CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has made plenty of high-profile enemies during her tenure at the formerly respected news company. Weiss’s MAGA-adjacent reporting choices have earned her flak from everyone from Andy Cohen to former 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley to beloved Daily Show comic Stephen Colbert. Now, it looks like she can add veteran journalist Katie Couric to the list.
Speaking to Status over the weekend, Couric gave CBS a D grade under Weiss’s tenure. “Unfortunately, the stories coming out of 60 Minutes about trying to direct the storytelling in a way that is less offensive to the administration or that fudges the truth is a total embarrassment,” the veteran journalist explained. “It’s hard to measure, but there is probably some anticipatory obedience, if you will.”
Your dose of fabulosi-TEA
Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today
Girl, you just said a mouthful!
Weiss has been courting controversy from the instant she got the gig last fall. According to multiple sources, she’s been softballing stories that expose the full depravity of Tr*mp’s administration—including playing down the disturbing realities of ICE violence against undocumented workers. Earlier this month, Senator Ron Wyden’s report uncovered more dirt on Weiss’s MAGA ties. According to Wyden, a 60 Minutes segment on his investigative work around Epstein’s big bank corruption was scrapped, and the reporter who edited the piece, Sharyn Alfonsi, was fired shortly afterward.
All of this would be enough to justify Couric’s statement that Tr*mp’s FCC appointee Brendan Carr has had a “chilling effect” on the current mainstream news environment. But when it comes to Weiss, Couric’s criticism could stem from a different source altogether.
As we know all too well, Bari Weiss wasted plenty of ink trying to sow doubts about the benefits of gender-affirming care for trans youth when she was still a New York Times columnist. This passion carried over to the pages of Weiss’s The Free Press, where “gender critical” feminists like Abigail Shrier regularly spew misinformation about trans healthcare. For whatever mysterious reason, Weiss has made it her mission to drum up “evidence” that trans care for youth is tantamount to abuse, and in large part, she’s been successful in planting this idea in the cultural subconscious.
Couric, on the other hand, went a different route. When faced with her own ignorance around trans identity—notably in the famous Carmen Carrera segment from 2014—she did something notable. She listened, took in criticism, and showed up in a new, humbled way for the community years later.
In the 2017 documentary Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric, the presenter sits down with actual members of the trans community from across the country in an effort to—shocker!—understand something she doesn’t know very much about. The documentary is far from perfect, but it was a good faith effort by Couric to do the boots-on-the-ground journalism that we once expected from people in her position.
In a more enlightened era of news media, journalists were encouraged to sit with their lack of understanding and see where their bias possibly interfered. Weiss’s tactic, on the other hand, remains the same: attack what you don’t understand, and try to take some peoples’ rights away in the process.
In the Status interview, Couric keeps it very classy, as usual. “I don’t want to pass judgment,” she says of Weiss’s controversial 60 Minutes rebranding. “We’ll see if the quality of the reporting and the quality of the pieces are still there.”
We certainly will.
Related
Anti-gay crusader Ken Paxton puts his foot in his mouth again
Anti-gay crusader Ken Paxton puts his foot in his mouth again.
Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.
