<![CDATA[60 Minutes]]><![CDATA[CBS News]]><![CDATA[Media Bias]]>Featured

Monday’s Final Word – HotAir

admin
December 22, 2025
0Points
0
0
CBS, Progressives Lose Their Minds Over Bari – HotAir

I make my living off the evening news, just give me some tabs, some tabs I can use …





Ed: Be sure to click through to the memo itself. It paints a picture of a 60 Minutes piece that consists of a one-sided narrative amplification that didn’t even try to tell a complete story. Bari Weiss is too classy to make that point explicitly in this memo, but it’s hardly subtle. 

===

Politico: To pull the story so close to airtime, Alfonsi said, is “not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote. “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”

She continued, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find convenient.” …

“We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it,” Alfonsi wrote. “When it airs without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of ‘Gold Standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet.”

Ed: I also included some of this in my earlier post, but the “corporate censorship” line is pretty rich. Alfonsi fronted a crappy, biased segment on a platform well known for publishing crappy, biased stories. Alfonsi has been part of that pattern, too. 

===





It was one of the most blatantly dishonest pieces of journalism I can ever remember. I would never trust a reporter who ran with such a story again. 

In addition, the fact that she reacted by trying to smear her bosses and @bariweiss instead of working to update the story in a way that gets it to pass their standards only furthers my assumptions that she’s an activist who is upset that she can no longer abuse her platform to push an agenda. 

Bari should clean house of the people who feel entitled to behave this way.

Ed: Alfonsi should be worried about her job for other reasons. Going public with accusations of “corporate censorship” for what should be normal editorial discretion will move Alfonsi to the top of the “future examples set for others” list. If it were me, I’d put her at the top of the list. 

===

Guy Benson (April 2021): The far bigger issue is that 60 Minutes’ team was explicitly warned, on the record, by two Florida Democrats with firsthand knowledge of the situation that their “DeSantis pay-for-play corruption” angle was totally and completely without merit.  The journalists actively ignored these warnings, plowing forward with a narrative that even members of the governor’s opposition party had told them was false.  And because both Democrats, to their immense credit, have spoken out publicly about the journalistic corruption they personally witnessed, 60 Minutes felt compelled to issue another statement, which is even worse …

The CBS statement knocks DeSantis for declining a sit-down interview (this decision appears vindicated by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s conduct at the press conference and her team’s egregious final product hit job, based on a pre-determined conclusion), then pushes back against the two Democratic officials in question.  We did speak to both of them, CBS says, but it’s “untrue” that we “ignored their perspective.”  The statement also appears to accuse Palm Beach Mayor David Kerner of lying about being interviewed.  All of this is totally bizarre.  Kerner never denied that he was interviewed.  His blistering press release on Monday stated what he’d “discussed” with CBS, adding that the network “had [the relevant] information” and “left it out because it kneecaps their narrative.”  Appearing on Fox the next day, Kerner mentioned that he’d spoken with 60 Minutes producers for the better part of an hour.  He never denied that the interview happened, as CBS suggests; he said that they ignored what he told them, which is obviously true.  Moskowitz is also very displeased with the way 60 Minutes characterized their interactions with him[.]





Ed: The fraud around the claim that CBS had asked for comment in that episode sounds pretty familiar in this instance, too. Alfonsi is not a reporter; she’s an activist promoting her political narrative. Read Guy’s entire essay to remember what happened in April 2021, and what DIDN’T happen – Alfonsi never got held accountable. 

===

Ed: Click through to read Becket’s own April 2021 essay on this subject. 

===

Axios: Paramount on Monday updated its takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery with a guarantee from Oracle chairman Larry Ellison to provide an “irrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4 billion of the equity financing” for its offer.

Why it matters: When formally rejecting Paramount’s hostile bid last week, the Warner Bros. board said that Paramount “misled shareholders” about the reliability of its backstop from Paramount CEO David Ellison’s family because the backstop funding was coming from a revocable family trust that could be amended before the deal closed.

Ed: It’s true that CNN is a very small part of this deal, and that WBD shareholders have bigger issues to discern between these bids. But it is still fun to point out that CNN could still end up answering to Bari Weiss.This development does make it a little more likely that Paramount will succeed. 





===

Ed: I’m pretty sure Chris is being sarcastic here. And well he should be. We all know why the Biden Regency wants to stop people from asking questions about their 2024 catastrophe, and more importantly, to bury the actual answers. 

===

Ed: Yeah, these guys are super credible … 

===

Mediaite: Former Vice President Mike Pence is poaching top officials from conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, as staff flee amid rising concerns about the organization’s recent controversies surrounding anti-semitism.

The former second in command to President Donald Trump told The Washington Post that the think tank’s officials are joining his group, the Advancing American Freedom, due to changing ideologies at Heritage.

“Why these people are coming our way is that Heritage and some other voices and commentators have embraced big-government populism and have been willing to tolerate antisemitism,” said Pence.

Ed: It’s mostly the anti-Semitism, as well as the crazies, that’s driving people out of Heritage now. 

===

Ed: Josh resigned over the weekend, too. 

===

Jonathan Turley: Yale has finally achieved liberal nirvana. According to a recent report from the Buckley Institute, there is now not a single Republican found across 27 of 43 departments at Yale University. In a nation roughly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats (with a slight advantage to the GOP), only 3 percent are Republicans across all Yale departments.





In comparison, roughly 83% of faculty are registered Democrats or primarily support Democratic candidates.

The Buckley Institute’s report looked at Yale’s undergraduate departments, as well as its School of Management and Law School.

Ed: I’m old enough to remember when Yale was the conservative Ivy League school. And the worst part – it still may be!

===

Ed: For a media “critic,” Stelter doesn’t evince much expertise in his field. 

===

Eli Lake at The Free Press: The photos in the Epstein files are not dated. Clinton claims that he cut off contact with Epstein in 2005, before the financier was first arrested, for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Because the files lack dates or other information, it’s impossible to know if any of them were taken on Epstein’s infamous private island, Little Saint James, which Epstein said Clinton never visited. Nonetheless, the photos make the ex-president’s relationship with Epstein appear more intimate than a few conversations about politics and economics.

Whatever happens, Clinton does appear to have some explaining to do. Even an erstwhile ally, Senator Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat who sought the vice presidency in 2016 on a ticket with Bill’s wife, Hillary, said so. On Meet the Press on Sunday, Kaine said he hadn’t tracked what Clinton had been saying about his relationship with Epstein, but added that, “If there are unanswered questions, you know, he should address them, and I suspect he will.” …





None of the files yet released prove the elaborate theory that has spread about Epstein: that he was running a sex-trafficking ring to blackmail America’s power elite. Instead, the release has fed another round of innuendo while eroding long-standing rules to keep the politics of personal destruction far away from our justice system.

Ed: I largely agree with Eli on this point. However, this is what happens when politicians demagogue on scandal. Both parties have been guilty about that with the Epstein files. And no one in the media seemed to care about that until the Tubba Bubba pictures got released. 

===

Ed: We make no promises, y’all. 

===

Ed: Tonight’s final Final Word is brought to you by Andy Rooney, and … the other Andy Rooney!

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!


Editor’s note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you’re digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments — and support independent platforms — why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise.  Use the promo code MERRY to get 74% off your membership!





Source link

admin

Related Posts

1 of 39
Copyright © 2025 nationalconservativemovement - .
Copyright © 2025 nationalconservativemovement - .