CBS News employees are “literally freaking out” that their new management has named Bari Weiss as its new editor-in-chief. Weiss was hired to reform one of the most left-leaning legacy news outlets, if not by restoring the principles of classical liberalism, at least restoring the principles of decent journalism. For the doctrinaire leftists who staff its newsroom, the prospect of losing control of the institution “feels like some sort of doomsday.”
Why is Weiss so scary? She resigned as The New York Times opinion editor in July 2020, citing an “illiberal environment” and “bullying by colleagues” over her “intellectual curiosity.” In other words, because she chose to think and investigate for herself rather than following every political cue in the progressive media orchestra, she was no longer welcome to play along.
So Weiss didn’t. After leaving the Times, she founded what became The Free Press in 2021. There, Weiss committed what amounts to unforgivable sins in leftist newsrooms: not only tolerating but breaking stories that undermine leftist narratives. In its brief history, The Free Press covered whistleblowers exposing the gender centers transitioning minors, the injustice of allowing men in women’s sports, the general extremism of gender ideology, ways that Biden’s open border policy facilitated sex trafficking, and the partisan bias of the NPR newsroom — not to mention Weiss’s impassioned condemnation of anti-Semites and jihadists.
Weiss is no conservative, merely a fair-minded liberal. But the intolerant activists of the Left made no scruples about such a nice distinction.
Even worse (from the perspective of media leftists), Weiss made her model of fair-minded, factual coverage work. Many news pundits have made themselves irrelevant by breaking from formal institutions and pursuing increasingly deranged quackery in some forgotten corner of the internet — but not Weiss. In just five years, Weiss grew her new media platform up to a base of 1.5 million subscribers, including 170,000 paid subscribers. While far smaller than many legacy media institutions, this audience is still respectable.
Meanwhile, many of those legacy media institutions were drowning amid their own ideological isolation. The checkered record of CBS News, for instance, featured a multi-million dollar settlement with Donald Trump over its biased editing of a Kamala Harris interview during the presidential campaign (rendered all the more important because of how few interviews Harris granted) and the messy cancellation of its late-night “comedy” show. The exhaustingly partisan programming simply failed to connect with enough viewers.
In August, CBS News was sold, along with its parent company, Paramount Global, to Skydance Media (now called Paramount Skydance).
The question is, who in their right mind would pay money for the headache of handling a rabidly leftist newsroom with a shrinking reach? The answer: a business-minded American with a vision for reform. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison set the new vision: “We believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home.”
Ellison chose Weiss to implement that vision, so in October, Paramount Skydance purchased The Free Press in a deal that made Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, reporting to no one but Ellison. After five years in the institutional wilderness, Weiss has once again landed on top.
It’s worth underscoring the very different reasons why Skydance purchased both Paramount and The Free Press. Skydance purchased Paramount for its institutional legacy, including the nationwide name recognition CBS News has enjoyed for generations. It did not purchase Paramount because it appreciates the current news produced by CBS; that is why it hired Weiss as an agent of reform.
How a 'Long March' took us backwards
To highlight the significance of this development, it’s important to place it in the context of the “Long March through the Institutions.” Since the 1970s, leftist strategy in the U.S. has focused on gradually taking control of society’s largest and most important institutions and twisting them for their own ends. Sadly, a multitude of evidence suggests that this strategy has been wildly successful, as virtually every major institution is now controlled by leftists, especially America’s legacy media.
Even Christian institutions have suffered such takeovers. From America’s original seminary Harvard to the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today, many Christian institutions have drifted leftward with age.
The Left’s deliberate choice of strategy is due to its Marxist ideology, which values power over truth. This ideology employs critical theory to cynically simplify all human relationships to power struggles, often based on group dynamics rather than individual choice. This perspective diminishes truth and other such values as irrelevant side issues compared to power.
This is why leftists prefer to capture institutions rather than build their own: they covet the power of institutions but dismiss the values that would allow them to build their own. Take news media as an example: today’s legacy news outlets once had to prove themselves as reliable sources of information, or else they never would have survived. The leftists who control them today are happy to traffic in their institutional capital, but they have little use for the true reporting that established the reputations of these institutions in the first place.
Weiss’s elevation at CBS News stands as a testament that the “Long March through the Institutions” is not some inevitable arc of history. In fact, in a matter of months, CBS News reversed its “progress” toward leftism with an aspiration toward liberalism. For left-wing radicals who have made politics their religion, any such move that throws their ultimate triumph in doubt may well elicit “doomsday”-like anxiety.
Weiss’s elevation at CBS also testifies to the more general reality that truth always outlasts power. If power were all that mattered, then legacy institutions like The New York Times and CBS News would continue to dominate America’s information landscape, while independent journalists would remain a footnote, haplessly composing Substack posts from their parents’ basement.
The proposition that truth outlasts power may seem refreshing, even surprising, because power often seems to enjoy the upper hand, at least during the brief span of our lives. In the final accounting, however, we know that truth will outlast power because Jesus said so: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). All the powers of this world are contained in heaven and earth, and they are passing away, but Jesus’s words — which are totally, unalterably true — remain forever.
This is evident not only from Jesus’s words but from his own example. Jesus was the incarnate truth (John 14:6). Yet, on the day of his crucifixion, he appeared as a powerless, oppressed subject of the greatest empire on earth. The Roman governor Pilate declared his authority and power over Jesus (John 19:10), all while throwing doubt on truth (John 18:38). For three dark days, it seemed that power had triumphed, until Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to his heavenly Father. The Roman Empire crumbled into dust long ago, but Jesus still reigns over all creation.
This reflection encourages believers today to stand on truth, even in the face of superior power. Whether facing down transgender ideology in a local school district, affirming the sanctity of unborn life against a culture of death, of professing the gospel of Christ to an increasingly intolerant world, Christians can look to Jesus’s example as a reminder that truth will outlast power.
One secret to truth’s staying power is that it fits with the reality of the universe, which is unchanging and shared by all. Weiss made this point in a letter explaining the buyout. “The entire leadership team who took over Paramount this summer … are doubling down because they believe in news,” she said. “Because they have courage. Because they love this country. And because they understand, as we do, that America cannot thrive without common facts, common truths, and a common reality.”
“Common facts, common truths, and a common reality” are keys not just to a thriving country but an invitation for Christians to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ with greater urgency. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil, wrote Paul in Wednesday’s Stand on the Word Bible reading. “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” (2 Corinthians 5:10-11). Every man is made by God, every man will give an account to God, and that truth will outlast any human power to defy him.
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