Bari Weiss is headed for a kick in the teeth

I was a news junkie long before it was cool — was it ever cool? — or even common.

Growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I was probably the only kid on my block, maybe in the entire city and state, who planted himself in front of the television every night to watch Walter Cronkite on CBS News.

When I was about eight years old, I could even do an impression of him, articulating his famous sign-off, “And that’s the way it is.” I can still do it today, though you have to be someone of a certain age to appreciate it.

I had a fixation with presidents, with war, with history, and nobody delivered the news with more authority, more gravitas, or more sheer trustworthiness than Cronkite. It wasn’t just my opinion. Year after year, he was named the most trusted man in America.

When he retired in 1981, I was in high school, and it felt like a seismic event. A seminal moment. Who in God’s name could ever replace the God of the evening news, Walter Cronkite? Dan Rather stepped in and did a terrific job.

Now it’s anchored by the woefully incompetent Tony Dokoupil. Who? Exactly. This neophyte wouldn’t have been qualified to be Cronkite’s junior intern.

But my devotion to Cronkite was only the beginning. There was also 60 Minutes. I watched that too, for as long as I can remember. Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley were my guys. And I loved Andy Rooney. I can do his impression too, but again, no one knows who he is anymore.

The fearlessness and tenacity of the show’s correspondents, and their refusal to let the powerful off the hook, were legendary. It was what journalism looked like at its absolute finest.

It was perhaps the love for Cronkite and 60 Minutes that drove me into media and public relations, where I spent 30 years working with hundreds of reporters and media outlets.

For a long time in PR, we had two holy grails — a front-page story in the New York Times and a segment on 60 Minutes, positive ones, of course. I was fortunate enough to land five front-page Times stories over my career and one 60 Minutes segment in 1999, tied to Y2K preparedness.

Which makes what is happening right now to that network all the more gut-wrenching.

Since the loathsome Bari Weiss took over CBS News and Donald Trump began his assault on Black Rock, the nickname for the former CBS headquarters, the network has been in a death spiral of its own making.

Weiss has no business running a major network news division. Under her watch, CBS News has become a shadow of itself, and its anchor has devolved into little more than Trump state television. The news division is collapsing at breathtaking speed.

And then there’s the tragedy occurring at the beloved 60 Minutes.

60 Minutes debuted in 1968 and became, arguably, the most important television program in American history, and remains that today. And, not just in news, but in the entirety of television. Year after year, it ranks among the most-watched programs on the air.

It broke stories that changed the country. It featured the most iconic correspondents in broadcast history. It was appointment television, 7 PM on Sunday night, or whenever the late NFL game ended in the fall, you made sure you were parked in front of your set. You were spellbound.

It’s now in a freefall.

Weiss shockingly dumped the show’s long-time veteran and executive producer, Tanya Simon, and appointed Nick Bilton, a technologist with no traditional broadcast experience, to lead 60 Minutes. He subsequently fired veteran producers and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.

The decision caused intense internal backlash, and that’s putting it mildly. It's being murdered, and I’m not the one using such draconian terms. And those firings were only the beginning.

Scott Pelley, the former CBS News anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent, blew up — and rightly so — this week, tearing into the new leadership of 60 Minutes, calling out the way staff have been treated, the firings, the gutting of the show’s editorial independence. He said Weiss was “murdering” the show.

After sticking up for his show, and his colleagues, Pelley was fired, and simultaneously proven wrong. The Trump/CBS paramilitary isn’t murdering the show. They are executing it.

Steve Kroft, another legendary 60 Minutes correspondent and my “friend” from the Y2K days, was more blunt, more direct, and more correct. He said, “I never expected it would be executed by the President of the United States.”

Trump is doing to 60 Minutes what he did to Stephen Colbert and the CBS Evening News.

This trifecta represents the cowardice at CBS toward Trump. It is a direct testament to how thoroughly Paramount and CBS have prostrated themselves before Donald Trump.

Here’s the business reality that CBS executives apparently cannot grasp: everyone who has ever bowed down to Donald Trump eventually gets kicked in the teeth. Trump never rewards loyalty. Ever. And CBS is going to pay a big, and perhaps fatal, price.

Having worked in the media for so long, I know that the advertising exodus is coming. Without credible news programming and without marquee late-night talent, what exactly is CBS selling? The NFL? Sure, football delivers ratings, but a network cannot survive on four months of ad revenue.

Once the big advertisers bolt, and they will bolt, CBS will be left hawking gold coins, commemorative silver plates, and 1-800 numbers, the same bottom-of-the-barrel inventory that clutters Fox News and late-night infomercial block. That is the road CBS is now on.

What is being done to CBS is a demolition. And when the last advertiser walks and the last credible journalist quits, Donald Trump will have claimed his most significant media scalp yet.

His accomplices, a cowardly corporation and one inept executive, are helping him tear it down.

And, that’s the way it is. And it’s a damn shame.