The Crisis, No. 6

On the architecture of unreality

Bari Weiss is not a journalist. She is a propagandist with a journalist’s title. She has an agenda. She has interests. And they align with the interests of those who think keeping the current regime in charge of our national affairs is theirs. It is why she brings the reactionary fraud Niall Ferguson to CBS: to lend the appearance of intellectual heft to what is, in fact, a project of epistemological sabotage.

Weiss announced her vision for CBS News today. She told the staff they are “toast” if they continue on their current path. She said the network must “reflect more of the political friction that animates our national conversation.” She wants to “widen the aperture of the stories we tell and the voices we hear from.”

This sounds reasonable. It is not.

What Weiss is demanding is not balance. It is fabrication.

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There is a reality. In this reality, federal agents have killed two American citizens in Minneapolis in the past month. In this reality, the administration is demanding voter databases as ransom to withdraw its occupation force. In this reality, children are hiding indoors while masked men patrol their neighborhoods. These things are documented. They are filmed. They are facts.

There is also a constructed narrative—what I will call the MAGA cinematic universe. In this universe, the agents acted in self-defense. The nurse had a gun. The protesters are domestic terrorists. The occupation is law enforcement. The ransom demand is reasonable governance. In this universe, the regime is restoring order, and anyone who objects is hysterical.

CBS News—like any functioning journalism operation—sends reporters into the world. Those reporters observe events. They interview witnesses. They review footage. They document what they find. And what they find does not match the MAGA cinematic universe. It matches reality.

This is what Weiss calls bias.

When she says CBS is not producing “a product that enough people want,” she means: CBS journalists are reporting what they observe, and what they observe contradicts the story that MAGA audiences have been told by their preferred media. The “product” those audiences want is validation of their constructed narrative. And CBS journalists, by doing their jobs, are failing to provide it.

Weiss’s solution is not to improve the journalism. It is to corrupt it.

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Niall Ferguson—a historian who has made a career of providing intellectual cover for empire and reaction. A man who writes columns for The Free Press, Weiss’s own publication, which Paramount conveniently acquired when she took the CBS job. Ferguson has been, in the delicate phrasing of the press coverage, “supportive of Trump.”

Mark Hyman—a wellness podcaster who wrote the preface to Robert Kennedy Jr.’s book arguing for removing mercury from vaccines. A man “closely aligned” with RFK Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services who believes vaccines cause autism. Hyman will now appear on CBS News as an expert.

Arthur Brooks, Coleman Hughes—both Free Press columnists. The pipeline is direct: Weiss’s publication feeds contributors to the network she now controls.

These are the dance moves of a propagandist, trying to redirect attention away from the inconvenient and towards the selective profanities of those she associates with her political enemies.

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Weiss pulled a 60 Minutes segment on Trump administration deportations in December—a segment that had already been promoted, that was ready to air. The correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, sent a blistering note to colleagues calling the decision political. The segment eventually aired a month later, after whatever pressure Weiss applied had its effect.

This is what editorial control looks like under the new regime. Not outright censorship—not yet—but delay, dilution, the quiet smothering of stories that might embarrass the administration. The correspondent calls it political. Weiss calls it editorial judgment. The audience never knows what was changed, what was softened, what was killed in the cradle.

And now Weiss tells the staff they are “toast” if they don’t get on board. The threat is clear. Produce the product the audience wants—the audience she is cultivating, the audience that wants its lies validated—or lose your job.

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We have been talking about the occupation of Minneapolis, about the shootings, about the craven corporate executives and the cynical ideologues. But underneath all of that is a more fundamental problem: a significant portion of the American population has been taught to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears.

They have been trained—by Fox News, by talk radio, by podcasts and YouTube channels and social media algorithms—to believe that mainstream journalism is enemy propaganda. That reporters who document what they see are liars. That the only trustworthy sources are the ones that tell them what they already believe.

This training took decades. It was deliberate. It was funded. And it worked.

Now Weiss is completing the project. She is taking one of the last legacy news organizations with mass reach and converting it to the cause. Not by replacing journalists with propagandists—that would be too obvious—but by hiring “contributors” who will provide the “political friction” she desires. By pressuring correspondents to soften their reporting. By creating an environment where the truth is just one perspective among many, no more valid than the constructed narrative, deserving no special deference.

The goal is not to convince anyone of anything. The goal is to destroy the concept of shared reality. To make it impossible to know what is true. To reduce all claims to opinion, all facts to perspective, all journalism to content.

In such an environment, power is the only arbiter. Whoever controls the narrative controls reality. And Weiss is positioning CBS News to be controlled.

