CBS News has a new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, who is making substantial changes to how that media organization operates, clearly hoping to get the organization to produce pieces grounded in real journalism rather than political advocacy.
How is it going so far? Well, the Weiss team is looking to hire an around-the-clock security detail and is seeking new recruits.
A spokesman for the recently installed editor in chief of CBS News shared a tongue-in-cheek job description with The Post on Thursday as he confirmed Weiss has been guarded by a phalanx of beefy guards due to death threats over her strong support for Israel.“If you’re a former Navy SEAL who can bench 400 pounds and looks great in a suit, please contact jobs@thefp.com,” a spokesperson for Weiss told The Post on Thursday, referencing the email address for job inquiries at her news site The Free Press.
Therefore, the data suggest she is upsetting the right people.
In addition to the new security detail, there has been an interesting change related to a topic I cover frequently: Climate crisis pseudoscience. Weiss has apparently taken an axe to the organization’s “Climate Desk”.
CBS News has effectively dismantled its climate unit as part of sweeping layoffs, following its parent company Paramount’s merger with Skydance. Nearly the entire climate team was let go, including senior coordinating producer Tracy Wholf, who led the climate desk, and two other producers; a third producer was reassigned.
CBS News senior coordinating producer Tracy Wholf, the former head of the climate desk, was among those who were fired. Two other producers on her team were also laid off, with a third producer reassigned to a different department. Only environmental correspondent David Schecter remains in his position, without an assigned producer overseeing his work.Wholf’s departure came shortly after she sent an email within the news department suggesting that the network’s reports on Hurricane Melissa include context about the climate crisis. Wholf had suggested including a simple sentence in reports to link the storm with the crisis: “The above-average Atlantic Ocean temperatures, made worse by climate change, helped Melissa rapidly intensify into a category 5 storm.”
Legal Insurrection readers may recall a reference I made to a climate-crisis-promoting group called “Climate Central” in my analysis of how every hot summer day has morphed into a climate apocalypse. Because most journalists lack scientific credentials, many news organizations relied on the pseudoscience Climate Central was pushing.
CBS was among those entities.
In recent weeks, CBS News has disclosed in both on-air and online reports its coordination with Climate Central, a nonprofit that calls itself a “policy-neutral” and “independent group of scientists and communicators who research and report the facts about our changing climate and how it affects people’s lives.”CBS News has cited Climate Central research dozens of times since 2021, according to Grabien transcripts. But it wasn’t until July that the network began consistently referring to “our partners at Climate Central” on air.Last month, CBS News published a story about melting glaciers that also aired on “Sunday Morning.” Ben Tracy was the correspondent on the segment, with his byline at the top of the article. A disclaimer at the bottom read, “Story produced by Chris Spinder, in partnership with Climate Central. Editor: Chris Jolly.”Another CBS News article in July, also tied to an on-air segment with Tracy, included the disclaimer that the story was “produced in partnership with Climate Central.”
It appears those days are now coming to an end.
For those of us in news analysis, who have struggled to explain the complex array of factors that impact the climate and emphasized the need to include cost/benefit considerations in policy-making, the fact that the much vaunted “Climate Desk” has been shut down at a major news outlet is wonderful news.
Charles Rotter of Watts Up With That Blog stresses how important this move is to restoring journalistic “norms”.
… Reporters once understood the limits of their knowledge. They knew the difference between evidence and inference, between data and doctrine. Today, many mistake conviction for clarity. The mission is no longer to seek truth but to defend the truth already chosen.If CBS is taking a step back from that mindset, it’s not an act of suppression—it’s a return to sanity. The press can still cover environmental issues, but perhaps now it will have to do so without assuming the conclusions in advance.In that sense, the elimination of the “climate desk” may be the healthiest newsroom reform we’ve seen in years. For too long, climate journalism has been less about discovery and more about repetition. If this marks a turn back toward skepticism, evidence, and proportion, then CBS hasn’t gutted journalism—it has revived it.
Hot Air’s Beege Welborn speaks for many of us here:
How nice it’s going to be to miss the inserted sermons.My eyeballs will hardly know what to do if they can’t roll backwards anymore.I look forward to simply hearing about ‘the weather.’
I guess a heat wave during summer can go back to being a hot day, rather than a climactic catastrophe.
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