• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 2 hours ago

In a New Yorker magazine story out this week about Bari Weiss and CBS News, anonymous sources come out of the woodwork to trash her, but despite this (or because of it), a reader comes away with enormous respect for her.

The story, posted Monday on the New Yorker website, rehashes the drama that has ensued at CBS News since Weiss took up the position of editor-in-chief last October.

The story covers the last-minute yanking of a “60 Minutes” piece in December about the notorious El Salvador prison where the Trump administration has sent deportees alleged to have been criminals; and it speculates about the connection, if any, between actions Weiss has taken and Paramount boss David Ellison’s efforts to curry favor with the Trump White House.

The story details Weiss’s Pittsburgh childhood, her student activism at Columbia and her rise to prominence.

Here is what the TV Blog took away from the story, headlined “Inside Bari Weiss’s Hostile Takeover of CBS News”:

No. 1: The headline on the piece might have been a cheeky reference to parent company Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers Discovery.

But describing Weiss’s arrival at CBS News as “hostile” is not necessarily the conclusion everybody will reach when reading the story. 

On the contrary, the lion’s share of the quotes in the story indicate that the hostility shoe is on the other foot.

No. 2: In the story, which runs to approximately 10,000 words, source after source comes out with negative opinions about Weiss. And none of the sources are identified.

Instead, the quoted sources are identified in a number of ways, including “one producer,” “long-time media executive,” “one senior television executive,” “one former Free Press employee” (the news and commentary website Weiss founded), “a former CBS executive,” “a former classmate” and more.

“Most of us found her conniving,” an unidentified former New York Times colleague said.

“Within a couple of months [of working with Weiss at Free Press], we all wanted to jump out a window. She was completely stubborn and couldn’t take guidance,” said someone identified as “another person who worked with Weiss.” 

The skeptic in me feels that it was likely the other way around. They couldn’t or wouldn’t take guidance from Weiss, who happened to be the boss.

No. 3: Anonymous sources certainly have their uses when used sparingly since many people do not feel comfortable putting their names out there in public to complain about or, in this case, insult someone else. 

But if they are too cowardly to air their opinions about another person publicly, then maybe they should decline to be interviewed at all. Then again, anonymity is the life blood of discourse today, if you can call it discourse.

No. 4: To me, the attacks on Weiss in this piece added up to a bunch of sour grapes by a bunch of spineless whiners. The more I read this story, the more I liked her. 

No. 5: Reading between the lines of all the carping, Weiss, 41, emerges as an electrifying, charismatic personality, a woman of intelligence, vision, ambition and, most notably, guts.

Weiss’s own voice goes unheard in the New Yorker story, except for things she may or may not have said in editorial meetings and the like, quoted by anonymous sources.

Perhaps she was invited to participate in the story and declined, which was the right decision. 

Why should she be put in a position to defend herself against anonymous, hit-and-run insults?

Photo credit: CBS News.