Journalists speculating on the ever-long telanovella melodrama inside CBS News has become a cottage industry in the media realm over the past few months. Since the arrival of Bari Weiss as the new head of the news division, there has been a civil war of sorts at CBS, and the journalists who oppose Weiss at other outlets serve as a willing conduit for her opponents at the network to leak unflattering content. The new leadership is facing an industry-wide effort to undermine her efforts.
What is most amusing is that her efforts entail bringing a level of respectability to her network’s journalism, and that has upset journalists, both at CBS News and outside the headquarters at Hell’s Kitchen. The desire by Weiss to deliver even-handed journalism and give equal side approaches to their reports is seen as her bowing to the Trump administration.
READ MORE: As Media Credibility Continues to Crater, That Same Media Refuses to Address the Problem
Case in point, Tony Dokoupil took over the duties of “The CBS Evening News,” and his first week at the desk saw him suffering perpetual criticism from many in the news industry. He has been torn to shreds by those who spent much of last year complaining about “attacks” on journalists by President Trump and others in the GOP, but they are perfectly content to eat one of their own.
Most hilarious has been the charge that Dokoupil is now “MAGA-coded.” Please. He is hardly a red hat-wearing stan dancing to “YMCA”; the man is married to Katie Tur, of MS NOW, after all.
We have been delivered another anecdote from inside the CBS Broadcast Center. The Guardian has a lengthy review of some of the histrionics taking place there, and one nugget jumps out. It is a newly reported detail from November of another battle taking place inside the newsroom, and it reveals more of the entrenched leftist and activist brainrot that Weiss is facing and striving to correct.
This involved internal communications where one journalist (not Weiss, tellingly) was complaining about the use of specific terminology regarding reporting on transgender issues. It appears that CBS News had been operating under the mandate that certain approved terminology be employed in such reports, following the standards sent to them by the Trans Journalists Association, which issued its own version of the AP Style Guide.
With Weiss in charge, there have also been internal cultural clashes on issues that align with her worldview, including a previously unreported 6 November blow-up among staffers about language choices when writing about transgender individuals. A prominent correspondent at the network wrote in an email viewed by the Guardian that CBS “should refrain from adopting terminology advocated by the movement”, referring to guidance from the Trans Journalists Association’s stylebook about how to use the phrase “biological sex”. A producer responded angrily to the correspondent, writing: “It’s a TJA style ‘guide’ – that’s what I’m trying to do. Guide us to better coverage.”
If there had been any wonder why news outlets have been using logic-defying terminology in their reporting — using phrases such as “pregnant person,” “menstruating individual,” and the like – it is due to this association laying the verbal boundaries. Here is one example of the fractured application of their style at the TJA.
In coaching on how to use the term “LatinX,” or “Latine,” for those who are opposed to the gendered Spanish language, it instructs. “Defer to an individual’s use and do not apply it to those who do not self-describe with it.” Yet, when it comes to those who agree with the gender they are born with, “cisgender,” or “cis,” is to be used as the biologically accurate term – regardless of whether the individual identifies that way.
When news outlets bow to this type of language policing, they reveal the activist intent in the reporting. And the very fact that some are battling against reverting to normal language terms shows how militant some are in maintaining this biased approach to their coverage.
This is going to be a lengthy but needed battle that Bari Weiss is facing. The screams of opposition across the media spectrum show how mired our journalism complex has become in this activist mindset.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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