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Did she make a mess or did she do precisely what she was hired to do? Perhaps she should have spiked the story earlier but regardless, she wasn’t hired for her skill set in shepherding the legacy of CBS News into the future. She was hired to be a hatchet person to that legacy. The degree to which we (the collective societal “we”) simply disregard and outright ignore what is happening around us as society falls is staggering to me. Perhaps it shouldn’t be. What has come out in the Epstein files alone would have brought down any other president. Now, it’s not even a blip. Setting aside the veracity of each individual claim, that preponderance of association and cloud of suspicion being utterly ignored by mainstream media is terrifying. Joe Biden slurred some words and the coverage was incessant. The current office holder rants incoherently, makes thinly veiled death threats against perceived enemies, wants to pull non-existent licenses from networks (and the president should actually know how thIs works, but I digress), is linked time and time again to perhaps the worst sexual predators in our lifetime — and the news outlets bring us the latest viral video, cute squirrel story, Taylor Swift gossip or what have you. Not a single one of the big three broadcast news operations is doing real journalism on a regular basis, and now the correspondent who did so has her story killed. Oh wait, I’m sorry, “postponed.” My time on this earth may not be all that much longer in the grand scheme of things. I look at the next generation in my extended family and fear for the world we’re leaving them.

This is a bit of a rant. You've been warned. True journalism was adversarial by nature. It made enemies. It embarrassed people with power. It survived complaints, lawsuits, and angry phone calls because that’s the cost of doing the job. When journalism started optimizing for comfort—of executives, donors, politicians, or audiences—it stopped being journalism and became content moderation for adults. And yes, we the public helped kill it too. As we trained newsrooms to fear us. We punished nuance, rewarded outrage, and confused “this makes me uncomfortable” with “this must be false.” We demanded instant takes, moral certainty, and tribal loyalty. Then we act shocked when reporters stopped taking risks. So now we have journalism that is: Carefully balanced to the point of meaninglessness Bravely critical only of people already out of favor Fearless about history, timid about the present “Investigative” as long as it doesn’t threaten access The most damning part isn’t that a story like the CECOT piece can be pulled. It’s that almost no one (aka the higher ups) inside these organizations are surprised anymore. They sigh, shrug, and move on to the next safe segment. The newsroom rebels were replaced by compliance officers with journalism degrees. We didn’t lose true journalism because the government banned it. We lost it because everyone involved decided it was too inconvenient to keep. And that, depressingly, is the most human outcome of all. End of rant.

UPDATE He has since passed away. A giant in hurricane forecasting, he was 94. https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/dr-neil-frank-dies/285-26cc29fe-18ee-4e47-bdf3-5039367c021a

Bari Weiss has really made a mess of herself in short time. No one believes she did this for journalistic reasons. I agree with Scott Pelley, as reported by the NYT: Mr. Pelley said that if Ms. Weiss planned to be more involved with editing “60 Minutes” stories, she should attend the early screenings and communicate directly with correspondents. “She needs to take her job a little bit more seriously,” he said. I also agree with this comment via Threads: Remember when Bari Weiss was just an intellectually lazy columnist whom none of her colleagues at the New York Times respected?

They won’t lose affiliates over it. It’s horrifically bad for anyone who values ethical journalism. But boards like this blow things out of proportion as the general public, writ large, sees and reacts to such things. Setting aside contractual terms as its own thorny issue, this will become background noise to the large chunk of the populace that’s not deeply engaged. That’s even more magnified during the busy holiday period when attention, already at a premium, is stretched to the breaking point. So much (bleep) comes at us so fast over the past year that before long, this will be a forgotten blip. I hate that. I do. But it’s reality. We need to understand how much of an ironclad grip this administration and its allies has on society. There is no Murrow, no Cronkite who will start the downfall. And it’s not going to be a spiked segment on the pre-Christmas 60 Minutes that breaks that grip. The list of times the resistance has hoped “this will be the thing” is long. And every single time, the result has been the same. The gravity of our situation can’t be overstated.

WEWS TV-5 Eyewitness News, complete evening edition and mostly complete late edition, for Friday, December 4, 1987... WCHS Eyewitness News 8 evening edition, for Thursday, November 15, 2001... Plenty more where those came from; channel has mostly Dothan and Panama City, with some Cleveland.

So happy to see Cindy back. I think I'm not alone in saying that I was growing increasingly concerned. Cindy brings so much light and warmth to Channel 2's airwaves and the station is instantly better with her there.

Thank goodness! She’s the best.

Yay, Cindy has returned to the ariwaves as of today at noon! So glad it was just a long break, which we are all entitled to.

His show is actually pretty good and not as politically heavy as every other cable news show now. You can’t compare ratings from a previous election year because there will always be a drop off. CNN knows they have a live anchor at midnight in case of breaking news but they can experiment.