The 60 Minutes way of looking at power and politics has always been cautiously rebellious or at least iconoclastic in a decorous sort of way. They’ve almost always represented the proverbial elite liberal Manhattan newsroom view of things. (Which I’ve mostly agreed with over the decades so no problem.) All hail Al Pacino‘s Lowell Bergman!
But in this sense 60 Minutes has always had its own thumb on the proverbial scale. The show has always espoused a branded 60 Minutes attitude or mentality.
That said, I don’t think Bari Weiss is the devil, or that she’s out to Trumpify or smother this show in any injurious or appalling way. She wants to modify the elitism and the entrenched upscale midtown Manhattan narrative, but she’s no Trump stooge.
Bill Maher last weekend: “I watch 60 Minutes every week. I have since I was a kid. If I hadn’t heard all the buzz in the media about the recent rancor, would I ever notice that [the show] was in any way different? I don’t think I would. [And] I don’t feel that Scott Pelley is a national treasure. I never liked him…sorry, I just never did. And companies change hands all the time. I feel like we see everything through such a partisan lens.”
Fired 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley to N.Y. Times‘ Lulu Garcia-Navarro: “My impression at the time [of the postponement of the CECOT Nicaraguan prison segment] was that Bari Weiss was representing…that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the [Trump] administration….just constantly looking out for the views of the president, which we had reported but it was never enough…for the first time in my career, the balance was off.
“But the inexperience and incompetence was the bigger problem.”
Garcia-Navaro: “Do you think Bari Weiss needs to be removed?”
Pelley: “Oh, gosh, yes! She brings an ideology into [this situation] that is just anathema [to 60 Minutes culture], and a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen before. There is no democracy without journalism. It cannot be done. It is possible to land this plane. But right now, in my view, CBS News is on fire.”
