The Shitstorm at 60
How much of the still raging dumpster fire at 60 Minutes is due to the billionaire Ellisons’ need to keep Trump onside to close their mastodonic media merger, and how much is it their editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss’s mind-boggling management ineptitude? 60 Minutes sainted veteran Scott Pelley was indeed overwrought in his NYT interview, using the phrase “like your spouse being murdered” to describe the fate of the iconic news show, where for 37 years he had covered every war, genocide, natural disaster, and president. But sometimes, it’s your ordained role to boil over and lose your shit. He’s almost 69 and he’s earned it. Pelley was most persuasive in his deep understanding – and reverence for – the technicalities of TV journalism. Weiss’s repeated suggestions to add and subtract elements to stories past their deadline defied TV’s most implacable demand, the ticking clock itself.
But there’s a worse element to Weiss’s conduct than the possibility of corporate sucking-up or a refusal to acknowledge her lack of broadcast experience. At The Free Press, the digital news platform she founded, Weiss was a fresh, inventive editor. I was impressed enough with the caliber of writers she published to be happy to have Fresh Hell sometimes reposted there.
It’s not Trump’s politics that she seems to be pushing on 60 Minutes – like Bill Maher, I haven’t seen any meaningful difference in their coverage since she took the helm - it’s the mirroring of Trump’s worship of chaos. Because chaos is cool. Because in the Trump era, the wrecking ball is the new cultural prestige. Because brutality is the new strength. It means that it’s not enough to fire executive producer Tanya Simon, who’d just presided over a rocket-fueled ratings boost. No, Pelley says Simon was ordered to vacate her office by 5pm, as if she’d been caught with her hand in the till. After also firing three senior producers and two correspondents, Weiss then announced the appointment as 60’s new executive producer: Nick Bilton, a random-assed media welterweight who has zero television news experience.
No doubt, there are a few pious, mediocre stiffs at 60 Minutes who should be replaced by some irreverent fresh blood. Far from being the close-knit family that Pelley described, I have always heard it’s a cage fight of cutthroat egos over there, competing for air time. But Weiss could have let Bilton reform the culture and lower the boom as he gradually brought in new cast members. It’s as if she actually revels in personnel shitstorms. She didn’t just demoralize the CBS staff, she castrated her own guy Bilton and threw him into the definition of a hostile working environment. It’s the Truth Social HR playbook. Humiliation all round. (I find it particularly galling that Bilton, who wandered in like the Chauncey Gardiner of TV news, is reportedly being paid a million dollars more than the 27-year veteran Tanya Simon.)
Rubble Trouble
The current vandalism vogue in so many aspects of American business and culture started with the Silicon Valley ethos of “Move fast and break things” and merged with the MAGA war on expertise. I’m surprised Weiss has not appeared at a CBS sales conference waving a Muskian chainsaw. It’s thanks in part to DOGE effectively closing the program which tracked the New World screwworm that the flesh-eating parasite has now resurfaced to infect cattle in Texas. Flesh-eating parasites of the world unite! What hideous dropped ball awaits us from the appointment of the latest Trump-donor clown, Bill Pulte. He’s already running the Federal Housing Finance Agency but Trump just threw him the added side hustle of being head of National Intelligence. (“Bill is a guy that will be able to figure it out very quickly,” Trump explained.) Another knowledge institution sinks into the quicksand.
The cultural meme of our time is the pile of rubble heralding the 90-thousand square feet White House ballroom. As historian Sean Wilentz writes in a forthcoming essay in Leon Wieseltier’s Liberties Journal, “for a developer, rubble is a sign that things are looking up.” For the rest of us, rubble is the reminder of the accumulated wisdom and communal values that are lost.
P.S. For more in press humiliation week, let’s not forget NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, who was so damn lame when Trump got into her face with a round of insults about her “crooked” network. After she challenged him over his claims about winning the 2020 election, he stormed out of an interview with the parting shot, “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.” Did Welker stand up and tell him, in polite TV terms, to back the fuck off ? No. She whimpered, “ Mr President, let’s please, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin!” As if getting out of her DC bubble was some heroic sacrifice for the nation.
The White House Correspondents’ Association has announced a replay on July 24th of their annual dinner with the president as screwworm guest of honor. Any member of the press who accepts an invitation to the do-over is off my Christmas card list forever.
"Any member of the press who accepts an invitation to the do-over is off my Christmas card list forever."
Mine, too. Terrific column.
All roads lead to Trump. Why do you think he picked the most unqualified, even dangerous sycophants for his own cabinet? He doesn't want anyone who reports to him to push back. (BTW, Hitler did the same thing when he came to power in 1933). They are there only to do his bidding and dirty work as he sees fit.) Our democracy has never been more vulnerable since the Civil War.