Future of CBS News?

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Article in Democracy Now! by Amy Goodman, 10/9/25

Headline:  “Bari Weiss to Head CBS News as Pro-Trump, Pro-Israel Billionaire Ellison Family Expands Media Emire”

“We speak to journalist David Klion about the Trump-affiliated right wing’s increasing grip on mainstream news media, as “anti-woke” pundit Bari Weiss takes the helm as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. The former New York Times opinion writer . . .in reality has a 20-year history of suppressing speech that she finds objectionable. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/8/bari_weiss_david_klion_cbs_paramount

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Article in Status by Oliver Darcy, 10/9/25

Headline: “The Weiss House”

“As Bari Weiss settles into CBS News, she’s moving fast – taking anchors to lunch, phoning potential hires, and plotting a new “Evening News” with names like Norah O’Donnell and Tony Dokoupil in the mix. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.status.news/p/bari-weiss-cbs-news-evening-news

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Article in The Guardian by Jeremy Barr, 10/7/25

Headline: “CBS News staffers react to Bari Weiss being named editor-in-chief: ‘It’s utterly depressing’ “

Subhead:  “Six network employees expressed a mix of emotions over the appointment in conversations with the Guardian”

“. . .In conversations with The Guardian, six current network employees who were not authorized to comment publicly expressed a mixture of apprehension, skepticism and frustration . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/07/cbs-news-staffers-react-bari-weiss-appointment

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Article in The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto, 10/7/25

Headline:  “Memo to Bari Weiss Re: CBS News: You’re doomed”

“. . .No one can save CBS News, because it was made for a media ecosystem that is now dead. Broadcast television is slowly circling the drain, its aging audience drifting toward the great inevitable. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theverge.com/business/793525/bari-weiss-cbs-news-glass-cliff

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Article in Poynter by Tom Jones, 10/7/25

Headline:  “Opinion | What will Bari Weiss do as head of CBS News? Her past may offer clues.”

Subhead:  “Weiss promises courage and truth at CBS News. Her track record running The Free Press shows what that might look like.”

“. . .The acquisition puts one of the country’s most traditional news institutions — the former home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — under the editorial guidance of a journalist who rose to fame in part by critiquing old-line media. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.theverge.com/business/793525/bari-weiss-cbs-news-glass-cliff

Media Fading Away?

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Article in Axios by Sara Fisher, 10/7/25

Headline: “Job cuts in news stabilize while broader media industry struggles”

“News media job cuts are more tempered so far this year, despite a few outlier organizations hit by public funding cuts and looming layoffs tied to consolidation.

“Why it matters: 2024 was a particularly brutal year for the news industry, as outlets raced to cut positions in an attempt to offset a weak ad market and get ahead of business disruptions from artificial intelligence. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.axios.com/2025/10/07/news-media-job-losses

Media Consolidation & Intimidation

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Article in FAIR by Pete Tucker, 10/8/25

Headline:  “MAGA’s Little Helpers: Sinclair, Nexstar and the Consolidation of Broadcast TV”

“When Jimmy Kimmel made his dramatic return to ABC’s airwaves on September 23, I was eager to be one of the over 6 million who tuned in. Only I couldn’t, at least not on TV.

That’s because the local ABC station in the DC area, WJLA, is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Network. And the right-wing network refused to air the Jimmy Kimmel Show! on any of its 38 ABC affiliates. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://fair.org/home/magas-little-helpers-sinclair-nexstar-and-the-consolidation-of-broadcast-tv/

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Article in Mother Jones by Monika Bauerlein, 10/8/25

Headline: “Nice Little TV Network You Got There”

Subhead: “How easily has Trump rolled corporate media? So much more easily than he probably expected.”

“The most basic American freedom, the first one enumerated in the Constitution, the right to say whatever the hell we please, including and especially about the powerful, was no longer reliable—for a celebrity employed by one of the world’s biggest media corporations, and thus for any of us.

Read the full article at:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/cbs-news-bari-weiss-free-press-corporate-media-nice-little-tv-network-trump/

Community Radio Our Last Hope?

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Luch Shiller, 10/7/25

Headline:  “Too Small to Mess With”

Subhead:  “Against the precipitous backdrop of funding cuts to public media, low-power radio emerges as a lesser-known source of inspiration.”

