QOTD -- R.I.P. CBS News

 

"It's worth remembering that whenever a MAGA figure enters an institution as a "leader," that institution is soon destroyed, with the MAGA figure thereafter blaming everyone else for what happened and launching a round of mass layoffs.

 

"Sometime in the future, the MAGA figure will be paid off to go away, even as they leave the institution they poisoned utterly destroyed forever.

 

"Once you start looking for this phenomenon you can't stop seeing it, and it's exactly what's happening at CBS News today.

 

"MAGA is a death cult. That means it doesn't build anything or innovate or foster any community or develop ethoi that inform or inspire... it has only one setting, and that setting is war. Tear everything down, attack everyone, delegitimize everything, defile everywhere. The idea that Bari Weiss has any vision whatsoever that relates to the news or anything else is simply laughable. She is a self-aggrandizing, clueless chaos agent who will throw all the toys out of the crib until she skulks away.

 

"The only thing any professional operating in good faith can do in the face of something like this is get as far away from it as possible as quickly as possible so that you don't get any of the moral and spiritual stink of MAGAism on you.

 

"The moment CBS News hired Weiss, it was gone." -- journalist and attorney Seth Abramson, on Threads, on the Bari-al of CBS News.  Next up for MAGA is CNN -- like CBS, owned by the fascist oligarch Ellisons.  More "moral and spiritual stink" to come.

BONUS:  Industry professionals are speaking out.

QOTD -- The Vichy Era Of CBS News And The Media

 

"... Larry and David Ellison are in the process of securing control over a vast swath of the American media landscape. The Paramount deal and the subsequent $7.7 billion overpay for the UFC to longtime Trump ally Ari Emanuel (seen ringside with Ellison, Trump, and Musk in April) set the stage for Oracle to go after the gigantic Warner Bros. Discovery company and gain control of U.S. TikTok at a fire-sale price. (Again, as with the Weiss acquisition, the Ellisons' steadfast support for Israel is not incidental, but rather a motivating factor.) It's a play for monopoly control. Buying off the president is the important part, but they still need to sell it.

"The Ellisons and the rest of the billionaire class don't need the aerodynamic drag of association with fringier right-wing stuff; they want the prestige and lubricity of affiliation with important, elite institutions. That's the value proposition of the Ivy-incubated, Wall Street Journal and New York Times veteran Weiss: obsequiousness to power and capital without any of the wacky stuff, the imprimatur of elite consensus unburdened by any inconvenient commitment to reporting on the business of powerful people. What does this look like in practical terms?  [snip]

"... Weiss has an insatiable metabolism for other people's anger, as she capably digests it into further proof of her claims to courageous truth-telling. Her new billionaire backers get an agent expert at turning people's ire toward other, softer targets—someone who can process it into fuel." -- Patrick Redford in Defector on the meaning of the oligarch Ellisons's naming of anti-woke crank Bari Weiss to be chief editor of the now- fatally- compromised CBS News -- now in its "Vichy Era."   With the Ellisons's acquisition of CBS News and Tik Tok (and potentially Warner Bros. Discovery), the Murdoch family's control of the WSJ and Fox "News," and Bezos's control of the Washington Post, we see the media is firmly lodged in the pocket of the billionaire class, to be run for the benefit of billionaires (and we're not even mentioning the right- wing companies that own the affiliate stations).