TV shows are going kaplooey. Why should we give a fig?
Here’s why: Because while the golden era of Walter Cronkite is long dead, the thirst for trust in news reportage has never been more acute. People get rightfully pissed when they see the short but heavy sausage fingers on Donald Trump tipping the scales of a beloved media organization. In particular, or when they see blatant political interference influencing editorial decisions, as obviously happened with a 60 Minutes report about the administration’s illegal deportations of immigrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Things have only devolved since then, with Weiss firing a raft of the program’s longtime producers and correspondents. Hilariously, it also follows persistent rumors that Weiss is trying to woo Joe Rogan to join the 60 Minutes team.
Joe Rogan. A man who rose to fame encouraging reality TV contestants on Fear Factor to eat horse anuses. On the show that has won 146 Emmys, 26 Peabody Awards, and multiple Edward R. Murrow trophies. Nothing against my short king, but can you imagine Joe Rogan’s doughy mug saying “Those stories and more on tonight’s 60 Minutes”?
How based would that be, bro???
I don’t know what was going on internally at 60 Minutes before Weiss arrived. But I know the quality of their work as it aired—it was excellent. Their ratings have also been excellent; take a Paramount press release from May 21st headlined “’60 Minutes’ Makes Television History By Marking 52 Straight Seasons as America’s #1 News Program.” What was so bad and so urgent that they had to take a bonesaw to it?
I do know that the mood in that big aircraft carrier of a building is not great. Without naming names, of course, I’ve spoken to a number of people who all performed some version of an eye roll whenever Weiss’s name arises.
Yes, I’m the one bringing up her name. But only because I’m genuinely curious about how she’s doing. I have my own selfish reasons for asking; David Ellison has now also secured the purchase of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros/Discovery, which puts him at the head of a vast media monopoly. Weiss is likely to be my new boss within the year. She may… have news for me. (HA!)
To borrow a phrase from Senator Susan Collins, I’m concerned.
Yes, I’m worried about my own job. I’m also worried about media conglomeration, an independent press, and whether Wolf Blitzer will be asked to rub Bari’s feet outside the Situation Room. More than anything, though, I’m worried about truth. It was Scott Pelley’s fellow unemployed network mate, Stephen Colbert, who first deployed the word “truthiness” to describe the alternate reality falling on the nation during the run-up to the Second Iraq War. Colbert recognized early what 60 Minutes viewers are only now just discovering: truth must be guarded.
That’s what makes 60 Minutes valuable. Not the ratings. The awards. What’s made the show invaluable for all those 52 seasons are the reporters and producers willing to follow a story wherever it leads, even when—and especially when—powerful people prefer they don’t. When those same powerful people get a veto over what makes it to air, the decline can happen lickety split. The building still occupies an entire city block. Institutions are harder to maintain than real estate, and I’ll be honest: they’re not even doing a great job maintaining the building.
Enjoy the bagels.
