Two Cheers for Bari Weiss

"The new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss isn't Barry Goldwater, despite what you may have heard. Noted media critic George Clooney may not be able to tell her apart from Sean Hannity, but Weiss is essentially a 1990s New Republic liberal, someone who might once have edited the inflight magazine of Air Force One during a popular Democratic administration. Of course, even that is now too right-wing for most of the modern American left, including those found in the pages of today's New Republic."

"Bernie Sanders's 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns were like retrospective primary challenges to Bill Clinton. Sanders failed in part because he cared more about socioeconomics than cultural identity and what Ralph Nader used to call "gonad politics." Not coincidentally, it is probably no longer possible for a Democratic administration to be popular for more than a few months under normal circumstances, at least with anyone who could realistically win the party's presidential nomination at the helm."

"Still, one needn't believe Weiss is the caricature that so vexes newsroom progressives nor have a particular taste for her preferred flavors of conservatism to have some sympathy for what she is seeking to accomplish at CBS. Weiss's progressive detractors believe she is trying to transform the legacy media into a pale imitation of the conservative press. But while her own politics are arguably quite narrow, nothing is narrower than the range of perspectives that dominate putatively mainstream newsrooms."

Bari Weiss is portrayed as a moderate 1990s New Republic liberal rather than an extreme conservative. Progressive critics fear she will convert legacy media into a conservative-style press, but mainstream newsrooms already reflect a narrow range of perspectives. Journalism has shifted toward a white-collar profession of college-educated liberals concentrated in Washington and New York, creating ambient liberalism that subtly shapes coverage. Bernie Sanders's campaigns signaled a tension between socioeconomic politics and cultural identity, and contemporary Democratic administrations struggle to maintain broad popularity. Diversity initiatives altered newsroom racial composition but preserved prevailing ideological conformity.

Read at The American Conservative