The very idea that broadcast news organizations do, or did ever, produce programming without some kind of political bias is nonsensical, seeing as how their news is gathered and written and spoken by people, and people have political opinions.
Case in point would be most clearly Fox News, which as an old newsman used to no cheering in the newsroom I can’t watch without gagging, and so don’t watch, except on election nights, flipping back and forth with CNN to hear the two kinds of spin.
Print news, too, although our news sides do their very best to report objectively. I always recall what former Washington Post Executive Editor Len Downie said: That he not only didn’t vote in elections, but refused to allow himself to consider who he would vote for if he were to vote. Now there is a scribe with deep convictions.
A professor now at the ASU J school, I wonder now in this fraught, absurd American political moment if Downie really can maintain those convictions when it comes to considering, or not, who he would vote for for president.
The issue of media bias, and of the attempt to not have it so far as is possible, is front and center here at the end of the year after the decision by the new editor in chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss, to at the last moment spike — or at least postpone — a story about the awful prisons of El Salvador to which Venezuelans deported from the United States had been sent on last Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was critical of the Trump administration.
She said that in her opinion the story “was not ready,” in particular because it did not include a Trump administration response. But the administration had declined to comment for the story. When that happens, broadcast and print editors tell their viewers, listeners and readers that, and then note that they are always open to a response from the politicos when they are ready to speak.
The story about the ill treatment of Venezuelan prisoners in El Salvador had been screened internally four times for CBS News brass earlier in the month; Weiss had not bothered to watch it. When she finally did watch it late last week, she offered editorial suggestions, which were incorporated into the script. Then, on Friday, she asked that an interview be added with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, who, let us say, takes an interest in matters involving immigration and deportation.
Weiss must have known that such a videotaped sit-down interview with a high White House official would have been impossible to arrange late on a Friday for a story airing on Sunday.
Or perhaps she didn’t know. Because there are two weird things about hiring Weiss to oversee CBS News. First, other than hosting a podcast, her entire journalism career has been on the print side. Second, that career has been on the opinion side, not the news, as an op-ed and book review editor at the Wall Street Journal, and an op-ed editor and writer at The New York Times, the latter hire being in particular because of her conservative politics as the Times sought to broaden the perspectives of its editorial pages.
Actually, a third weird thing about the Weiss hire as boss of a huge news organization is far more troubling. After she left the Times, she founded an opinion journal, The Free Press, which Paramount owner David Ellison — who also owns CBS — bought this year for a rather startling $150 million. Then he installed her at CBS News, where she reports directly to him. This would be the same Ellison who is a friend of and political donor to Donald Trump, and who is lobbying the administration in his effort to buy Warner Bros.
Everyone concerned about the actual freedom of the press in our country should be worried about this situation. The spiking of a single story is only a small part of it. No matter what your politics, no matter if you thought that the news on CBS skewed liberal — a lot of news does — the solution was to hire a Len Downie type, not an opinion writer. We opinion writers are too opinionated.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.