Re-immers­ing in news after a week off for trav­el, I stum­bled into a sto­ry that could have come straight from “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”, the now more than 100 year-old car­toon that spe­cialis­es in things so strange, read­ers doubt their verac­i­ty. Hence this open let­ter to the new CBS News Editor-in-Chief.

Dear Bari Weiss: As a con­cept, nev­er mind a gen­uine need, spend­ing a report­ed $10,000 a day on as many as eight body­guards and a small con­voy of armoured SUVS, to keep you safe in the streets and office suites of New York is deplorable, pathet­ic and laugh­able in equal measure.
It cer­tain­ly fits a Ripley’s car­toon, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing you tried to  inspire your new staff  to do the job they’ve been doing with courage and dis­tinc­tion for  decades, by sign­ing off a pep talk with: “Let’s get out there and do fuck­ing news”.
Do you have any inkling of what the peo­ple you will be respon­si­ble for send­ing into con­flict zones and civ­il strife actu­al­ly face?
Would it help you get a feel for it if I sent you the body armour and Kevlar hel­met I stored in the base­ment when I retired?
Sor­ry. Sil­ly questions.
 The answer to both is obvi­ous­ly no, and hence you have even less of an idea how you will be viewed, and the loy­al­ty your regime will not in any way com­mand among them.
If you want to inspire and earn the respect of  CBS staffers, you’d be far bet­ter cit­ing the news phi­los­o­phy of leg­endary Man­ches­ter Guardian edi­tor C.P. Scott: “One of the virtues, per­haps almost the chief virtue, of a news­pa­per is its inde­pen­dence. What­ev­er its posi­tion or char­ac­ter, at least it should have a soul of its own.”
But then, you left a prime colum­nist job at the New York Times because, alleged­ly,  the paper dis­cour­aged your “bold” and “chal­leng­ing” writ­ing,  and failed to address “bul­ly­ing by col­leagues who dis­agree with my views.”
I would have thought the “damsel in dis­tress” trope was beneath you, Ms Weiss.
Which also rais­es the ques­tion: why should those to whom you are now man­age­ment,  believe you’ll stand up for them, or the jour­nal­is­tic prin­ci­ples you claim to espouse, against a U.S. pres­i­dent who has made a career out of bul­ly­ing any­one and every­one he sees as a vul­ner­a­ble enemy?
Or when one of your reporters asks a legit­i­mate ques­tion and is threat­ened, insult­ed, den­i­grat­ed or stonewalled by him, a mem­ber of his cab­i­net or  a Press spokesperson?
If you won’t back your staff in the face of them, or eco­nom­ic pres­sure, why should your employ­ees believe or have any faith you’ll pull out all the stops the way the old CBS did when any­one was under threat, wound­ed, injured or killed?
Again, sil­ly me.
The new CBS own­ers have already set the prece­dent for that.

THE COST IN CURRENCY YOU UNDERSTAND

 At a rough guess, your secu­ri­ty bill will be  the annu­al equiv­a­lent of the salaries of as many as 40 of the one hun­dred or so peo­ple who actu­al­ly get the news on the air, but have been fired since you were hired.
In a memo (no per­son­al touch nec­es­sary, of course),  David Elli­son, the bil­lion­aire who hired you and made them “redun­dant” char­ac­terised doing so as “phas­ing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolv­ing priorities.”
What’s the bet what­ev­er they evolve into will turn out to be wor­thy of a Ripley’s cartoon?
Elli­son pro for­ma char­ac­terised the blood­let­ting as “a dif­fi­cult process” and flavoured it with “these deci­sions are nev­er made lightly.”
That, I feel safe in say­ing,  fits the “or not” category.
Fir­ing peo­ple is no more stress­ful for your new boss and his ilk than dis­card­ing a suit or shirt that no longer fits.
Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump called you “a great new leader”, which is odd, con­sid­er­ing he also said: “I don’t know her.”
But for sure, it indi­cates Trump  expects you to try to turn the once-upon-a-time Tiffany net­work into what might best be described as  CBSFOX.

                      AN ALTERNATIVE

Instead, I unhumbly sug­gest you strive to  emu­late 2021 Nobel Peace prize win­ner, Maria Ressa. As founder of the Philip­pines-based online news site Rap­pler, she exposed what the Nobel com­mit­tee char­ac­terised as “the abuse of pow­er, use of vio­lence and increas­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism of the regime of (Philip­pines) Pres­i­dent Rodri­go Duterte.”
What Ms Ressa did not do was sur­round her­self with body­guards. She sim­ply stood fast and relied on jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty for pro­tec­tion and guidance.
Do any­thing oth­er than that, Ms Weiss, and your epi­taph, and that of what­ev­er is left of CBS News when you are done with each oth­er, will be the last lines of  “The Hol­low Men”, T.S. Eliot’s reflec­tion on hope­less­ness and social decline:
“This is the way the world ends 
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
 Yours sin­cere­ly, etc… 

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