“Years ago, in Louisville, “people just didn’t understand this concept of having a radio station where people could just walk in and play what was interesting to them, or talk about what was on their mind,” Sharon Scott told me. ‘This was just totally radical.’ Scott started ART-FM, otherwise known as WXOX 97.1 FM, in 2011, out of her family’s living room. Her husband, Sean Selby, a carpenter, helped put it together. She served as the general manager. . .”

More at https://www.kkfistory.org/ Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/feature/public-media-funding-cut-low-power-radio-lessons-community-broadcasting.php

Conspiracy Theories in Media?

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Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 10/7/25

Headline:  “Why the right-wing media apparatus is suddenly yelling about Jack Smith supposedly spying on GOP senators”

“Republicans and their right-wing media allies yesterday spun out frothy allegations about former special counsel Jack Smith purportedly ‘spying on Republican senators’ in order to forestall tough questions about the state of the Justice Department. But their dark conspiracy theory immediately collapses under scrutiny. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/why-right-wing-media-apparatus-suddenly-yelling-about-jack-smith-supposedly-spying-gop

 

In the Shredder?

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Article in Daily Beast by Janna Brancolini, 10/6/25

Headline:  “Murdoch Paper Shreds Trump’s ‘Self-Destructive’ Fiasco”

“Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal blasted President Donald Trump’s tariff policy as “self-destructive folly” in response to plans to bail out farmers whose markets the administration has destroyed.

“Trump is considering a $10 billion relief package for soybean farmers, who have seen their sales plummet, thanks to the president’s trade war with China, which has hit American soybeans with a 23-percent import tax. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rupert-murdoch-paper-shreds-donald-trumps-self-destructive-tariff-fiasco/

 

Riding the Press?

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Article in The Hill by Max REgo, 10/6/25

Headline:  “Hegseth defends media restrictions: ‘The Pentagon press corps can squeal all they want’ “

“Pete Hegseth is doubling down on the Pentagon’s new restrictions for the press corps, arguing it will not change despite complaints from the press.

“ ‘I think the American people see things like that as absolute common sense,’ the Defense secretary told Fox News on Sunday. ‘The Pentagon press corps can squeal all they want, we’re taking these things seriously. They can report, they just need to make sure they’re following rules.’ . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5540286-hegseth-defends-pentagon-rules/

 

Shape of Things to Come?

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(Penguin Books)

Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jem Bartholomew, 10/6/25

Headline:  “Unbelievable Stupidities”

Subhead:  “How the press can rise to the moment.”

“In April 1944, in one of his early Tribune columns, George Orwell described the feeling of coming across a newspaper from before the outbreak of World War II, which at the time had been raging for almost five years, and ‘marvelling at its almost unbelievable stupidity.’

“The stupidity that Orwell saw was a naive disregard—or in some cases a willful downplaying—of the danger signs of the coming global war. . .”

“. . .Ten years from now, or eighty years from now, what might future observers look back on as the media’s ‘unbelievable stupidities’? Will they think the press of today rose to the moment? . . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/unbelievable-stupidities.php

New CBS News Head Faces Right

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Article in The Guardian by J. Oliver Conroy, 10/6/25

Headline:  “Bari Weiss’s ascension to top of CBS News highlights the political winds”

Subhead:  “US media giants have bowed before Maga after Trump’s many lawsuits and the Jimmy Kimmel firestorm”

“Paramount Skydance, the newly merged conglomerate which owns CBS News, has hired the journalist Bari Weiss as the network’s editor-in-chief – and acquired the Free Press, the publication Weiss co-founded in 2021 as a challenger to the establishment media, for a reported $150m.

“Weiss has made her career as a center-right critic of progressivism, and the Free Press is a contrarian, loosely conservative and ardently Zionist publication that views itself as a speaker of hard truths and protector of free discourse. . .”

(More articles below) – Read the full article at:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/06/bari-weisss-cbs-news-analysis

Fake Media Experts?

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Article in Mediaite by Alex Griffing, 110’3’25

Headline:  “Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson’s Conspiracy Theories Totally Wreck the Credibility That Alternative Media is Trying to Gain”

“. . .As traditional media continues to shed viewers and more and more Americans, especially young people, tune into podcasts and scroll social media for their news, the likes of Owens and Carlson are shaping the discourse more than ever. Unfortunately, much of their content is utter and total nonsense, and leans into age-old stereotypes and bigotry to grab headlines and remain provocative. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/candace-owens-and-tucker-carlsons-loony-conspiracy-theories-totally-wreck-the-credibility-that-alternative-media-is-trying-to-gain/