In the legacy media, there’s effectively a credo: Ignore our failures and attack anyone who challenges us. That’s why so many people inside news agencies send me information confidentially, pointing out their agencies’ fiascoes. They’re afraid to say anything internally because they’d be treated like an enemy.
So when The Free Press founder Bari Weiss, who does not share that our-way-or-it’s-not-news philosophy, was placed at the helm of CBS News, the rest of Big Media lost its mind. And when she dared to hold a 60 Minutes story for further reporting, journalists attacked.
In the process, they showed a total disregard for the job: providing facts plus context. In the new episode out today, I talk you through what happened, and break down the hypocrisy of an industry that shapes how people see the world.
“Journalists” raced to call Weiss names and cast the entire situation in the most conspiratorial light possible. The worst take I saw, sent to me by a listener, came from a so-called “journalism ethics” leader. You can’t make this stuff up.
Margaret Sullivan is a former public editor of the New York Times, where she was supposed to address the paper’s extreme journalistic failures. She’s now director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at Columbia Journalism School. Sullivan wrote a column about this CBS situation for The Guardian (a site that regularly runs biased hit pieces). The column is filled with ethical failures.
The episode is free for anyone to hear. Listen & subscribe! Details below for supporters.