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Weiss is not saying that CBS should lie. She is saying that CBS should present lies and truth as equivalent. That the journalist who documents an execution and the administration spokesman who calls it self-defense should be given equal weight. That “both sides” deserve representation, even when one side is simply making things up.

This is the false balance that has plagued American journalism for decades, but Weiss is taking it further. She is not just applying it to matters of opinion—should taxes be higher or lower, should we have more or less immigration—where reasonable people can disagree. She is applying it to matters of fact. Did the agents shoot a man who was trying to help someone? The footage says yes. The administration says no. Weiss says: let’s hear from both sides.

When you treat lies as one legitimate perspective among many, you are not being fair. You are being complicit. You are lending the authority of your institution to the project of deception. You are telling your audience that they cannot trust their own eyes, that reality is up for debate, that power gets to define what happened.

This is what Weiss means by “political friction.” She wants CBS to be a battleground where truth and lies fight to a draw. She wants the audience to come away uncertain, confused, unable to distinguish reporting from propaganda. She wants them to throw up their hands and say: who can know what’s really true?

That uncertainty is the product. That confusion is the goal.

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The journalists at CBS News know what is happening. Some of them are fighting back—Alfonsi’s note was an act of courage. But they are outgunned. Weiss has the backing of ownership. She has the power to hire and fire. She has told them they are “toast” if they resist.

This is how institutions die. Not all at once, but by inches. The correspondent who knows the story was softened but needs the job. The producer who sees the contributor list and understands what it means but has a mortgage. The editor who remembers what journalism used to be but watches the layoffs and keeps quiet.

Each individual compromise is understandable. Together, they constitute surrender.

And Weiss knows this. She is counting on it. She is betting that the economic pressure, the career pressure, the exhaustion of fighting every day will wear them down. That eventually, the journalists who remain will be the ones willing to produce the product she wants. The ones with principles will leave or be pushed out. The institution will be hollowed from within.

This is the playbook. It has worked before. It is working now.

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I said at the beginning that Weiss is not a journalist. Here is what that means.

She presents herself as a defender of free speech, a champion of open inquiry, a brave voice against orthodoxy. This is the brand. This is the pose.

But look at what she does. She pulls segments that might embarrass the administration. She hires contributors aligned with the regime’s health secretary. She demands that her newsroom “reflect the political friction”—meaning, validate the lies that half the country has been taught to believe. She threatens staff who resist.

This is not journalism. This is captured speech. This is the instrumentalization of a journalistic institution for political ends.

Weiss does not believe in free inquiry. She believes in her inquiry, her perspective, her allies in power. The Free Press is free to publish what Weiss approves. CBS News will be free to report what Weiss allows. The speech that gets protected is the speech that serves the project.

She is not hiding what she is. She told the staff they are “toast.” She announced the contributor hires. The fraud is not in concealment—it is in the pretense that any of this is journalism at all.

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What do we do?

First, we name it. We do not pretend that Weiss is engaged in a good-faith effort to improve journalism. She is not. She is engaged in a project of epistemological warfare, and CBS News is her beachhead.

Second, we support the journalists who resist. Alfonsi’s note should not be an isolated act of courage. It should be the beginning of a movement. The reporters and producers and correspondents who still believe in their craft need to know that the public sees what is happening and stands with them.

Third, we build alternatives. The legacy institutions are falling. CBS, ABC, NBC—they are all vulnerable to this kind of capture. We cannot depend on them to tell us the truth. We need independent journalism, funded by readers, accountable to no one but the public interest. We need to support it with our subscriptions, our attention, our trust.

Fourth, we refuse the frame. When someone tells you that journalism is just another form of opinion, that truth is just one perspective among many, that reality is whatever you can get people to believe—you tell them no. You insist that there are facts. You insist that documentation matters. You insist that a nurse was shot ten times in the back and that this is not a matter of perspective.

The epistemological crisis is the foundation of all the other crises. If we cannot agree on what is true, we cannot act together. If we cannot trust any institution to tell us what is happening, we are atomized, isolated, helpless. If reality is up for grabs, power wins by default.

Bari Weiss understands this. That is why she is doing what she is doing.

We must understand it too. And we must fight.

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There are children hiding in Minneapolis tonight. Federal agents patrol their streets. A nurse was buried this week.

And Bari Weiss is telling the staff of CBS News that they need to “widen the aperture.” That they need to give the administration’s lies equal time with the documented truth. That they are “toast” if they don’t comply.

Fuck you, Bari. I say this on behalf of those who want to say it, but currently find the courage escaping them.

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Go Deeper into the Circus

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