The panel on Thursday’s edition of the RealClearPolitics podcast discussed whether criticism of new CBS News editor Bari Weiss is fair, including this piece from Variety: “CBS News Veers Toward Dysfunction Under Bari Weiss Following Gaffes at 60 Minutes, Evening News.” “Staffers say she rides people intensely to execute on a directive and then is apt to change her mind at the last minute, all of which proves exhausting,” someone at CBS told Variety. “She’s seeing resistance from within the organization,” Tom Bevan said. “Oh, she’s a tough boss. Really? Is that even news?” “If that’s the worst thing you can say about her, she’s probably doing pretty well,” Bevan continued. “But it does point out that this may have been a job she was never going to be successful at just because the institution itself was unwilling to accept not just her management style, but her philosophy.” “People should understand CBS is not, or has not been, a well-oiled machine for quite a while,” Walworth added. “I think it’s fair to say that this really isn’t about her management style. It’s about the fact that they perceive her as a conservative and someone who wants a different take on the Trump administration.” “First of all, she’s not a conservative. She’s a traditional liberal – a gay woman, married, Jewish intellectual,” Carl Cannon said. “When The New York Times decided she was a right-winger, that didn’t tell you anything about Bari Weiss. It told you how the inmates were running the asylum at The New York Times.” “She’s come in there, and they’re afraid she’s ideological,” Cannon added. “They don’t see that they’re ideological.” “One thing you could raise – not to fault her – is that she had no real experience in broadcasting. She was a columnist, then ran a startup,” Cannon also said. “It was wildly successful, but she didn’t know that business. She might have gone slower, learned the culture, made some friends, and built alliances. She didn’t. It sounds like she came in tossing furniture around, firing people, and hiring people. So she was going to get flak. We shouldn’t say all of it is undeserved because we don’t know.”
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