Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather weighed in on David Ellison’s hire of Bari Weiss as editor in chief at CBS News, warning that it portends a culture of fear in the news division as staffers worry about their jobs.
On his Substack, Steady, Rather put Weiss’ hire in the context of the Skydance-Paramount merger, noting that the companies bowed to pressure from the Trump administration in order to get the transaction approved by the FCC.
“That deal and the hiring of Weiss signals to everyone, especially to the man in the Oval Office, that CBS is no longer independent, but under the tutelage of a conservative billionaire who is putting more than his thumb on the scale,” Rather wrote.
Rather wrote of the pending layoffs across Paramount, with CBS News journalists worried about their futures, yet will be reporting to Weiss, an opinion writer and “not a reporter.”
“Rather than doing their jobs as sentinels of democracy, who independently cover the news and hold the powerful accountable, they now have to be concerned about how their pitches, their stories, and their scripts will be received by someone with a clear political agenda,” Rather wrote. “They will be dogged by worry that anything they do, any question they ask, will be scrutinized to ensure that it suits the political powers.
“Anything that runs afoul of Trump’s agenda may be flagged and is unlikely to be aired unaltered, if aired at all. No journalist or their work can remain unaffected by toiling in such an environment.”
Rather also warned that it “is a dark day in the halls of CBS News, where the portraits of television news pioneers once hung — Cronkite, Murrow, Sevareid, Collingwood. They were journalists who made television a trusted source of information. Whom and what are we to believe today?”
Ellison announced on Monday that Paramount would acquire Weiss’ site, The Free Press, known for its pro-Israel, anti-woke commentary and analysis, while she would have the title of editor in chief at CBS News, despite lacking broadcast journalism experience.
On the day that her hire was announced, Weiss wrote to Free Press subscribers, “If the illiberalism of our institutions has been the story of the last decade, we now face a different form of illiberalism emanating from our fringes. On the one hand, an America-loathing far left. On the other, a history-erasing far right. These extremes do not represent the majority of the country, but they have increasing power in our politics, our culture, and our media ecosystem.”
Rather, though, wrote that such a statement “portends a push for ‘bothsidesism’ and arguments reliant on false equivalences. There can be no equivalences drawn between the two political extremes in this country, especially when one extreme is led by a man who rarely speaks without lying. But Weiss’s modus operandi is giving the fictitious illusion of fair and balanced coverage through such mechanisms.”
A Paramount spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rather, 93, served as CBS Evening News anchor from 1981 to 2005. He stepped down following the airing of a 60 Minutes II report on President George W. Bush’s service in the National Guard. The network retracted the story after it was found that documents used in the piece could not be authenticated. But after he left CBS News, Rather defended the report and noted that no one had shown that the documents were fraudulent.
The post Dan Rather Says Bari Weiss Hire And Skydance-Paramount Merger Mark “A Dark Day In The Halls Of CBS News” appeared first on Deadline.
